Summary

We are entering the era of software defined everything (SDE) in which the balance between hardware and software will shift decisively towards software. Hardware vendors will have to adapt in order to remain relevant and profitable.

While in some domains (e.g., high performance network switching) specialized hardware still offers performance benefits, successful hardware vendors are embracing a new order where a growing proportion of their revenues will come from software sales rather than simply shifting boxes.

The incumbents in this segment face growing competition from more open alternatives, but many larger vendors saw the transition coming and are in the process of managing their evolution towards a software defined world.

Our thematic scoring methodology is designed to identify tomorrow’s leaders rather than today’s incumbents, based on their competitive position in the most important themes impacting their industry.

To do this, we score the top 600 TMT companies against 60 investment themes, creating a database of 36,000 thematic scores - our thematic engine - to help us identify the strongest and weakest players in each sector over the next two years, once all relevant themes have been taken into account.

Scope

- This report is a sector scorecard, which identifies those companies most likely to succeed in a world filled with disruptive threats. Inside, we predict how each theme will evolve and who the leading and lagging companies are.
- It includes a theme map that shows the 60 biggest themes driving growth in the tech, media and telecom sectors.
- It explains how some of the largest listed players in the sector have performed over the last four years.
- It looks at major technology, macro-economic, and regulatory themes impacting networking equipment companies.

Reasons to buy

- Companies who invest in the right themes become success stories; those who miss the big themes end up as failures.
- Corporate executives and investors who want to outperform their competitors need to understand all the themes that impact their sector.
- However, many of these themes are, by definition, outside of the core competencies of company boardrooms because they typically originate from external industries.
- This Networking Equipment Scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the servers, storage and networking equipment industry over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

Companies Mentioned
Acacia Comms
Accton
Adlink
Adtran
Adva Optical Networking
Applied Optoelectronics
Arista Networks
Arris
Brocade Comms
CalAmp
Calix
Ciena
Cisco
Commscope
Cray
Dawning
Ericsson
Extreme Networks
F5 Networks
Fabrinet
Finisar
Fujitsu
Hexagon
Hitachi
HP Enterprise
IBM
Infinera
Inspur Electronic
InterDigital
Juniper Networks
Keysight Tech
Kudelski
Lenovo
Lumentum
Macom
Motorola Solutions
NEC
NeoPhotonics
NetApp
Netgear
Nokia
Nutanix
Oclaro
Pure Storage
Seagate
Sercomm
Spirent
Sterlite
Telit
Ubiquiti Networks
Viavi
Western Digital
Zayo
ZTE