Top 12 Cisco Competitors and Alternatives (2023)

“Cisco” is an acronym for San Francisco, founded in 1984 by Stanford computer scientists Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner.

Cisco was set up in California on December 10, 1984, and launched on February 16, 1990. Cisco currently has a slightly over $170 billion market capitalization and is valued at 18 times profits.

A technology firm primarily recognized for its networking equipment. Cisco manufactures and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment, and other technology-related products and services.

Contents

Cisco Competitors and Alternatives

Juniper Networks
HPE Aruba
Arista Networks
NETGEAR
VMware
Extreme Networks
Dell Technologies
Microsoft
NVIDIA
Allied Telesis
Fortinet
HP

1. Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks, Inc. is based in Sunnyvale, California. Juniper was established on February 6, 1996, by Pradeep Sindhu.

Juniper is a technical high-road company that develops and sells high-end, cutting-edge routers to the world’s largest telecom and Internet service provider customers, including AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and SBC Communications.

Apstra’s software uses a session and application that demands to generate intelligent routing decisions. 128’s leading technology is its Session Smart software, which helps minimize SD-WAN and WAN costs.

2. HPE Aruba

Aruba Networks is a wireless networking business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise formed by Keerti Melkote in 2002 in Santa Clara, California.

It was initially called Aruba Wireless Networks and is currently known as Aruba Networks. Three hundred crores USD (2019) its revenue. HPE/Aruba purchased a networking company named Silver Peak for $925 million.

According to research, the SD-WAN industry is expected to increase from $2.3 billion in 2020 to $4.9 billion in 2024.

3. Arista Networks

Arista Networks was founded in October 2004 by Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton at Menlo Park in California, United States.

An American computer networking firm’s revenue was 295 crores USD in 2021. In December 2021, there were 2,993 employees. The company created and sold multilayer network switches for software-defined networking in big data centers, cloud computing, high-performance computing, and high-frequency trading environments.

Arista provides a software-based routing solution but does not provide routing hardware.

4. NETGEAR

A Networking hardware company Netgear, Inc., is a computer networking company based in San Jose, California, with offices in approximately 25 countries. Consumers, organizations, and service providers can all benefit from it.

NetGear has been in the networking business since 1996; it competes with Adtran, D-Link, Dell, and others more effectively.

With its wired and wireless devices, it has successfully competed with Cisco Meraki, a larger Cisco competitor in the small-to-medium-sized enterprise, retail, and home networking industries.

5. VMware

Diane Greene, Edouard Bugnion, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, and Edward Wang are the founder of VMware, Inc., a virtualization and cloud computing technology business. The foundation was laid in 1998 in Palo Alto, California, the United States.

The company did a business of 1,176.7 crores USD as of 2021. It was the first business to virtualize the x86 architecture on a commercial scale successfully. They are employing 34,000 (2021) people.

There is a lot of competition for SD-WAN. Both companies have ties to significant cloud vendors, particularly AWS for VMware, which will fuel future competition.

6. Extreme Networks

It is an American networking firm with its headquarters in San Jose, California. The company was founded by Herb Schneider, Gordon Stitt, and Stephen Haddock in 1996. As of 2020, the revenue of 94.8 crores USD.

The company employed 2713 people in 2019. It offers end-to-end cloud-based networking solutions and high-quality services and support, which helps design, develop, and produce network infrastructure equipment for wired and wireless networks.

7. Dell Technologies

On February 1, 1984, Michael Dell founded Dell Technologies in Austin, Texas, United States. The company has over 165,000 employees worldwide.

The company focuses on developing, selling, repairing, and supporting computer-related products and network servers with data storage solutions. It recently launched Apex, which manages storage servers.

The PowerSwitch product supports both its own NOS and third-party NOSes such as Cumulus and SONiC.

Bonus: Top 12 Dell Competitors And Alternatives

8. Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. It creates and sells computer hardware, software, electronics, and services.

Azure is an extensive collection of cloud services that competes with the Cloud-based solution of Cisco. In 2020, Microsoft Azure showed a 59% increase in revenue.

Azure’s features enable a service supply of more than 100. Because of their various cloud solutions, Microsoft is considered a major Cisco rival.

9. NVIDIA

Founded in April 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, NVIDIA was founded by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem.

The company has 22,473 (2022) employees. NVIDIA is a computer chip maker and IT company specializing in graphics processing units (GPUs). NVIDIA creates this rendition of Cisco competitors because few companies have achieved the same gains in data centers as it has in the last few years.

NVIDIA ‘s data center business grew by 54 % from 2018 to 2020, increasing its total revenue by 12 %.

10. Allied Telesis

Since 1990, Allied Telesis has designed wired and wireless networks that are reliable, secure, and simple to use for campus, branch, and IoT applications worldwide, headquartered in San Jose, California.

It has a self-defending network intended to safeguard users from cyberattacks. It competes against the market share of Cisco in switches and wireless APs.

Some businesses may prefer Allied Telesis’ hybrid APs over Cisco due to the surge in cyberattacks.

11. Fortinet

In 2000, Fortinet was founded in Sunnyvale, California, and its headquarters today. Today the company has offices worldwide. Around 4700 employees work on their various networking solutions.

Wired, wireless, security and edge networking solutions are all available. They provide outstanding protection and visibility by utilizing an intuitive operating system and threat intelligence. It is rated third in the global SD-WAN market, with 12.3 %, behind VMware (16%) and Cisco (13%).

Network, multi-cloud, web application, email, endpoint, administration, and analysis are their products that provide proficiency in networking across multiple technologies. Fortinet is regarded as one of Cisco’s top competitors.

12. HP

Hewlett Packard (HP) Company mainly focuses on developing technology to improve global connectivity between people and businesses.

Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, the company offers personal computers, storage devices, networking goods, servers, software, and a variety of printers.

Due to immense innovation in its products and its technology, it is considered the main competitor of Cisco.