Executives say revenues for 2012 were up 30 percent from the previous year. That made for a 9.3 percent market share in application delivery controllers (ADCs) in the fourth quarter, good for third place behind F5 Networks Inc. and Citrix Systems Inc., according to the Dell'Oro Group.

A single quarter of market share results doesn't necessarily represent a trend, but A10's rise is believable considering one of its biggest competitors, Cisco Systems Inc., has walked out of the market.

That leaves some market share lying around for free, in a sense. Citrix will get some of that, as it's been chosen as the ADC partner that Cisco sales reps will recommend in place of Cisco's defunct Application Control Engine (ACE). (See Cisco, Citrix Get Friendly to Fight F5 Networks.)

A10 claims it's getting some of the pie as well. According to a customer survey A10 commissioned, 16 percent of its customers used A10's AX system to replace Cisco gear. Just two other answers got higher response, at 19 percent each: F5 and "nobody" (i.e., greenfield deployments).

Now that Cisco is out of the market, that 16 percent ought to grow, says Kelly LeBlanc, A10's head of global marketing.

Another potential boost could come from A10's partnership with Ericsson AB, announced last week. Ericsson will resell A10's AX system as a tool for handing carrier-grade network address translation between IPv4 and IPv6 environments.

It's only one specific usage -- A10 has not become Ericsson's full-on ADC partner -- but it widens A10's exposure. "There were deals in Q4 -- stuff in the Middle East -- we would never have known about," says Paul Nicholson, A10's director of product marketing.

For more

• A10 Working Around Brocade Injunction
• Brocade Gets Injunction Against A10
• Brocade Awarded $60M from Startup A10
• F5 & Riverbed Take to the Cloud

— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading