Enterprise Routers Market - Growth, Trends, Covid-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2023 - 2028)

Enterprise Routers Market - Growth, Trends, Covid-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2023 - 2028)

The enterprise routers market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.2% over the forecast period (2021-2026). Enterprise routers are vital products that any business or enterprise uses regularly. They play an essential role in enterprises in connecting computer networks and the internet. Routers perform many functionalities, such as enterprise routing, which gives businesses a higher CPU capacity to control place tasks. Furthermore, it provides companies the ability to enhance their interface for both Ethernet and WAN circuits, run NetFlow/sFlow, MPLS, QoS, and other security features. It has functions to integrate deep packet inspection and WAN acceleration. Enterprise routers assist in maximizing productivity in the office, and the installation of an enterprise router requires the skills and expertise of an engineer.

• In the first quarter of 2019, the enterprise and service provider router market grew 8.2%. The service provider segment accounts for 75.3% of router market revenues. The service provider router market rose 7.1%, and the enterprise router market grew 11.9%. The top seven enterprise routers which had high market share till June 2019 were Cisco (55.7%), Huawei (9.3%), HPE (5.3%), Nokia (3.7%), Juniper (3.6%), Netgear (2%), Dell EMC (1.7%). Cisco Systems is one of the top networking companies in the world with the highest market share providing a wide variety of enterprise routers. Cisco's enterprise router revenue rose 16.1%, and Cisco's SP and enterprise router market share increased to 42.4% from 37.4% in the first quarter, according to telecom lead.
• Huawei's Global Industry Vision (GIV) predicts that by 2025, 85% of enterprise applications will be moved to the cloud, resulting in significant traffic growth at the egress of enterprise WANs. Traditional private lines offer several Mbit/s bandwidth and are prone to network congestion, and so service experience cannot be guaranteed. Leveraging flexible and efficient application-based traffic steering, Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) is the best choice for enterprise WAN interconnection in the cloud era, as it can effectively ensure customer service experience. However, when traditional enterprise routers intersect with SD-WAN, their forwarding performance decreases by about 80% on average. In response, Huawei launched next-generation NetEngine AR enterprise routers that provides higher forwarding performance at the egress of enterprise WANs.
• Furthermore, service providers are rapidly modernizing their networks to satiate enterprises' growing appetites for higher performance and superior user experiences. However, as service providers adopt virtualization and SDN capabilities, they are being held back by monitoring techniques that cannot keep up. The enterprise cloud migrations and increasing reliance on software-as-a-service applications- introduced new challenges. This has driven service providers to adopt NFV, SDN, and cloud-native computing technologies. In May 2020, 128 Technology, the leader in Session Smart Routing, announced that Momentum Telecom selected 128 Technology's Session Smart Router to enable a new era of software-defined network services for its thousands of enterprise customers and partners.
• Furthermore, as work from home (WFH) becoming the latest trend during the COVID-19 pandemic, players and individual consumers can be seen occupying to secure their various IT products for their employees. As a result, supplies of IT peripherals, including wireless routers, lead to a sharp spike in demand. COVID-19 took a USD 1 billion bite out of the ethernet switch and router market in the first quarter of 2020. Moreover, as everyone navigates through this unprecedented COVID-19 situation, Cisco is aligning in solidarity with customers. Besides, in April 2020, Scientists created a small wireless item that can monitor COVID-19 patients at home. The machine, which is a box-like tool, resembles a Wi-Fi router called Emerald and is developed by using MIT's CSAIL, which can screen one's breathing in addition to their moves and sleep patterns.

• An ordinary wireless router can only support approximately 10-20 users’ access. In contrast, the wireless access router point allows over 50 or even hundreds of users’ access, with the potential ability to send and receive signals. According to Cisco, the expected penetration of enterprise internet traffic via wireless fixed-line connection in 2021 shall be 125988 petabytes per month. With the rise in high internet traffic and devices, average fixed broadband speed, along with average internet users, will grow exponentially in the forecast period. Average fixed broadband speed is likely to increase from 5.1 Mbps in 2015 to 12.9 Mbps in 2020.
• For instance, the industry’s first 5G optimized wireless WAN edge router for enterprise branch deployments has been released by Cradlepoint in May 2020. The Cradlepoint E3000 Series, according to the company, optimizes performance and investment protection and enables customers to deploy a wireless wide-area network (Wireless WAN) using the latest LTE and Wi-Fi technology and seamlessly upgrade to 5G in the future. The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled an already growing demand for agile and rapidly deployable wireless WANs based on LTE for primary connectivity. Cradlepoint said in the release that the E3000 Series is intended to target this market directly.
• Generally, the range of signal transmission for a wireless router can cover just dozens of meters. A wireless access router includes further distances, up to 100-300 meters, enabling users to roam freely in the network. Especially for enterprises, the office space is usually more substantial, and even some need to communicate across the buildings. The number of users accessing the network is so large that they need a broader wireless router network coverage. Furthermore, the networking model of the wireless router is quite single, with low flexibility. On the contrary, a wireless access point provides a wide variety of modes such as Simplex AP, Wireless Client, Wireless Bridge, Multi-point Bridge, etc. It can be managed in a centralized way with cooperation.
• Furthermore, M2M Connectivity supplies a broad range of wireless routers for 4G/3G as well as models for satellite and short-range RF (WLAN, Bluetooth). These ethernet routers enable remote access and communication with equipment and assets such as remote PLCs, data loggers, and microcontrollers. With the increasing usage of such solutions in various end-users, the market tends to grow in this sector. In April 2020, Digi International announced the launch of several new cellular routers and extenders, each designed to meet the present and future connectivity needs of organizations for M2M applications in the transportation and enterprise marketplaces.

• North America is expected to hold a prominent share in the enterprise routers market. Moreover, the region has a strong foothold of network routers vendors. Some of them include Cisco Systems, Inc., Dell EMC, Juniper Networks, Inc., among others, which contribute to the growth of the market. It is estimated that till 2022, in United States the market for network router will grow to USD 11,950 million which includes the market for ethernet service edge router, multiservice edge router, service provider core router, and internet exchange router (source Cisco), where the expectation of high market growth potentially move towards internet exchange router in 2022.
• The growing demand for hyperscale data centers is now steering growth for the network hardware industry in United States. Surging demand from hyperscale cloud providers led to a record of 303 megawatts (MW) of absorption in the seven primary United States data center markets in recent years, which will lead to the demand for high IP traffic, by which the demand of enterprise router will increase. Furthermore, Cisco estimated that in North America, the IP traffic growth would increase to 108 exabytes/month by 2022, showing 21% CAGR, which is three-times growth. This significantly caters to the demand for enterprise routers during the forecast period.
• Moreover, according to Cisco, 46% of network devices will be machine -to -machine or IoT by 2020, which are vulnerable to attacks. To fully realize the potential of these connected devices, the industries need to be equipped with WANs that are flexible to meet the network demands anticipated over the future. Furthermore, the emergence of trending technologies, such as cloud networking, SaaS-based application, network analytics, DevOps, and virtualization, has encouraged the users and businesses in North America to undertake enterprise routers products.
• However, security and privacy concerns are restraining the market. According to the study, five out of every six routers in United States are running out-of-date firmware with exploitable security vulnerabilities, which hinders market growth globally. In a situation where many employees are currently working from home due to a COVID-19 pandemic or access wi-fi networks that operate at enterprise-level security, devices such as routers can be hacked to plant a range of malware into handheld devices used by employees. Subex, through its honeypot network (a decoy computer system for trapping hackers), spread across 62 cities, has been tracking cyberattack trends and malware activity that can be correlated with the outbreak.

The enterprise routers market is fragmented as the global players invest in R&D for the latest innovations in the product for several small to medium-sized companies. Key players are Cisco Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, etc. The companies operating in the market continuously strive to launch new solutions to help service providers achieve a holistic approach to infrastructure transformation and gain new orders in that course for strategic aim.

• March 2020 - Huawei confirmed that its next-generation NetEngine AR600 and AR6000 series enterprise routers have passed the verification test by The Tolly Group which is an authoritative international provider of testing and validation. The results showed that Huawei's NetEngine AR routers are equipped to handle the growth in traffic from digital transformation in the next three to five years, leading the way to a new era of ultra-fast interconnection for enterprise WANs.
• December 2019 - Cisco Silicon One based Q100 processor and 8000 Series routers. Cisco will uniquely allow ecosystem players to separately buy processors, the XR7 router software, 8000 series routers without software, optical modules (QSFP-DD and QSFP28), or a fully integrated 8000 Series solution. The 8000 Series router and the Q100 processor is targeted at service providers and data center operators ranging from large aggregation to core applications.

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