Switches capable of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) will soon experience a very strong increase in adoption, according to Crehan Research’s most recent Data Center Switch Long-Range Forecast Report.
The firm is forecasting that data center switch port shipments in this market segment will grow from a current annual run-rate of tens of thousands to handily exceed ten million by 2019. The report points to compelling pricing as a key enabler of the strong uptake, with average 100GbE selling prices falling by approximately 50% year-over-year for a number of consecutive years.
“We expect that 100GbE-capable data center switching will soon see a dramatic increase as a result of the compelling economics and diverse use-cases that the upcoming next-gen products enable,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “Price premiums over prior technologies should be relatively small, and these switches can be deployed from the core of the data center network all the way down to the server access layer, given their flexible speed configurations via breakout cables,” he said.
The report further predicts that the keen interest in this next-generation 100GbE-capable data center switching technology from the hyper-scale cloud segment will be a major driver of the initial strong uptake. The deployment of a new technology from large hyper-scale customers such as Google and Microsoft can result in its dramatic growth. This was recently the case with 40GbE server-access deployments and was highlighted in a prior Crehan Research data center networking report.
