The availability of multiple new data-center Ethernet speeds will lead to a much stronger server networking upgrade cycle than seen over the past decade, according to a new Server-Class Adapter & LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) Long-Range Forecast Report from Crehan Research.
The firm expects that the impending arrival of 25 gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 50GbE and 100GbE products, in combination with existing 10GbE and 40GbE products, will result in more than two-thirds of total networking ports migrating to high-speed Ethernet within three years (see accompanying figure).
“Over the past decade or so, the data center has seen many significant changes, and it is no longer a one-size-fits-all market,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “Consequently, we are seeing solutions that are highly optimized for the needs of specific customer segments, whether it be a fully vertically integrated system for a converged enterprise network or a bare-bones disaggregated system for a massively scalable cloud service provider,” he said. “As a result, the market is currently looking for more targeted Ethernet networking solutions.”
The report predicts that the many various high-speed Ethernet options will coexist for some time, each benefitting from the demands of a specific market segment. For example:
- 25GbE is expected to see a strong initial ramp from deployments by cloud titans such as Google and Microsoft, an area of the market where 10GbE server networking is currently prevalent.
- 10GbE should see its third, and biggest, adoption phase as the mainstream enterprise market upgrades its mostly 1GBASE-T server and server access infrastructure to 10GBASE-T.
- 40GbE is starting to ramp significantly, benefitting from a current window of opportunity as the most attractively priced data center Ethernet speed from a bandwidth perspective.
In both its 3Q14 Server-Class Adapter & LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) Long-Range Forecast and its 3Q14 Data Center Switch reports, Crehan Research highlighted the dramatic uptake in 40GbE data center adoption, noting that networking bandwidth demands were so strong in some market verticals that these customers could not wait to evaluate impending 25GbE and 50GbE options.
