Market research firm Dell'Oro Group recently began tracking the 40G Ethernet market as 10G takes hold and grows, necessitating 40G uplinks, aggregation switches and core modules. And the market leaders are IBM and Extreme Networks.
In Dell'Oro's first 40G market report, which tabulates revenue and port/unit share for the third quarter, Extreme is the market leader in modular 40G Ethernet switches and second in overall 40G Ethernet. Extreme and Dell, which acquired Force10 Networks this year, are the only vendors to realize modular 40G revenue in Q3.
That won't be the case for long though. Ethernet switch market leader Cisco and other data center switching vendors are expected to see some ramp in their own 40G switches and port modules next year.
This year though, the total market was $600,000 in modular revenue in Q3. Extreme accounted for $400,000 and Dell $200,000. Extreme's BlackDiamond X8 is designed to support up to 192 wire-speed 40G Ethernet ports while Dell's Z9512 supports 96 line rate 40G ports.
The Z9512 is shipping now, while the BlackDiamond X8 is expected to begin shipping in the first half of next calendar year.
In fixed configuration 40G, the $2.6 million market was split three ways in Q3. IBM was the market leader with $1.8 million in revenue, while Dell and Extreme each had about $400,000. Extreme edged Dell ever so slightly for second place to IBM, with 15.4% share vs. Dell's 14.6% share, according to Dell'Oro.
IBM has two switches that support 40G ports and uplinks: the G8316 and G8264. Extreme has 40G uplinks in the Summit X670, and Dell has fixed 40G in the S4810 and the 2RU Z9000.
Earlier this year, Dell'Oro reported that the impact of cloud computing on the $20 billion Ethernet switch - or $6 billion 10G -- market could exceed $1 billion. And as 10G servers are deployed in data centers, 40G ports are becoming the switch interconnect in private data centers and hosted cloud environments.
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