+60% in SAN Switch Revenue in 2010 for Cisco, Leader Brocade Losing 6 points

Market research firm Infonetics Research released its fourth quarter of 2010 (4Q10) SAN Equipment market share and forecast report, which tracks storage area network (SAN) switches and adapters.

"The SAN switch and adapter market rebounded nicely in 2010 after the drop in 2009, with revenue growth driven mainly by Cisco, which posted a 60% increase in SAN switch revenue in 2010. Brocade remains the market leader in the overall SAN space of course, but it lost 6 points of market share while Cisco gained 7. Cisco is in a good position here with its strong lead in the Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch segment, widely seen as the future technology of the data center,” notes Michael Howard, Infonetics Research’s principal analyst for carrier and data center networks.

SAN Market Highlights

• The combined SAN switch and adapter market grew 15% in 2010 over the previous year, to $2.76 billion worldwide.
• For the quarter, SAN switch and adapter revenue is up 10% in 4Q10 over 3Q10, to $749 million worldwide.
• Infonetics Research forecasts the worldwide SAN equipment market to grow to $8.4 billion in 2015.
• In the adapter space, the 2 kingpins QLogic and Emulex showed solid revenue increases in 2010 over 2009 (10% and 12%, respectively).
• Worldwide FCoE SAN switch revenue jumped more than 200% in 2010, albeit from a small base.
• SAN equipment simplifies the complexity of consolidating and increasing the size of data centers, a huge trend that continues as data center owners grapple with exploding amounts of (largely consumer-generated) video and data content.