Cloud and Datacenter Networks

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Meet the Experts

Photo of Rohit Mehra
Rohit Mehra

Group Vice President, Network and Telecommunications

Photo of Vijay Bhagavath
Vijay Bhagavath

Research VP, Cloud and Datacenter Networks



IDC's Cloud and Datacenter Networks service provides continuous market data and analysis of the worldwide markets for datacenter and multicloud networking, including software, hardware, and cloud services. As applications migrate to public clouds, the datacenter and its network are becoming increasingly distributed, driving a need for elastically scalable architectures, declarative policy-based automation, simpler operations, better abstractions, and seamless operation with public clouds. This service provides research and analysis on how these trends are reshaping the datacenter and multicloud networking markets.


Markets and Subjects Analyzed


  • Datacenter network infrastructure
  • Ethernet switching in the datacenter
  • Datacenter network spending, segmented by technology/region
  • Growth of bare metal ODM/white-box switching
  • Network disaggregation, including open source network operating systems such as SONiC
  • Software-defined networking (SDN) and intent-based networking
  • Automation of datacenter networks
  • Application delivery network infrastructure
  • IaaS networking (network services provided by IaaS cloud giants)
  • Networking for converged and hyperconverged infrastructure
  • IDC Innovators documents on networking start-ups
  • Datacenter networking for hybrid/multicloud environments
  • Ingress controllers and service meshes
  • Evolution of open source networking technologies 
  • Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) markets and technologies 
  • Key industry partnerships and alliances in datacenter networking

Core Research


  • Datacenter Network Forecast and Analysis 
  • Datacenter Switching Forecast and Market Share
  • Application Delivery Controller Forecast and Analysis
  • Datacenter SDN/IBN Forecast and Analysis 
  • Analysis and Overview of Multicloud Networking and Multicloud
  • Market Assessments and Forecasts for IaaS Networking
  • IT Buyer Studies: Deployment of Datacenter/Multicloud Networking
  • Container Networking, Including Service Mesh Technologies
  • Datacenter/Multicloud Network Customer Requirements
  • SD-WAN Forecast and Analysis

In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct research on specific topics or emerging market segments via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.


Key Questions Answered


  1. What are the greatest growth opportunities for datacenter network infrastructure vendors (hardware and software) in on-premises datacenters and public clouds?
  2. As hybrid IT and multicloud proliferate, what challenges and opportunities are available to established vendors, cloud providers, and start-ups?  
  3. What are enterprise requirements for multicloud networking?
  4. How and where will public clouds continue to impact the datacenter network landscape, driving new innovations and best practices?
  5. What IaaS networking services from cloud giants will have the greatest market impact?
  6. How will buying centers change as multicloud networking and cloud-native technologies gain wider adoption?

Companies Covered