FC SAN Shows New Life, Cisco Makes Strong Gains – Infonetics

Infonetics Research, a technology market research firm, released excerpts from its 3Q14 SAN and Converged Data Center Network Equipment report.

In the report, Infonetics, now part of IHS Inc., tracks SAN FC switches and HBAs, converged data center network adapters, and switch ports-in-use for storage.

“The long-term downward streak for FC SAN equipment was broken in the third quarter of 2014 (3Q14), driven by high performance requirements for flash storage and Cisco’s customers finishing their SAN product evaluation cycles and beginning to scale deployments,” notes Cliff Grossner, Ph. D., directing analyst for data center, cloud, and SDN, Infonetics.

“The question remains, however, whether the growth expected from SSD storage and Gen 6 FC that’s expected in the coming year will be enough to return the market to increased growth,” continues Grossner. “We believe the answer is yes for the short term, but do not see any evidence that double-digit growth will return to FC market.”

FC SAN Market Share

3Q14 SAN / Converged Data Center Market Highlights

• In 3Q14, the global SAN equipment market, including FC switches and HBAs, grew 10% from 2Q14 to $654 million, and was up 15% from 3Q13
• Worldwide converged data center network adapter revenue was up 13% sequentially in 3Q14, with CNAs in the lead, followed by iSCSI adapters
• Another transformation in the converged data center network adapter market is on the horizon: the introduction of 25GbE, expected in 2015 targeting large cloud service providers
• Brocade dominates the SAN switch and adapter market, while Intel leads the converged data center network adapter space

Infonetics’ quarterly SAN equipment and converged data center network report provides worldwide and regional market size, vendor market share, forecasts, analysis, and trends for chassis and fixed FC switches; FC HBAs; converged data center switch ports-in-use for storage (iSCSI, FCoE, FC-to-FCoE); and converged data center network adapters (iSCSI, CNAs, universal).

Vendors tracked: Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, ATTO, Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Emulex, HP, IBM (BNT), Intel, Juniper, QLogic, others.