FC Switch Market Grew in 4Q08 But FC Adapter Market Slowed Down

According to a recently published report by Dell’Oro Group, Inc. the source for market information about the networking and telecommunications industries, fourth quarter 2008 Fibre Channel Storage Networking Market sales were about even with the prior quarter levels. Sales of host bus adapters were down both sequentially and versus the year ago quarter, moving in sympathy with the declines in the server market. In contrast, Fibre Channel switch sales moved in the opposite direction, rising largely as a result of price appreciation as users opted for the higher-priced higher-featured new generation platforms. 
 
“The Fibre Channel adapter market is not feeling the rewards of users migrating to the higher-priced higher-featured products.  Instead, this market is characterized by an increasing portion of lower-priced blade server adapters,” said Tam Dell’Oro, President and Founder of Dell’Oro Group.  “However, we see two silver linings on the horizon,” added Dell’Oro. “First, the only thing slowing down users’ appetite for bandwidth are layoffs, and ultimately, demand from the remaining employees must be serviced.  Second, users will have a great choice to fulfill this pent up demand:  8 Gbps Fibre Channel, or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).  In the fourth quarter, users began trialing Cisco’s Nexus 5000 switch enabled with FCoE software, and the adapters from Emulex LP21000 and QLogic QLE 8000,” concluded Dell’Oro.