The enterprise networking market may be slowing in the face of adverse economics, but the fundamentals are in place for longer term market growth.

This is one of the findings of new research from leading analyst name Dell’Oro Group, which concluded that more than $95bn will be spent on campus switches over the next five years. Multi-gigabit switches (2.5/5/10 Gbps) are expected to comprise 10 percent of the port shipments by 2026.

“Due to a number of unforeseen headwinds including lingering supply chain challenges, increased macro-economic uncertainties, higher inflation, and regional political conflict, we have lowered our forecast for 2022 and 2023 compared to our prior January report,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “At the same time, while we made this downward adjustment to our short-term forecast, we have raised the forecast figures for the outer years as we believe spending over the five-year forecast period will not decline compared to our prior forecast, but rather shift from one year to the next, depending on the supply situation and macro environment. Our interviews with system and component vendors, as well as with some of the Value-Added Resellers (VARs) and System Integrators (SIs), revealed that the fundamental growth drivers remain in place and that there is a substantial technology debt urging customers to upgrade their networks in order to support their digital transformation initiatives.”

Additional highlights from the Ethernet Switch – Campus 5-Year July 2022 Forecast Report:

• Power-Over-Ethernet (PoE) ports are forecast to comprise nearly half of the total campus port shipments by 2026.
• China is expected to recover very quickly from the recent lockdown and comprise 25 percent of campus switch sales by 2026.
• The introduction of new software features and Artificial Intelligence capabilities are expected to increase over our forecast horizon.
• Interest in Network-As-a-Service (NaaS) offerings is expected to rise but adoption may take time.