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Full speed ahead with 10G

10G as a technology has many benefits over existing networking technologies. By Faiz Askari

In specific industry verticals, design and multimedia houses, 10G is being deployed. With the complex set of applications being deployed in enterprises, it’s becoming essential for them to go in for gigabit at the edge and 10G at the Core of the network. Moreover, advocates of this technology also believe that 10G is the best option for affordable broadband, which is the need of the hour in India.

Structured Networks

Apart from 10G, India is also the fastest growing structured cabling market in APAC. According to AMI Research Findings, the Structured Cabling Market in Asia Pacific is set to grow at 11% through 2010. India is the fastest growing market in the region with a CAGR of 22.1%.

Dr. Ispan Kandasamy, VP and MD, APAC, CommScope said, “The Indian data center market opportunity, which is estimated to be worth around $100 million now, is expected to double by 2009. The growth is expected to be driven by a number of factors, including increasing supply and decreasing cost of Internet bandwidth and the reality of more domestic companies hosting their mission-critical applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at third-party data centers. AMI expects that increasing convergence will also be a growth factor as India’s leading cable operators and telecommunications companies roll out ‘triple play’ services and solutions that include the delivery of television, telephony and broadband Internet access over a single network.”

The cabling market for the APAC region will reach $1.5 billion by 2010. The data center market is expected to grow at 33% while the total cabling market including data center and enterprise is expected to grow at 11% till 2010. Cabling used in the data center will reach $500 million by 2010. The growth of data center market is the major driver behind the growth of cabling in APAC.

The 10G drive

While discussing the potential elements of this technology that are acting as drivers for this in a country like India, Subasish Gupta country India and SAARC, Allied Telesyn said, “Ease, simplicity and manageability are the three most important points that enterprises look at while considering structured cabling.”

Kandasamy added, “In fact, the first user of 10G Ethernet was in India. Tata Consultancy Services announced the usage of our 10G infrastructure for their development center at Hyderabad. They wanted a 10G cabling infrastructure, to take care of the new generation of applications, which are becoming more bandwidth hungry. We have many customers in the banking and insurance sector too. Customers are looking at high bandwidth requirements.”

While highlighting another key aspect for this upcoming technology in India, Chandra Kopparapu, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Foundry Networks stated, “10G has become more affordable and this is prompting more organizations to opt this technology. Entertainment and animation are the two segments that have shown great interest in 10G.”

Awareness in the market

Gupta stated, “A lot of customers are waiting and watching. 10g is still priced on the higher side. But in a year to 18 months, I believe that the industry will see more aggressive price points and they will invest in 10G.”

Kopparapu added, “Indian organizations are late adopters of 10G compared to the US and European markets. Having said this, most Indian organizations are adopting the latest technologies within 10G. So in that sense, although late in one regard, Indian organizations are adopting the latest and most advanced features of 10G.”

10G on Copper

10G at this stage is a backbone technology; but of late trends seem to suggest an increasing opportunity space in the server farm arena as well. Gupta added, “Although vertical risers and network backbones are fiber runs; the server farm is a layer where 10G on copper is best applicable.

“The limiting factor in 10G on copper were the network adaptors so far. Once the adapters pick-up and more servers get loaded with them the demand for 10G will grow correspondingly.”

The future of 10G

Gupta added, “India is a transactional hub for the world. With increased data-sizes and converged IP applications environment 10G is best suited to be the preferred backbone/server-farm media.”

Kopparapu predicted, “The technology has many value-adds for customers. Looking at the way in which people are relying on technology for their businesses, social activity etc., 10G is definitely going to be an integral part of cutting-edge networks.”

faiz.askari@expressindia.com