Virtualization, cloud drive data centre market

BOSTON, USA: 2010 was a strong year for data centre network equipment sales, due to a rebound from bare-bones 2009 spending levels and, more importantly, fundamental trends favouring investments in the data centre, such as the explosion of content and traffic, use of virtualization, and increasingly, cloud-based services and architectures.

This is as per the latest survey of market research firm Infonetics Research.

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In 2010, the worldwide data centre network equipment market -  data centre Ethernet switches, application delivery controllers (ADCs), WAN optimization appliances - jumped more than 50 percent over 2009, to almost $8 billion, the report adds.

Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, enterprise networks and video, Infonetics Research, said: "For 2011, we expect tempering but still robust growth in sales, and the biggest opportunities for vendors is in helping companies grow their data centre infrastructure sustainably, such as through the use of products that dramatically increase price-to-performance or improve management in highly virtualized environments."

Data centre switches, by far the largest segment, are transitioning from general-purpose to purpose-built equipment, as evinced by a near-doubling in purpose-built equipment revenue quarter-over-quarter

Cisco leads the data centre Ethernet switching market by far, with over 80 percent market share. ADC market leader F5 maintains its strong #1 position, although revenue share declined as rival Cisco turned the corner.

The WAN optimization market is a three-horse race between Blue Coat, Cisco, and Riverbed

Enterprise Data Centre Survey highlights

North American enterprises plan to increase their data centre infrastructure spending by an average of 25 percent in 2011.

Cloud technologies will play a major role in this expansion, and are among the top three expected data centres changes.

Interest in 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) equals or exceeds interest in 40GE, despite the lack of  available products.

Fiber Channel is the most used SAN technology, however respondents show strong interest in next generation FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet) to streamline their data centre networks.