Data Center Forecast: Flipping For Bare Metal Switches

Going Bare

Bare metal switches are becoming more prevalent in the data center, according to recent research reports.

Infonetics Research, now part of IHS, released a study forecasting that bare metal switches, which according to the company "decouple hardware from software and offer greater agility," will make up just less than one-quarter of all data center ports shipped worldwide in 2019. This, according to Infonetics, is an increase from just 11 percent in 2014.

In addition, Dell'Oro Group released a study this month saying bare metal switches accounted for 7 percent of data center revenue in 2014, which is an all-time high.

Analysts said there are several factors playing into the rise of these basic switches compared with traditional branded switches.

Cloud Adoption

With cloud adoption ramping up, companies are more interested in top-of-rack deployments, according to Rohit Mehra, vice president of network infrastructure at research firm IDC.

Mehra said bare metal switches will continue to see increasing interest from larger cloud providers and some of the largest enterprises for the data center. "Especially those that have capabilities in-house to integrate multiple vendor hardware and software network, IT and orchestration infrastructures," he said in an email to CRN.

Alan Weckel, vice president of Ethernet switch research at Dell'Oro Group, echoed Mehra's statement in an interview with CRN. "If you look at the data center every year there's more and more cloud spending, and the cloud is the perfect place for the white box," he said. "We definitely have several years of very good white-box growth just due to how the market is swaying and who is growing, which is those cloud providers."

The Price Factor

Affordability is another major factor that will play into the future implementation of basic switches inside the data center.

Dell'Oro Group's Weckel said on average basic switches are 30 percent to 40 percent less expensive compared with a traditional vendor brand switch.

"Not only is it cheaper, but it lets you do things like develop your own operating system. It's cheaper and you're doing so much volume, so it really plays to an advantage to do that on your own," said Weckel.

Fewer Questions Around Quality

Analysts said after witnessing the successful implementation of bare metal switches within giant companies such as Google and Amazon, other organizations began to sit up and take notice.

Earlier this year, Hewlett-Packard unveiled a line of open-source, bare metal network switches for the data center.

"With vendors such as Dell and HP jumping into the mix with branded bare metal switches, adoption of bare metal switching is going to accelerate as Tier 2 [cloud service providers] and large enterprises endeavor to achieve the nimbleness demonstrated by Google," said Cliff Grossner, research director for data center, cloud and SDN at Infonetics, in a statement.

Software-Defined Networking

Analysts said as SDN makes it easier to manage networks, adoption and demand for basic switches will increase.

"There's more and more development on SDN," said Weckel. "So as every year goes on, SDN, the bare metal switch, the third-party operating system, become better and better and a more valid way to do things. So that also helps adoption."

Bare Metal Market Growing

Analysts said white-label and bare metal switching has seen steady growth in the data center market over the past several years, which is a foreshadowing of where the market is heading.

"I don't think it's a trend; it's the way it's going to be," said Weckel.