COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Dell'Oro Group reported that the 10-Gbit switched Ethernet market hit two important milestones in the second quarter of 2008. Total revenues exceeded $600 million for the first time, and numbers of ports shipped exceeded 250,000.
Aggregation 10-Gbit switches have been implemented at the chip level for several years. However, the growth of system-level switches in the enterprise was hindered by several factors, including the high price of transceiver components, and the unavailability of a physical-layer solution that operated over unshielded twisted-pair copper. In recent years, more enterprises have switched to fiber in the risers of buildings, even as 10G components have dropped in price.
Dell'Oro senior analyst Alan Weckel said that an interesting trend has occurred at 10-Gbit/sec speeds, as network managers try to combine more feature sets in either the wiring closet or the data center. Because Ethernet switching now is implemented along with VoIP and security in all enterprise locations, and with storage area networks in the data center, OEMs are seeking to cobble together combined solutions through alliances or acquisitions.
"Recent examples of the changing vendor landscape include the Siemens joint venture that combines Enterasys with Siemens enterprise voice, and Hewlett-Packard ProCurve's acquisition of Colubris for wireless LAN," Weckel said in a statement. "Meanwhile, in the data center, the convergence towards Ethernet as the fabric for storage and networking led to Brocade's recent purchase of Foundry."
Dell'Oro sees this trend continuing in emerging realms such as traffic management and application-layer networking. Weckel cited new higher-layer products from Cisco Systems Inc., F5 Inc., and Citrix Inc., which showed a higher rate of growth than the Ethernet switching market at large.
