Data center, cloud, SDN driving Ethernet switch market to $25B
Data center switching will drive most of the growth in the market. Data center switching growth will be driven exclusively by the cloud, with the enterprise market declining slowly, towards the end of the decade, Dell'Oro expects.
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Cloud will also help spur the adoption of software-defined networking, another factor in the transition from an enterprise-driven to a cloud-dominated Ethernet switching market, Dell'Oro notes.
"The Cloud's need to scale, be flexible, and differentiate are ultimately all governed by what can be achieved in software," states Alan Weckel, vice president of Ethernet switch market research at Dell'Oro.
Dell'Oro's five year forecast also notes that 25G Ethernet will be a major driver for growth in data center switching and will help propel 100G Ethernet volumes, with enterprises adopting a different class of switch to support 25G compared with switches used in the cloud. The report also states that software will transform how Ethernet switches are consumed by customers.
Infonetics Research also noted the imminent emergence of 25G and 50G Ethernet in a recent report. It will be driven by large cloud service providers looking to migrate from 10G Ethernet switching and server connectivity to 100G switching and 25G server connectivity, the firm notes.
The global data center Ethernet switch market was up 5% sequentially to $2.2 billion in Q3, 2014, with U.S. public sector and cloud service providers providing a boost, Infonetics states.