According to the recent Ethernet Switch – Data Center Quarterly Report by Dell’Oro Group, 25 and 100 Gbit/s switch port shipments increased to more than one million in the first quarter of 2017, with suppliers Arista, Cisco, and white box vendors leading the transitions to higher speeds.
Highlights from Dell’Oro’s latest first quarter Ethernet switch, data centre report include:
1. That 100 Gbit/s shipments surged in the quarter, increasing six-fold year on year.
2. Vendors Arista, Cisco and the white box suppliers each achieved revenue of more than $100 million for 100 Gbit/s in the first quarter.
3. Shipments of 25 Gbit/s ports are ramping on the switch side, primarily driven by Cisco, as enterprise customers focus on upgrading their switches ahead of the Intel Purely server refresh cycle that is expected in the second half of the year.
Regarding the report, Sameh Boujelbene, senior director at Dell’Oro Group, commented, “As supply constraints on 100 Gbit/s optical modules started to alleviate, demand for 100 Gbit/s switches is ramping up at the major cloud providers… however, (the market) is in the early stage of this migration and I expect demand to accelerate through the rest of the year, driven by the cloud, as well as telco service providers and enterprise deployments.”
