Almost half of the world’s population has internet access. And as this figure grows, so will the complexity of networks and connectivity. To keep on track, ongoing innovations in information technology are increasing the efficiency and reliability of these ever-expanding networks. Software-defined networking, or SDN, in particular, has changed the way information moves around the world.

As it’s a growing market, there is a lot of competition between companies to be the best but also to attract the best Network Engineers to their organisation. Therefore, we thought it’s time to look into the most powerful networking organisations, networking companies to watch, what their employees say and what Network Engineers look for in a company.

Most powerful networking companies

There is no shortage of vendors competing for business in the networking world. None are equal but there are a few vendors that have separated themselves from the pack to become the most powerful.

Cisco

This is of course no surprise. Cisco remains the biggest single player in enterprise networking. They maintain 60% market share in the routing and switching market, according to the most recent numbers from IDC.

Cisco offers almost anything you could need for your network and ensures that the products work nicely together. Cisco continues to have a strong, reliable technology base and is the company to beat in the most important areas of enterprise networking.

Did you know Cisco is also one of the most sustainable companies in the world?

What their employees say: Cisco came 67^th on the Fortune best companies to work for list of 2017 and 87% of Cisco’s employees say their workplace is great.

Juniper

Juniper is the other very well-known Networking vendor. Juniper’s datacentre solutions are nicely integrated, well-made and generally thought to function better than Cisco with third-party products.

Juniper was faster on the uptake than the competition was when it came to mesh networks and other next-gen network topologies, and the company’s software is particularly well-regarded, tending toward open frameworks that integrate smoothly with other parts of the network.

What their employees say: Many Juniper employees say that the company provides a good work/life balance and there is great team spirit.

Aruba

Aruba is the biggest name that isn’t named Cisco in the wireless LAN space. Aruba got acquired by HP months before the company split into two entities in late 2015. It’s now the wireless arm of HPE. Aruba accounts for about 20% of worldwide wireless revenue share, according to Gartner.

Lately, Aruba’s been pushing into the core switching market, releasing new hardware to go with its ArubaOS-CX operating system, which it bills as an all-in-one solution for visibility and management for an increasingly IoT-heavy enterprise network.

What their employees say: A fun and entrepreneurial company where a lot of autonomy and freedom is given to the employees.

Huawei

Huawei’s looking to become a Chinese Cisco. The company is second only to Cisco in core switching and routing market share, and in third place behind Cisco and HPE/Aruba in WLAN. Huawei is having some issues with their presence in the U.S. because of questions about the security of its products and its relationship to the Chinese government. But these issues don’t occur in many other markets around the world.

What their employees say: The Chinese culture is different and requires some getting used. It’s a company that pays well and it’s a results oriented company that requires hard work.

Arista

Arista mainly focuses on datacentre networking and is one of the top companies in the world in this area. The legal case for patent infringement brought against it by Cisco is not going to put the company out of business or anything, but it’s a pretty serious stain on the companies’ public image.

What their employees say: Great teamwork amongst departments. Intense fast-paced environment that if you thrive on timelines & pressure this is the place for you.

VMWare

VMware’s virtualization and cloud products are some of the most important networking workloads in the industry. The company is owned by Dell EMC since late 2016 and is therefore among the most influential in the enterprise networking sector. With its NSX network virtualization product, VMware is also directly in the forefront in software-defined networking.

What their employees say: At VMware, 92 percent of employees say their workplace is great.

 

Companies to watch

Now that we talked about the big networking companies, which probably should’ve rang a bell, it’s time to look into the networking companies to watch for the future.

Apstra

Apstra is a networking software company that develops an Intent-based networking system – a vendor-agnostic, intent-based Self-Operating Network for the datacentre network featuring closed-loop telemetry. The system is known as the Apstra Operating System (AOS). The company was founded to pioneer and enable the Self-Operating Network.

Barefoot Networks

Barefoot Networks is a start-up founded in 2013 by industry veterans. Barefoot Networks has developed a programmable switch chip targeting hyper-scale datacentre operators. By making networks programmable down to the data-plane level, the start-up aims to advance software-defined networking.

Aryaka Networks

Aryaka Networks provides SD-WAN and WAN optimization services for globally distributed enterprises. Aryaka’s services have over 10 million users across 7,000+ sites.

Aryaka’s Global SD-WAN can be deployed within days. It is delivered as a service, so IT companies can consume global networking services the way they would consume SaaS applications like Salesforce and infrastructure-as-service like AWS and Azure.

Forward Networks

This intent-based networking software start-up allows customers to search, verify and predict network behaviour by providing a software copy of their networks that customers can use to run tests before implementing changes into production. The start-up’s SaaS-based platform is aimed to prevent outages, streamline network management and enable engineers to test any changes before deployment.

Big Switch Networks

Big Switch Networks offers solutions for network monitoring and network switches, which allow devices to receive, process, and forward data to other devices. These switches can be programmed using their proprietary software. They are leveraging the principles of software-defined networking (SDN), coupled with a choice of industry-standard hardware.

They have two solutions: Big Monitoring Fabric, a Next-Generation Network Packet Broker, which enables pervasive security and monitoring of datacentre and cloud traffic for inline or out-of-band deployments. And Big Cloud Fabric, the industry’s first Next-Generation switching fabric that allows for choice of switching hardware for OpenStack, VMware, Container and Big Data use cases.

Versa Networks

Versa Networks is a software-defined networking vendor, providing an end-to-end solution that both simplifies and secures the WAN/branch office network. Based completely on software, Versa’s Cloud IP Platform delivers a broad set of capabilities for building agile and secure enterprise networks, as well as highly efficient managed service offerings.

The trends we noticed in the industry

As we are a recruitment company we speak to many Network Engineers daily, and we have seen a bit of a change in what Network Engineers are interested in. But it’s important to say that this is personal preference and it all depends on the individual, stage of their career and location.

A lot of the start-ups are in London, Dublin, San Francisco, etc. so if you are based in the Midlands or North there is less accessibility to start up brands.

Those with less personal commitments tend to be more likely to engage with a start-up as they are in a position to take the risk that goes with that. Start-up businesses tend to be very agile and dynamic with a lot of change in the early stages. You have to be flexible and prepared to work longer than usual hours, particularly in its infancy. Obviously not all start-ups go on to be the next Facebook or Google and many do run out of money so it can be harder to entice those with families, a mortgage or other commitments. Fundamentally it comes down to a “risk vs reward” scenario and each company has to be taken for its merits at that point in time.

Larger businesses will offer more structure around career progression, salary uplifts and perks such as holidays, pensions, working from home, parental leave, etc. Lots of large businesses can provide a clear structure around how your career can develop and progress over the next 4 to 5 years and how you can move departments, roles or even regions. On the flip side although it can be seen to be “safer” working for a larger organisation there is still an element of risk. Lots of larger businesses regularly have “restructures” and are generally accountable to shareholders, so a poor performance usually equals a reduction in headcount and mass redundancies. Who would have foreseen the likes of Nokia reduce their headcount so dramatically over the last 10 years.

What is more important to you when looking for a job? Working for a industry giant or working for a smaller new company?