FCoE Switch Revenues Grew 19% Sequentially in 2Q11

A recently published report by Dell’Oro Group indicates that growth in the SAN market during the second quarter of this year was driven by converged connectivity technologies such as FCoE, where port shipments on both switches and adapters realized strong Q/Q performance.

"FCoE switch revenue grew 19% sequentially to $94 M," said Casey Quillin of Dell’Oro Group. "Cisco’s Nexus 5000 series switch accounted for almost 50% of the more than 200 K FCoE ports shipped in 2Q11," added Quillin. Brocade also enjoyed growth in the converged switch market, with strong sales of their VDX switches.

The quarter also saw the entry of Juniper Networks which began shipping its QFX series switches, a standards-based FCoE switch and FCoE to FC gateway.

The report also includes a thorough analysis of current FCoE penetration in the marketplace and what areas are likely to see the strongest growth.  

"One of the things we did was to determine the percentage of FCoE-capable ports connected to FCoE switches and deployed to run FCoE traffic end-to-end," said Quillin. "We also looked at FCoE-capable LOM and adapters and had some interesting findings".