Cisco is dominating spending on branded data center Ethernet switches, accounting for more than half all spending in a market that is seeing the highest growth rates in four years.

According to new analysis from Crehan Research, the first half of 2016 saw the strongest growth of branded data center Ethernet switches since the first half 0f 2012.

The market's growth rate in the first half of 2016 approximately doubled the rate seen in the previous two years leading to record results, the research firm's latest report reveals.

"Customer spending and deployments of branded data center Ethernet switches accelerated significantly during the first half of this year due to a number of factors," says Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research.

"First, we have seen the recent introduction of numerous products with compelling features and value propositions including programmability, automation, and telemetry, which help to enable software-defined data center networks.

“Second, we are seeing the price per gigabit of bandwidth drop significantly, enticing customers to upgrade their existing infrastructure,” he says.

“And lastly, we are seeing a lot of early excitement and interest around 100 gigabit Ethernet switching, where data center shipments have gone from about ten thousand ports in the first half of 2015 to well over one-hundred thousand ports in the first half of 2016."

According to Crehan, over half of all spending in the market was on Cisco products during the first half of 2016.

The company enjoyed particularly strong adoption of its Nexus 3000 and 9000 lines, the report shows.

However, the strongest vendor revenue growth during the same time period was seen by Arista and Huawei, each of which increased revenues by over thirty percent in comparison to the first half of 2015.

Juniper Networks' revenue also had a very healthy increase – in the twenty-percent range – as its QFX portfolio of data center Ethernet switches saw strong acceptance within the telco, cable and cloud service provider markets.

"The market for branded data center Ethernet switches looks promising heading into the second half of 2016," Crehan says.

"The second half of the year has historically performed better than the first, and in the second half of 2016 we expect the 100 gigabit Ethernet ramp to really kick in."