Crehan Research reports 10 Gigabit ethernet (10GbE) enters the next major stage of volume adoption-- with public cloud, Web 2.0 and scalable data centre companies driving 10GbE server and server-access switch demand.
"We believe we are now in the 2nd of 3 major adoption stages 10GbE server networking will follow,” Crehan says. “Each stage has distinct characteristics, resulting in correspondingly different and significant market changes and vendor impact."
According to the analyst the current stage promises market share gain for vendors stronger within the cloud segment.
The three stages of 10GbE mainstream networking adoption are as follows:
- First Stage: The 2009-2013 period involves blade servers, with major drivers including the space, cable and component savings of 10GbE (in comparison with multiple 1GbE and fibre channel connections), cost-effective chip-down LOM solutions using backplane ethernet (resulting in the popularity of 10GBASE-KX4 and 10GBASE-KR PHYs) and Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet (FCoE) value propositions.
- Second Stage: The current stage, with high-bandwidth applications (chiefly public cloud), technology maturity and attractive pricing driving deployment growth. SFP+ is the 10GbE port interface of choice.
- Third Stage: Expected to gain traction in 2013 through the traditional enterprise segment upgrading a large installed rack and tower server port base from 1GbE to 10GbE. Crehan forecasts the largest revenue opportunity in 10GBASE-T (since most enterprise infrastructure is 1GBASE-T) and server-access port sales for the period.
The analyst also expects 500% growth in server networking bandwidth over the 2012-2017 period, thanks to exponential growth in network devices, ubiquitous connectivity and richer applications.
Go 10GbE Enters Next Major Stage of Volume Server Adoption (Crehan Research)