Global Data Center Fabric Market 2017-2021

Global outlook of the data center fabric market

Technavio’s market research analysts predict the global data center fabric market to grow steadily during the forecast period and post a CAGR of more than 8% by 2021. This industry research report identifies the increased adoption of cloud-based services to be one of the major factors that will have a positive impact on the data center fabric market size in the coming years. Cloud-based services eliminate the need to own and manage data center infrastructure and are highly cost-effective. As a result, large enterprises, SMEs, and several government agencies are increasingly adopting cloud-based services offered by CSPs, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and are constantly increasing their infrastructure expenditure on data centers. Since most of these CSPs operate Tier-3 and Tier-4 data centers, they will start virtualizing their facilities to increase the utilization of the underlying IT infrastructure. This will, in turn, boost the market’s growth prospects since fabric networking provides high availability of services through dynamic allocation of virtual machines. This will lead to an increase in  data center fabric market share during our forecasted period.

This market research and analysis estimates that in terms of geographical regions, the Americas will be the major revenue contributors to the market throughout the predicted period. The increased spending on data centers by the US and the rising number of data centers in Canada and Latin America will propel the growth of the market in this region.

Competitive landscape and key vendors

The market is characterized by the presence of a considerable number of vendors and appears to be highly fragmented. One of the major vendors Brocade communications systems has a wide product portfolio that includes Ethernet switches, router, and FC SAN fabric switches. The company provides networking infrastructure and software, including SDN-enabled products and solutions and offers products through three major segments such as SAN products, Internet Protocol (IP) networking products, and global services. The company sells its products and services directly to end-users and also through distribution partners, including original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), systems integrators, and value-added resellers (VARs).

The leading vendors in the market are -

• Brocade Communications Systems
• Cisco Systems
• Dell
• HPE
• Juniper Networks

The other prominent vendors in the market are Arista Networks, Avaya Networks, Big Switch Networks, Extreme Networks, Gigamon, Huawei Technologies, IBM, Lenovo, Mellanox Technologies, Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent), Oracle, and Pluribus Networks.

Segmentation by product and analysis of the data center fabric market

• Fabric switches
• SAN fabric
• Fabric routers
• Management software

Being a combination of hardware and software, fabric switches facilitate the secure transfer of data between network nodes through the network port. According to the analysts, this segment accounted for the major shares and dominated the market during 2016. Rising deployment of multi-core processor-based servers and virtualized servers will increase the need for Ethernet switch fabrics, which, in turn, fuels the growth of the market segment in the coming years.

Segmentation by end-users and analysis of the data center fabric market

• Cloud service providers (CSP)
• Telecommunications service providers (TSP)
• Enterprises

During 2016, the CSPs were the major end-users of fabric switches and routers, and according to this market research study, this segment will continue to dominate the market throughout the predicted period as well. The increasing investment of major CSPs such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon in new fabric infrastructure and management software and the shift in preference of several SMEs and SMBs from data center construction towards cloud services will propel the market’s growth prospects during the forecast period. Also, the high utilization of cloud fabric will drive the market growth in this end-user segment.  

Key questions answered in the report include

• What will the market size and the growth rate be in 2021?
• What are the key factors driving the global data center fabric market?
• What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the global data center fabric market?
• What are the challenges to market growth?
• Who are the key vendors in the global data center fabric market?
• What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the global data center fabric market?
• Trending factors influencing the market shares of the Americas, APAC, and EMEA.
• What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the global data center fabric market?