In-Stat/MDR (www.instat.com) projects that the combined market for backbone network solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate of more than 140% from 2002 to 2006,reaching a total of just more than $173.3 billion.
This growth will be spurred by the increased demand for continuous availability and use of applications, and an incremental scaling of resources creating the need for swift, agile access to, and manipulation of ever-increasing computing capacities and more storage.
In-Stat/MDR reports that the relative costs of purchasing storage and servers, and their efficient and effective management, combined with a shortage of IT professionals, are driving demand for new backbone network solutions.
"iBAN (InfiniBand Area Network) and SAN (Storage Area Network) are at the core of this new backbone network trend, with each solution filling unique needs and having its own value proposition," says Lauri Vickers, manager of In-Stat/MDR's LAN group.
"Despite our optimism for this market, new backbone networks will have significant hurdles to overcome, including a lack of integrated network management solutions, a 'killer app' and major players in certain segments, in addition to competing topologies, high price points and the low profile of storage and servers within the overall networking story," Vickers adds.
In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
* In addition to networking, storage and computing vendors, a surprising number of technology specific start-ups are also touting backbone network solutions. Service providers, software vendors and silicon manufacturers are also positioning this market to grow.
* SAN, in FC (Fibre Channel), iSCSI (a type of SCSI over IP) and IB (InfiniBand) implementations, will account for the majority of the new backbone networks through 2006.
* iSCSI and IB are expected to cannibalize FC SAN implementations. While FC is certainly an established solution, it adds a great deal of complexity and cost.
The report is titled "New Backbone Networks: InfiniBand & SAN Market Analysis."