Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its full 4th quarter 2013 (4Q13) and year end Data Center Network Equipment and SAN and Converged Data Center Network Equipment reports, which now include forecasts for bundled solutions and ports-in-use for storage.

DATA CENTER NETWORK EQUIPMENT MARKET HIGHLIGHTS
.    Data center Ethernet switch ports sold as part of a bundled solution made up 27% of all data center ports shipped in 2013, growing to 45% in 2018
.    The bare metal switch market has the potential to transform a significant portion of the Ethernet switching market into a disaggregated model, similar to the server market

SAN AND CONVERGED DATA CENTER NETWORK MARKET HIGHLIGHTS
.    Nearly half of all converged data center network ports shipped in 4Q13 will carry
storage traffic
.    Infonetics forecasts Ethernet switch ports-in-use for storage to reach 55% of all data center purpose-built switch ports shipped in 2018
.    Switch ports-in-use for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are expected to account for 22% of all data center purpose-built ports shipped in 2018

ANALYST NOTE
“There’s still room for best-of-breed in the Ethernet switch market, but as the industry moves beyond early adopters and the early market for data center fabrics, the next wave of adoption has to be made simpler for the ‘main street’ buyer,” notes Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., directing analyst for data center and cloud at Infonetics Research. “This will keep the market for best-of-breed solutions healthy even as a portion of the data center Ethernet switch market turns to bundled solutions.”

Grossner adds: “The shift to cloud-architected data centers with automated deployment of virtual workloads will require storage networking to be more agile, driving the need for a converged network with storage and application traffic on Ethernet.”

REPORT SYNOPSES
Infonetics’ quarterly data center network equipment report tracks data center Ethernet switches, application delivery controllers (ADCs), WAN optimization appliances, and Ethernet switches sold in bundles (companies tracked: A10, Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, Array Networks, Barracuda, Blue Coat, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, F5, HP, Huawei, IBM (BNT), Juniper, Kemp, Radware, Riverbed, others). Infonetics’ quarterly SAN and converged data center network equipment report tracks chassis and fixed Fibre Channel switches; Fibre Channel HBAs; converged data center switch ports-in-use for storage (iSCSI, FCoE, FC-to-FCoE); and converged data center network adapters (iSCSI, CNAs, universal) (companies tracked: Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, ATTO, Brocade, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell, Emulex, HP, IBM (BNT), Intel, Juniper, QLogic, others).

To buy the reports, contact Infonetics: http://www.infonetics.com/contact.asp

IDC Data Network Prioritites Survey Results:

Reference:

A New Open Data Center Network: Disaggregating the Network Operating System from Switch/Router Gear

http://viodi.com/2013/06/25/a-new-open-data-center-network-disaggregatin…

FREE SDN REPORT AND WEBINAR:
Everyone who registers for analyst Cliff Grossner’s Virtualizing Networks with SDN NVOs and Bare Metal Switches webinar will receive a special Infonetics report, 2014: The Year SDN NVOs and Bare Metal Networking Get Serious. Join the live event March 25 at noon EDT or watch the replay. The webinar explores how network virtualization overlays (NVOs) and bare metal networking make data center network virtualization faster, easier, and more affordable:
http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=746584&s=1&k=F8942DEE951A3E32B8495DE59289A1E3