IHS released excerpts from its 2015 IHS Infonetics WLAN Infrastructure Vendor Scorecard, which profiles and analyzes the 5 top revenue producers of enterprise wireless local area network (WLAN) infrastructure: Aerohive, Cisco, HP, Ruckus and Zebra.

"Consolidation in the WLAN market has bifurcated the vendor landscape into end-to-end networking providers that can address the whole range of enterprise networking requirements, such as Cisco and HP, and WLAN specialists like Aerohive, Ruckus and Zebra that focus on a particular niche or new ways of solving old problems," said Matthias Machowinski, research director for enterprise networks and video at IHS.

"Specialists drive innovation, but once their period of hypergrowth is over, they must have a long-term plan to compete against much larger and entrenched vendors. Meanwhile, end-to-end networking providers can leverage the completeness of their portfolio and their installed base, but they cannot become complacent in their success-they must continue developing or acquiring new technology," Machowinski said.

WLAN vendor scorecard highlights

The incumbent in networks around the world, Cisco has rock-solid fundamentals and positive feedback from enterprise buyers that will assure its dominant position in the years to come.

HP's strong brand and existing portfolio, coupled with the acquisition of Aruba, strengthens its position as a preferred provider of end-to-end networking solutions.

Aerohive has been riding the controller-less WLAN wave to great success, and expanded partnerships will help it keep up momentum.

Ruckus has rock-solid financials and a differentiated hardware platform, and partnerships will help it compete for unified access deals.

Zebra's focus on asset tracking puts it in a position to create a highly-differentiated tracking solution that generates WLAN pull-through sales.

About the IHS WLAN scorecard

The only report of its kind, the 2015 IHS Infonetics WLAN Infrastructure Vendor Scorecard evaluates the leading WLAN vendors on criteria using actual data and metrics, including market presence (market share, financials, solution breadth and buyer feedback on product reliability and service/support) and market momentum (market share momentum, next-gen intensity, buyer feedback on vendors' technology innovation).

This approach eliminates subjectivity and ensures vendors are assessed accurately and fairly. The report includes detailed vendor profiles and a Leadership Landscape Graph that classifies vendors as "Leader," "Established" or "Challenger" based on their scores. IHS is publishing 15 vendor scorecards in 2015 on markets ranging from telecom and enterprise networking equipment to carrier Wi-Fi, network security, LTE infrastructure, cloud unified communications and more.

To purchase reports, please visit www.infonetics.com/contact.asp, or learn more about the scorecards at www.infonetics.com/research.asp?cvg=Equipmentvendorscorecards.