FCoE, GPON markets surge

A recent report from Dell'Oro Group has revealed that Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is pushing sales and market share shifts for 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). A different report from the market information company has shown record-high sales of Gigabit passive optical networks (GPONs), driven to some extent by deployments in China.

In a second quarter tie, Cisco Systems and QLogic jumped from fourth to third place in overall 10GbE controller and adapter revenues. As a whole, the 10GbE market is growing by 50 percent, but FCoE-capable products are soaring at a 300 percent annual rate, the report stated. Broadcom slipped from third to fourth in the 2Q rankings. Intel still leads the segment with about a 25 percent revenue share, followed by Emulex at about 16 percent.

"Every gain in market share ranking this quarter was correlated with an increase in FCoE business," said Sameh Boujelbene, a networking analyst at Dell'Oro.

"Cisco is really pushing its Ethernet adapter business because it's such a differentiator for its UCS server products," said Tam Dell'Oro, president of the market research company. The networking adapters have become a business of "almost $20 million a quarter for Cisco, so it's a nice little business for them."

FCoE shipments have been growing at a faster rate than 10Gbit/s Ethernet, making up an increasing share of total 10G controller and adapter sales, Boujelbene said. "Nevertheless, we calculate less than 40 percent of the FCoE-capable controllers and adapters are actually deployed to run FCoE traffic."

FCoE aims to combine fiber channel storage and Ethernet networking traffic on one set of Ethernet links, creating cost savings. Cisco, Emulex, IBM and others have been driving FCoE into the market for several years, targeting uptake at the 10Gbit generation.

In a separate report, the GPON market grew 10 percent in the recent quarter, hitting a new sales record. "Although more than half of PON revenue was driven by deployments in China, aggregate GPON revenue derived from projects outside of China increased sequentially for the first time since 2Q10, driving sequential growth in the quarter," noted Dell'Oro.

Latin America, Russia and the U.S. also contributed to the growth in sales of GPON optical line terminals and optical networking terminals, she added. China remains the key market for influencing overall vendor market shares. The report shows that Huawei was the top GPON supplier due to its position as leading supplier to China. It was followed by Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and ZTE—all had significant shipments to China.

- Rick Merritt
??EE Times