According to a report from analyst firm IDC, there has been an exponential increase in Ethernet switch growth due to demand from enterprise customers.
IDC's report found that the global Ethernet switch market hit a record revenue of $5.96 billion (£3.8 billion, AU$6.68 billion) in the fourth quarter of last year. This marks an increase of almost 5 per cent on 2012 and a total growth of 3 per cent over the course of 2013.
Behind this rapid increase in revenue is rising demand for speed and transfer capabilities in data centres. The focus of the demand is primarily on 10GbE, though interest in 40GbE is also purportedly on the rise.
"A rapid explosion"
As proof of its growing stock among data centres, sales of 10GbE switches increased by an incredible 35.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, selling 5.4 million ports in just three months.
Interest from large cloud providers has also footed the growth of a number of white-box switch makers, including Cisco, Dell, HP and Huawei. Cisco retains its crown as the dominant Ethernet vendor, with 61.3 per cent of the market, with closest rivals HP holding 9.3 per cent.
"The worldwide Ethernet switch market is diverging into two market segments … the enterprise campus segment and the higher growth data centre segment," Rohit Mehra, vice president for network infrastructure at IDC, said. "The data centre [market] continues to reflect the rapid explosion of 10GbE and 40GbE switch ports shipments."
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