Nokia has been recognized by industry research firm GigaOm as a “Leader and Outperformer” in data center switching for the fifth consecutive year, underscoring the company’s strengthening role in AI-era data center networking.
GigaOm’s 2026 Radar Report for Data Center Switching once again places Nokia in the Leader and Outperformer category, marking the fifth year in a row the Finnish company has achieved the top placement. The report cites Nokia’s Data Center Fabric solution for its innovation, performance and readiness to support AI-scale infrastructure as enterprises, cloud providers and telecom operators modernize their networks.
In the latest Radar evaluation, GigaOm positioned Nokia’s Data Center Fabric in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant and classified it as an Outperformer based on strong feature execution and roadmap delivery. Nokia received five-star ratings across all key feature areas, including hardware portfolio, switching and routing features, Day 0/1/2+ operations and management, NetDevOps suitability and traffic security, and was also highlighted for AI-specific networking features and its microservices-based network operating system architecture.
GigaOm analyst Andrew Green said Nokia’s Data Center Fabric stands out for the depth of its hardware and software capabilities and its strong support for automation tailored to modern AI-driven data center environments. He noted that the company has demonstrated “consistent innovation” in data center switching and strong feature delivery over the past year.
Michael Bushong, Vice President of Data Center at Nokia, called the fifth consecutive Leader and Outperformer recognition validation of Nokia’s work in delivering highly reliable data center solutions for cloud, enterprise and service provider customers in the AI era. He emphasized that openness, automation, scale and reliability require continuous investment, and said the GigaOm assessment shows Nokia is keeping pace with the rapid innovation driven by AI.
The recognition also reflects Nokia’s Human Error Zero strategy, which aims to eliminate software defects and configuration errors that can disrupt data center networks. Nokia’s approach is designed to simplify operations and improve reliability as organizations run increasingly data-intensive and distributed cloud applications.
Nokia’s Data Center Fabric solution combines high-capacity switching platforms with the SR Linux network operating system and the Event-Driven Automation (EDA) platform to enable programmable, highly automated data center networks. The fabric is built to support both greenfield and brownfield deployments and to integrate into heterogeneous environments, allowing enterprises, cloud providers, colocation operators and service providers to evolve their data center infrastructure while maintaining operational simplicity.
