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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates

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To: Greg Hull who wrote (15580)1/18/2000 9:12:00 PM
From: Greg Hull  Read Replies (1) of 54805
 
Sir Galahad,

You have pointed out to us that most Fibre Channel connections have been over copper instead of glass. This appears to be changing. In the January issue of Lightwave (http://www.light-wave.com but not available online yet) in the Trends section, a product marketing manager from Molex is quoted on a shift to fiber. Molex makes components for both copper- and fiber-based Fibre Channel applications. Here are some quotes from the article:

"At 1 Gbps, more than half of the market right now is using optics" [my note: quarter gig networks were common a couple years ago]

"All the new designs, as far as I can tell, are incorporating optics"

"sees growth in the demand for equipment with optical interfaces as the length of SAN connections increases"

"We see a lot of movement toward the 2 Gbps Fibre Channel ... I think that will have a larger optical emphasis, but there will still be a copper version of it, I'm sure"

"I think it's likely that the next rate move will go from 2 gig to 10 gig - and 10 gig FC will be heavily optics. I don't know if they'll do an electrical version at all at that speed."

Copper still has a cost advantage over a glass physical layer, so they are still used for shorter, or lower speed, connections. This cost differential is decreasing. I'm sure this is enough FC for everyone for now.

Greg
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