Data center to drive Ethernet switch revenue growth through 2016

REDWOOD CITY, USA: According to a recent report by Dell'Oro Group, the L2-3 Ethernet Switch market is forecast to approach $28B in 2016, with future growth to be driven primarily by sales of Ethernet switches optimized for larger data center deployments.

By 2016, 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the Ethernet Switch market is expected to comprise the majority of revenue. Also expected by 2016 is robust growth in 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet with the combined technologies expected to exceed $3 billion.

"We expect the Ethernet Switch market to experience two significant years of market growth in 2013 and 2014 from the migration of servers towards 10 Gigabit Ethernet," said Alan Weckel, senior director of Dell'Oro Group. "We believe that in 2013, most large enterprises will upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet for server access through a mix of connectivity options ranging from blade servers, SFP+ direct attach and 10G Base-T. We further anticipate that in 2014, small and medium businesses will upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Looking toward the second half of the decade, 40 GE and 100 GE switches will be an important growth driver for the Ethernet switch market."

The report also shows that Fixed 10 Gigabit Ethernet revenues are projected to grow the most during the forecast period. Vendors with current Ethernet Switch offerings in this segment include: Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Brocade, Cisco, Extreme, Dell, HP, IBM, and Juniper.