In the nearly 10 years we've been covering the infrastructure market, we've noticed a trend of invention, innovation, imitation, growth and consolidation. Vendors knew that Fibre Channel wasn't going to cut it for LANs, so they innovated, using the core technology to develop Gigabit Ethernet. And vendors are still innovating, developing faster, cheaper ways to push packets through Gigabit Ethernet switches. This same innovation has contributed to server load-balancing, cache redirection and switching at all layers of the OSI model. This year we give two awards in the switching space.
Vendors fight for market share by aggressively slashing prices and adding copycat capabilities.
Thus far, capacity and performance have come second to features, and you'll still pay a premium for these big boxes. They'll preach about networks that have a unified code base end to end and networks that can handle voice and data seamlessly, but their goal will be a bigger chunk of your IT and telecom dollars. If unified services are the way to get that bid, then consolidate they will. Industry consolidation will continue throughout this decade, and despite the need for standards-based technology, the best solutions will be those that are enhanced through proprietary efforts. Some technologies have moved beyond maturity into obsolescence.