Best Ever Q1 Revenues for FC Switch

In a newly-released SAN quarterly report by Dell’Oro Group, the source for market information about the networking and telecommunications industries, FC switch revenues surpassed $476 million in 1Q12, the highest ever for a first quarter.

Results of the quarter have culminated in Brocade gaining six points of revenue share in 1Q12, reaching above 71, and the highest since 4Q09.

"Brocade has had two consecutive strong FC switch quarters, calendar 1Q12 being their best ever for FC switch revenue, reaching just under $340 million. FC continues to have legs and, while the unprecedented growth in unstructured data is increasing the need for file based storage alternatives, we have learned that FC SAN storage in also being deployed in cloud service provider infrastructures alongside NAS systems," said Casey Quillin, senior analyst at Dell’Oro Group. "With Brocade’s momentum, the continued ramp of Intel’s Romley platform, and Cisco’s fiscal year end and strongest month coming in July, we expect to see strength in the overall FC market in the second half of 2012."

The report also discusses trends in SAN, the outlook for FC switches and adapters, and alternative SAN technologies, such as FCoE.