1/25/2005 -- As a provider of enterprise networking solutions, Cisco enjoyed a peerless 2004, solidifying its control across most of the enterprise markets in which it competes.

In the carrier space, too, Cisco continues to excel—although its prospects for long-term dominance aren’t without a potential pratfall or two.

According to Synergy Research, Cisco was the dominant provider of carrier-specific solutions through the first three quarters of 2004, controlling more than three-quarters of the core IP routing market—almost six times more than runner-up Juniper Networks, which notched a 12.9 percent share.

According to Jeff Ogle, a principal analyst for carrier infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis, Cisco’s new CRS-1 could help to expand this lead. “While it is too early for the newly introduced CRS-1 to have impacted market share numbers, it will obviously have a major impact on the competitive landscape and shows Cisco’s true commitment to own this space as well as its commitment to the service provider market,” Ogle writes.

CRS-1 trumps the best of what Juniper, Avici and other vendors have to offer, Ogle says: It boasts 92Tbps of raw throughput, trouncing the core offerings from Juniper (at 1.2Tbps) and Avici (5.6Tbps).

And while Cisco’s edge portfolio has caused it a few problems in the enterprise space, the configurability of its 7600, 10000, and 12000 Series products appeals to service providers, says Ogle, who notes that these devices provide multiple, function-rich platforms with enough overlap to satisfy many of the esoteric configuration scenarios required by carriers.

Elsewhere, Ogle says other technology trends portend well for Cisco. “More good news for Cisco is that the industry shift to packet-based technology, which is now being executed by the largest and most conservative carriers, plays directly into Cisco’s traditional strength in routing and switching,” he writes. “These packet-based services will drive the need for service providers to grow their infrastructures to new levels of performance in an incremental way.”

Similarly, as service providers start to target enterprises with managed or hosted services, Cisco is poised to profit from this trend. “If the carrier is going to be forging intimate ties with enterprise networks, it makes sense to put Cisco gear in its backbone,” Ogle says.

As a result, Juniper and Avici are Cisco’s only real competitors in the core routing space, Ogle concludes. And in this respect, the networking giant faces two worthy adversaries. “Cisco has been losing market share over the last several years to Juniper Networks, the only competitor that has demonstrated the ability to beat Cisco and gain discernable market share in several areas,” Ogle argues, adding that “Juniper Networks may have actually surpassed [Cisco] in some specific geographic regions.”

In the future, Ogle says, Cisco should expect to face competition from a new generation of composite, multi-vendor solutions.

“Cisco’s competitors are teaming up against it. Lucent, a long-time challenger in the service provider market, has joined forces with Juniper Networks. This relationship goes beyond a simple reseller relationship; Lucent and Juniper are integrating their product lines under a common management system and jointly developing signaling and traffic-bearing interfaces to unite Layer 2 and Layer 3 traffic in a consolidated core,” he notes “The threat to Cisco is that the new Lucent-Juniper partnership suddenly makes Juniper’s routers a more attractive complement to Lucent’s large installed base of multiservice switches.

Similarly, Nortel Networks and Avici have also teamed up, notching a strategic partnership agreement in early 2004. “In addition to a simple reselling agreement, Nortel has integrated the management of the Avici core routing platform under the Preside network management system,” Ogle says. “This higher level of management integration is integral to service provider networks and large enterprises.” -Stephen Swoyer