In querying 100 CIOs (60 in the United States and 40 in Europe), UBS found that not only were these topics high priorities, but by an even wider margin this quarter than in its previous surveys. 

The findings bode well for Cisco. Not only are they leaders in WLANs and Ethernet switching, 27% of the CIOs surveyed expect Cisco to gain share vs. competitors on a global basis. This is the strongest result for Cisco in the past four UBS surveys, the firm notes.

“We view Cisco as more likely to preserve/ gain share in networking after it restructured through 2011, and this is consistent with the view of 80% of respondents,” UBS analyst Nikos Theodosopoulos stated in a report on the survey. “We expect continued Cisco gains in the blade server market.”

On the competitive front, UBS found that is most likely to be part of the company’s 2013 product cycle. It’s still in early evaluation for now, UBS notes, and 10% to 15% of the survey respondents plan to trial the product this year.