Interpreting the "2020 Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure" Magic Quadrant

Not long ago, Gartner released the Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure 2020, in which 18 WLAN vendors around the world were shortlisted.

　　In the report, Gartner is very optimistic about the future of the market. It predicts that by 2023, more than 90 percent of enterprise campuses will be connected to devices via intent-based networks.

　　It's easy to see that in the Magic Quadrant chart released, most of the "players" are concentrated in the Watchers quadrant in the lower left corner, while the Challengers and Visionaries quadrants are particularly quiet.

　　The Top 4 vendors are Juniper Networks, HPE (Aruba), Cisco, Extreme Networks, whose market share is increasing year by year, squeezing the remaining vendors' living space together.

　　It is worth mentioning that Mojo Networks was acquired by Arista Networks and therefore was screened out.

　　▲ Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure 2020

　　The Big Four

　　HPE's (Aruba) and Cisco's leadership in this space is nothing new, as HPE (Aruba), with its "customer first" culture, has a clear market position through the Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and is at the forefront of all vendor visions. Cisco offers an open, programmable architecture that provides the most advanced and reliable way to deliver the best of all worlds.

　　Cisco provides a campus network infrastructure with multi-vendor integration and analytical insight through an open, programmable architecture. Geographically, Cisco has a diversified presence across small, medium, and large enterprises, serving customers that have been in the Leaders quadrant for 10 consecutive years (2011-2020).

　　Positionally, it took Juniper Networks only two years to move from the Watcher to the Visionary to the Leaders quadrant. It has pulled away from the rest of the pack with its Mist AI-powered wired and wireless portfolio, and is in a position to ride the wave of success.

　　After successfully integrating several acquisitions, Extreme Networks began to update its product line with the ExtremeCloud IQ cloud management platform and Fabric Connect solution, solidifying its position in the wired and wireless LANs.

　　Domestic Five

　　Huawei continues to be the top-performing Chinese company in the report, with a strong performance. Its product strategy is focused on the AirEngine Wi-Fi 6. The data shows that Huawei's Wi-Fi 6 products rank first in market share in both China and the global market (excluding North America), with a 49.7 percent share in China and 39 percent worldwide.

　　New Huasan (H3C) is a niche player, without much change in position. It mainly serves the local market and has increased its footprint in EMEA. in the first half of 2020, Xinhuasan iMC Intelligent Management Center topped the market share of network management software in China with 28% of the market.

　　Ruijie Networks (Ruijie) is in the watchers' quadrant for the second time. its WIS wireless intelligent service platform combines AI, big data and other technologies to provide network visibility, diagnosis and optimization, and has served 450 million customers cumulatively. according to IDC, Ruijie Networks ranks second in China's enterprise WLAN market share.

　　D-Link has reshuffled its product strategy to focus on the core functions required by vertical market customers and reduce costs by avoiding "unnecessary" functions. TP-Link is in an interesting position.

　　TP-Link is in an interesting position as it follows market trends but lacks differentiated product innovation. TP-Link is able to control product costs but does not have a campus switch that supports 802.3bz ports and its gateway only supports Zigbee, not Bluetooth or IoT modules.

　　Security bull

　　Fortinet, a global provider of network security appliances, was named a visionary in the report. fortinet's vision is based on reducing costs, simplifying management, and reducing complexity, with a core strategy of building security-driven networks for users.

　　Centralized management through FortiGate simplifies deployment and configuration of FortiSwitch with contactless, auto-discovery, one-click VLAN and security policy assignment. However, Fortinet lags behind its major competitors in integrating AI and ML to simplify network operations.