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16G fibre channel comes back strong in Q1: Infonetics

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Deepa
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BANGALORE, INDIA: Global revenue for SAN equipment, including fibre channel switches and iSCSI and fibre channel host bus adapters, declined to $604 million in 1Q13, an eight per cent drop from 4Q12. The initial pent-up demand that provided a jump start for 16G fibre channel switches is still in motion, but Infonetics believes it will soon slow and settle into a growth pattern more in line with the 8G segment, finds Infonetics Research.

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"While most SAN equipment languished in the 1st quarter of 2013, 16G Fibre Channel switches put up a very strong showing," notes Michael Howard, Infonetics Research's co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks. "Sales of chassis 16G Fibre Channel switches grew 45 per cent, and fixed switches more than doubled from the previous quarter."

On the heels of huge growth in 2012, the global high-performance interconnect equipment market, including converged FCoE/Ethernet switches and converged network adapters, slumped 13 per cent sequentially in 1Q13, but are up 45 per cent from the year-ago quarter.

"The bulk of 16G Fibre Channel deployments continue to be inter-switch link applications, but with server input/output capabilities rising with the introduction of Intel's Romley, and with Emulex's and QLogic's first 16G Fibre Channel adapter shipments, we expect a more meaningful adoption of 16G for server connections to begin in 2013," Howard adds.

Infonetics forecasts the SAN and high-performance interconnect (HPI) equipment market to top $9 billion by 2017, with the HPI segment gaining as 10GE, 40GE and 100GE transports become the norm for networking within the data centre. The leading manufacturers in the SAN and high-performance interconnect markets all had a down quarter in 1Q13.

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