ACG Research Names Chris Nicoll as Principal Analyst for Its Mobility Practice

ACG continues to expand its coverage areas by recruiting best-in-class subject matter experts

ACG Research announced today the appointment of Chris Nicoll as principal analyst for its mobile service. Chris will lead ACG’s mobility practice services and syndicated programs, which includes mobile infrastructure, service provider WiFi and service provider VoIP services.

"We are extremely excited about Chris joining our team,” says Ray Mota, managing partner. “His rich technology analysis background, commitment to the industry and passion for helping carriers grow make him an ideal fit for ACG Research. And with Chris leading our mobile analysis consulting services, ACG will be on the cutting edge in providing the services to service providers and vendors that help them determine their economic value.”

Chris is a highly respected and experienced industry analyst, consultant conference speaker and panel moderator. Chris provides strategic marketing thought leadership, competitive response and corporate positioning consulting to his clients based on his previous experience working in Strategy, Network Engineering and Public Affairs for US and International network equipment vendor and fixed and mobile operators.

Recently, Chris published ACG’s Q3 Mobile Infrastructure Market report, which showed across the board decreases quarter over quarter but year-over-year market growth across all segments. Total Packet Core was up +19.9% and Mobile IP Edge posted an increase of15.1% y/y. Of all vendors, Cisco and Ericsson were the only vendors to post positive or neutral numbers in all product areas, reinforcing their leadership positions. Chris is working to expand the coverage area in his space. Contact Chris at cnicoll@acgresearch.net to discuss your company and to ensure accurate representation in his reports.

Scaling the Router Control Plane

As network usage moves to cloud, personal and mobile services the quantity of network signaling—control plane—traffic is exploding. Router vendors and network architects who are already struggling to meet the bandwidth requirements of video traffic must add control plane scalability to the network design equation.

The rapid increase in network signaling traffic is driven by the move from an Internet that served fixed locations and fairly static information sources to one where users demand personalized, socially-inclusive, media-rich apps, and mobile devices. Growth in fixed and mobile broadband subscribers, the number and type of network devices, and applications are all fundamental drivers of increase control plane signaling traffic. They combine to produce a multiplier effect that makes control plane traffic grow faster than data plane traffic.

Read the entire article at FierceTelecom.

Michael Kennedy
mkennedy@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch.net

Packet Optical Market Reflects Seasonality: Q3/11: ACG Research Optical Networking Market Share Report

The Worldwide Packet Optical Transport Market has seen typical 3Q seasonality, declining 16.1% sequentially but growing 21.0% year over year, according to ACG Research. The total Worldwide Optical Networking market declined 9.3% sequentially but grew 5.4% year over year in Q3 2011.

Cisco has regained the number one position with 22.7% of total market share in Packet Optical Transport; Fujitsu is still strong at the #2 spot. Tellabs, which had the #1 share in POT systems for the last 2 quarters has now fallen to third place with 16.1% market share. Of note, Infinera captured the number one spot in Long haul DWDM segment for North America.

According to Eve Griliches, "Despite weak economies and lackluster employment trends, financial investment firms are still investing in optical networking products, albeit at a slower rate this quarter. Content providers are deploying 100G as planned, and in fairly high numbers. We are in a fairly different market now, which is changing faster than previous generations. Demand from content providers is growing and spending by top tier providers is being constrained.”

Top Vendors-Worldwide Packet Optical Transport Systems (POTS) Market
Vendor	Rank	Q-Q Revenue Growth	Y-Y Revenue Growth
Cisco	1	16.7%	35.8%
Fujitsu	2	22.0%	49.1%
Tellabs	3	-24.2%	-15.2%
Huawei	4	5.3%	54.9%
Alcatel-Lucent	5	-17.6%	-31.6%
Total		-4.4%	12.9%

QUARTERLY TREND and DRIVER HIGHLIGHTS

• This quarter has been marked by headwinds, strikes, hurricanes and floods. Overlay that with a climate that has a "hesitation to spend" and "continued focus on fiscal control" and you would assume that it was a lousy quarter. It is not. OTN architecture is clearly resonating with operators, but adoption of OTN standalone platforms within major carriers involves a long selling and new certification cycle.

• It turns out the headwinds, strikes and floods had little disruption for most vendors in what is a typically soft quarter. Effects of the floods in Thailand are likely to be felt next quarter and possibly into Q1 2012, although not by significant percentages.

For more information about ACG Research's Packet Optical Transport Market Share Report contact sales@acgresearch.net.

Global Politics and Debt Overshadow Router and Switching Market in Q3: Service Provider Routing & Switching Market Share Report, ACG Research

Concerns over the high level of global government debt, especially in Europe and slower economic growth in the US, Europe and emerging countries, which may stumble into a recession, are impacting the Worldwide Carrier Routing & Switching markets. The global market decreased 4.3% sequentially and grew slightly 1.8% year over year, according to ACG Research. The Total Worldwide Carrier Routing & Switching market grew revenue $2.8B in Q3/11. Core Routing revenues were down 3.9% q/q but up 4.2% y/y. Edge Routing and Switching revenues were down 4.4% q/q but up 1.1% y/y.

With 54.5% of the total market share, Cisco, the market leader, is capitalizing on the trend of its customers simplifying the way their networks work and how next-generation Internet can be more visual, mobile and virtual. The company has posted 3.9% growth in edge routing, largely attributed to successful ASR 9000 momentum. Juniper holds the number two spot with 18.1% and continues to gain traction with its strategy of capitalizing on mobile, Internet and cloud computing and solutions portfolio. Alcatel-Lucent, which is benefiting from the market momentum for 100G IP/optical as well as providers replacing and leveraging 100GE and IPv6 transition technologies has 16.5% of the total market share.

According to Ray Mota, managing partner, “Many carriers are letting emotions get in the way of fundamentals regarding the economy. Carriers need to understand that volatility in markets is normal, and they must understand what is driving the volatility in order to make sound investment decision for expansion of networks or development of new services.” They need to control emotions and look at economic fundamentals, for example, the US GDP grew 2.5% in Q3, the UK grew 0.5%, and India grew 7.7%. So, focus on fundamentals, allow expansion and promote cautious growth by controlling cost on the operational side and expanding into new services related to enterprise-productive services, such as mobility and video/CDN experience enhancements.”

Vendor	Rank	Market Share ($)	Q-Q MS Point +/-
Cisco	1	54.5%	3.8
Juniper	2	18.1%	-1.8
Alcatel-Lucent	3	16.5%	-1.3
Tellabs	4	2.8%	-0.4
Huawei	5	1.9%	-1.4

QUARTERLY TREND and DRIVER HIGHLIGHTS

• Open Internet: The US senate just voted to block a resolution that would disapprove the FCC Open Internet order. This move is a victory for the over-the-top (OTT) operators such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix. Network operators should continue to be innovative regardless of this ruling and figure out ways to create more value without net neutrality violations for the OTT market.

• Ethernet continues to move beyond the metro, and we are seeing providers offer Ethernet services nationally and globally and with consistent class of service and end-to-end service level agreements. However, some service providers still struggle with how to differentiate their services. We suggest they focus on two areas related to this concern: 1) design and deliver personalization and solutions offering instead of just products and 2) focus on while maintaining simplicity.

• With IT spending on cloud services projected to increase 300% to $42B by 2015, cloud continues to be the driving force in the market, and vendors are taking a focused approach and targeting technologies for the next-generation infrastructure and data center evolution.

For more information about ACG Research's Q3 Market Share Router and Switching Report, contact sales@acgresearch.net