6/28/2012 --

Cisco Systems Inc.'s is tops in the data center.

No, not with Unified Computing System (UCS), its data center computing business.

In networking, of course, where it's always dominated the data center. Thanks to an early-2012 spike in demand, the market for data center networking gear is a pretty big pie.

Cisco just has the biggest piece, that's all.

According to market watcher Infonetics Research, Cisco maintains its large lead over competitors F5 Networks and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), who are second and third, respectively.

Cisco, Infonetics says, enjoys a "commanding" lead over both F5 and HP, who are vying with one another for runner-up honors. The good news is that demand for data center networking gear is up significantly -- by 17 percent -- year over year. "The data center equipment market was down sequentially, but is up nicely from the year-ago first quarter," said Infonetics analyst Sam Barnett, in a prepared release. "For the remainder of 2012 and into 2013, we expect growth to be choppy as service providers and data center operators are at different stages in their data center upgrades and some are beginning to wind down their current investment cycle."

While the data center networking market was up 17 percent year over year, it was down 6 percent from the previous quarter. WAN optimization sales were hardest hit, dropping by a full 20 percent. Demand was strongest in the Asia-Pacific region, although North America still accounts for almost half the overall market, according to Infonetics.

UCS Makes Strong Gains in Data Center Market

Cisco doesn't enjoy quite the same dominance in the data center computing segment.

However, UCS continues to make headway against established heavyweights Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), IBM Corp., and Oracle Corp.

According to market watcher International Data Corp. (IDC), for example, it's the No. 3 player in the blade server segment, with nearly 13 percent of the overall market.

That's almost half again as much as Dell, with 8.7 percent of the market.

Moreover, says IDC, Cisco increased its blade server revenues by nearly half (48.8 percent), year-over-year, in Q1 of 2012. Cisco's 12.8 market market share was up 3.6 points from Q1 of 2011.
--By Stephen Swoyer