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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2011
41
Telecom
news
telcos and the quality of their
eco-marketing,” said Phil Sayer,
the company’s principal analyst.
“Europe’s telcos need to work
much harder to articulate how
sustainability performance adds
value to core telecoms services.”
Purpose-built switches
hold their own in a
decelerating data centre
equipment market
After tremendous growth of over
50% in 2010, the data centre network
equipment market has slowed in 2011.
As reported by Infonetics Research
(24
th
June), that market grew to
$8 billion last year and is forecast to
top $10 billion by 2015.
Now, however, some 2010 drivers (like
pent-up demand) have disappeared;
and new challenges (such as slowing
public sector spending) have arisen.
In the first quarter, sales were down
and year-over-year increases were
moving down.
There is a bright spot, however.
Matthias Machowinski, the Infonetics
directing analyst for enterprise net-
works, noted that purpose-built data
centre Ethernet switches continue
to enjoy strong growth “as buyers
transition to these devices to better
address performance requirements in
their data centres.”
In addition to data centre Ethernet
switches, the market analysed by
Infonetics includes application deli-
very controllers (ADCs) and WAN
optimisation appliances.
The international market research and
consulting firm noted that:
✆
Driven by emerging economies,
the data centre equipment
markets in Asia Pacific (APAC) and
Central and Latin America (CALA)
posted strong year-over-year
growth in IQ11
✆
With a market share of over
80%, Cisco Systems (San Jose,
California) continues to lead the
data centre Ethernet switching
market
✆
ADC market leader F5 Networks
(Seattle Washington) increased
its revenue only slightly in the first
quarter, but gained four points of
market share as rivals Cisco and
Citrix (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
declined
Swedish broadband equipment maker Tilgin has launched Simba, a platform
for home gateways that can handle gigabit speeds. The company said that
lower-priced computer chips enable it to offer gateways running at 1Gbits
per second for the price of 100Mbps models. Tilgin told Mikael Ricknäs of
the IDG News Service that it expects the first operators to offer products
based on Simba with broadband subscriptions at 1Gbps before the New
Year. In
Network World
(27
th
June), Mr Ricknäs noted that Tilgin is not the only
vendor pushing gigabit broadband. In the US in March, Google announced
plans to offer broadband at 1Gbps to residents of Kansas City.
Google technology evangelist and TCP/IP co-creator Vint Cerf said in
a mid-June speech that the purpose of the project is, in Mr Ricknäs’s
paraphrase, “to demonstrate what happens when you have gigabit speeds
available.”
In Japan and Hong Kong, gigabit speeds are already on offer.
Network World
mentioned these initiatives elsewhere:
✆
Also in June, the American cable operator Comcast demonstrated a 1Gbps
connection over a live broadband network by downloading 23 episodes of a
TV show – close to nine hours of content – in about 90 seconds
✆
Britain’s BT Group has announced plans to test broadband at downstream
speeds of 1Gbps and upstream speeds of 400Mbps this year
✆
According to the marketing manager of Bredbandsbolaget, the Swedish
operator is planning to launch a gigabit broadband service this Autumn
Operators are responding to rising interest
in gigabit broadband worldwide
“Our study found that telecoms
operators who can’t communicate
their own energy, environment,
and sustainability performance are
now at a competitive disadvantage.
This is particularly true when bidding
for public sector telecom contracts.”
The reference, by director David
Metcalfe of Verdantix, was to “Green
Quadrant
Sustainable
Telecoms
Europe 2011,” published 13
th
June. The
London-based independent analyst
firm reviewed 18 of the largest telecom
operators in the European market,
across 50 criteria. The key finding is
that AT&T, BT, Orange, Swisscom,
and Telefónica will improve their
ability to win contracts for services
like telepresence, cloud computing,
smart meters, and Web hosting
because of their superior energy and
environmental performance.
Interviews with 15 senior IT and
telecoms buyers with combined
revenues of over $247.9 billion
disclosed a growing trend for these
powerful buying constituencies to
inquire into energy and environmental
responsiveness. Two global banks
told Verdantix they require telecoms
to have ISO14001 certification before
spending money with them.
In the European market, AT&T, BT,
Orange, Swisscom, and Telefónica
were found to lead their peer group
on energy, environment, and social
metrics. According to Verdantix, these
providers boast the broadest portfolio
of services that target sustainability
growth markets like electricity and
gas smart-metering.
The five leaders also have invested
more than their competitors in
measuring and communicating to
their customers the benefits they
deliver. Swisscom has a “green
tool” that enables customers to
assess savings in energy and CO
2
emissions consistently across all
services.
AT&T, Orange, and Telefónica each
has a chief sustainability officer who
reports at board level.
✆
While Verdantix sees a big market
opportunity for telecoms to act as
sustainability “enablers” to their
customers, it also acknowledges
a need to more effectively define
the benefits of sustainability
in financial terms. “Right now
there is a gaping disconnect
between the ambitions of the
Five European operators take notice that the biggest
buyers of telecom services are serious about energy
and the environment