Datacentre upgrades set to surge

Previous under-investment and a cash-rich financial sector will boost equipment sales

Corporates and hosting companies across the US and Europe are set to increase spending on datacentre infrastructure hardware over the next few years, say analysts.

Specifically, customers will be splashing out on 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switches and storage area network (SAN) components after a period of relative under-investment during the recession.

Infonetics Research predicts that global revenue from all datacentre equipment, including Ethernet switches, application delivery controllers (ADCs) and WAN optimisation appliances will grow 67 per cent during 2010 to be worth $7.6bn (£4.9bn) by the end of the fiscal year, with spending particularly buoyant in the US and Europe.

"A new round of datacentre upgrades is under way, driven by virtualisation, surging amounts of data, the growing need for storage, under-investment in 2009, and renewed life in the financial sector," said Infonetics' directing analyst for enterprise networks and video, Matthias Machinowski in a statement.

Infonetics says the accumulation of video and data content in datacentres is also driving sales of storage area network (SAN) equipment to handle ‘gargantuan' storage volumes.

Global revenue from SAN switches and adapters grew to $683m (£442m) in the third quarter of 2010 up 16 per cent over the same period a year earlier and is forecast to reach $6.6bn (£4.3bn) by 2014.

Leading datacentre and SAN equipment companies include Brocade, Chelsio, Cisco, Citrix, F5, Mellanox, QLogic and Riverbed, said the analyst firm.