Market research firm Infonetics Research says in its new first quarter (1Q11) SAN Equipment market share and forecast report that the combined SAN switch and adapter market totaled $755 million globally in 1Q11. This performance represented an 0.8% increase from the previous quarter, and a 9.8% uptick from the first quarter of 2010. And the growth shouldn’t stop there, according to Infonetics.
"We see steady growth ahead for the overall SAN equipment market,” explains Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier and data center networks at Infonetics Research. “The long shift to cloud computing will propel the SAN switch market to more than triple from 2010 to 2015, and we forecast the SAN adapter market to grow at a 20% compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2015, spurred by demand for FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) converged network adapters."
Other 1Q11 market highlights reflected in the report include:
- SAN switch revenue grew 4% and adapters declined 8% in 1Q11 from 4Q10
- While most vendors in the SAN switch and adapter space had a down 1Q11 and lost share, Cisco picked up 3 percentage points of market share
- Meanwhile, perennial market leader Brocade's market share and revenue held steady
- FCoE switches represent 15% of the total SAN switch market, and are expected to be a strong growth driver moving forward.
Infonetics' SAN Equipment report provides worldwide and regional market size, market share, forecasts, and analysis for Fibre Channel SAN switches and FCoE SAN switches, and three segments of storage networking adapters: Fibre Channel host bus adapters, iSCSI HBAs, and FCoE converged network adapters). Switches are tracked by chassis (director) vs. fixed (fabric).