Alternatives: Data Networking

Few vendors hold sway over their market space the way Cisco Systems does in data networking. Its routers and switches dominate the market and, in the eyes of a vast majority of solution providers, are the products to beat, according to the VARBusiness Alternatives Survey.

But Cisco's Windows-like dominance doesn't mean that VARs are forced to partner with the company. Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve networking products rank second in market share, and partners have long appreciated how well the company integrates its products and pays attention to their full life cycle, from procurement to disposal. That's especially attractive now that networking services are beginning to take hold.

"It's a lot easier to maintain and restore services if you have all the same equipment, and we prefer to use HP because they believe in the integrity of that life cycle," says Dan Atkinson, executive vice president of alliances for DirectPointe, an SMB services provider in Lindon, Utah.

An even more viable networking alternative to Cisco might be Juniper Networks, whose core routers have crept toward 30 percent mind share, according to our study (Cisco's have been slipping down to the 60s). In addition, Juniper's T-Series and M-Series routers have been garnering accolades for their robustness and scalability. In December, Juniper announced that MCI had demonstrated a 40-Gbps transmission rate using one of its routers.

As Juniper CEO Scott Kriens told analysts and media last year, the company is well-positioned to take advantage of the move to upgraded networks.

"As customers migrate from legacy systems to next-generation IP networks, they'll be less hesitant to spend money on the upgrades," Kriens says. "There's a $10 billion opportunity in the traffic-processing space, and we'll perpetually be spending a percentage of our revenue in the mid- to high teens to take advantage of this."