The State of the Session Border Controllers Market

By Robbie Pleasant
TMCnet Contributor

The Session Border Controllers market is a tough race, with multiple companies vying for the top spot. Infonetics Research (News - Alert) has released a new report, in which it tracked the enterprise SBC market, and determined where it’s headed and who is leading the pack.

According to the report, “Enterprise Session Border Controllers,” we can expect to see global revenue for enterprise SBCs increase by about one-third in 2013. That’s due in part to strong demand in North America, as sessions are expected to grow by around 27 percent year-over-year.

When it comes to SBC users, enterprises between 100 and 5,000 employees tend to use them the most. Nearly three-quarters of the shipments are for companies around those size ranges, although there is still demand from smaller businesses as well.

The market tends to be dominated by three companies: Cisco, Acme Packet (News - Alert) and Sonus Networks continue to struggle for the top spot, with such a small difference between their control of the market that it falls within a forgivable margin of error every which way. Of course, smaller SBC vendors are also moving in, but they’re trailing behind the top three by a fair margin.

“Competition in the enterprise SBC market is very dynamic, with more than 20 vendors offering some form of SBC functionality, either integrated in another network element or as a standalone device,” says Diane Myers, Infonetics’ principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS. “And it’s extremely tight at the top, where Cisco (News - Alert), Acme Packet and Sonus Networks were within 1 revenue share percentage point of each other in 1Q13.”

The report shows things looking up for the Session border Controllers market, which means the companies vying for control need to up their game even further. It seems to be a delicate balance of power right now, but anyone could break away from the pack with a new innovative tool, or another contender can catch up with them. No matter what, it will continue to drive creation and innovation, which will keep the market active and healthy.

Edited by Alisen Downey