Core switches to drive revenue growth in the Fibre Channel market

Fibre Channel switch and adapter revenues are going to be a lucrative source of revenue for all of the industry players involved, approaching $3 billion in 2016, indicates a new Dell'Oro Group report.

While Ethernet has been a dominant storage area network technology used by enterprises, Casey Quillin, Senior Analyst at Dell'Oro Group, said that "Fibre Channel is being used to backend the Ethernet systems."

Quillin added that "a portion of the server aggregation layer to shift away from Fibre Channel, which will result in a decline in port shipments in the outer years."  

At the same time, Fibre Channel system prices will rise as vendors incorporate more data management features and migrate to 16 Gbps.

In the near-term, Fibre Channel has become lucrative market segment for major players, particularly Brocade and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO). As of Q1 2012, overall Fibre Channel market revenues, according to Dell'Oro's Q1 2012 quarterly report, surpassed $476 million.

For more:
- see the release

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