4. Switching/Routing

For the first time in several years, switching and routing products were tapped as one of the top five investments for CIOs, with 46 percent of respondents reporting that they planned to increase their spending on that technology this year.

In both 2015 and 2016, switching and routing technologies were tagged as a spending-growth priority by only 38 percent of surveyed CIOs.

Piper Jaffray said the heightened focus in 2017 indicates that more enterprises are updating their data centers and wiring closets, a trend that could spell a huge opportunity for networking equipment solution and service providers.