Dedicated data centre ethernet switches sales jump 800 percent

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 14:04

A report on the global data centre equipment market says that sales of dedicated ethernet switches jumped 800 percent in the 12 months to 30 September 2011.

"Wow is the only word that can accurately characterise the performance of the purpose-built data centre ethernet switching market at the end of the third quarter, with year-over-year gains of over 800 percent," said Sam Barnett, directing analyst for data centre and cloud at Infonetics Research - which undertook the study.

He added: "That really tells the story of the data centre network equipment sector: we are on the path to convergence in earnest. The resurgence in data centre upgrades, virtualisation and data/storage/traffic growth bodes well for all categories in the data centre network equipment market.

"Once final 2011 figures are in we expect the market to be up about six percent over 2010, and we expect growth to nudge back up into double-digit percent territory in 2012."

Overall Infonetics said that global revenue for data centre network equipment rose 12 percent sequentially in 3Q11, with all segments posting growth, including general purpose, purpose-built and blade data centre ethernet switches, application delivery controllers (ADCs) and WAN optimisation appliances.

"The North American data centre equipment market had the strongest regional performance in 3Q11 (up 16 percent sequentially), Asia's sequential growth slowed significantly but remains up an astounding 39 percent year-over-year and Europe's 3Q11 results are in positive territory (following a dismal second quarter) despite continued economic concerns," Infonetics said.

"Overall data centre network equipment leaders Cisco and F5 increased their revenue and market share in 3Q11, while number three player HP saw a drop in both, allowing F5 to jump into the number two spot for the first time in a year."