Data Center Growth Driving ON Market: Report
New research released Monday suggests that the optical networking market and data centers will maintain their symbiotic relationship, with increasing numbers of sites in Latin America driving the sharpest growth. A report from the U.K. analyst firm Ovum expects the ON market to reach $20 billion by 2017, with a 5 percent compound annual growth rate. Although Ovum believes that the North American market will continue to experience "solid" growth in the ON space, the firm—perhaps unsurprisingly—indicated that less mature markets will grow the most rapidly. Selecting a data center site is predicated on a number of factors—available power, property and site costs, and proximity to customers, among others—but the availability of high-speed data connectivity is a must. Ovum highlighted Facebook's 2011 decision to build a massive data center in Lulea, Sweden, where the frigid climate will assist in cooling, as one site that will need to ensure that high-speed data connectivity is not neglected. “The new bandwidth driver is data centers. Large-scale data centers continue to be built out –both the multi-tenant, carrier-neutral variety and private data centers,” said Ian Redpath, principal analyst in Ovum’s Network Infrastructure practice, in a statement. “The data centers are being placed in brand new locations, creating brand new optical networking demands.” He added: “For example, the new Facebook data center at Lulea, Sweden, near the Arctic Circle, will require terabits of bandwidth. These new demands are not unique to Lapland—they are emblematic of a trend unfolding in multiple European and North American locations.”