Asia Pacific enterprises standardise on Ethernet fabrics

Enterprises across the Asia Pacific are standardising on Ethernet fabric technology, according to a new research report from Frost & Sullivan “Think flat with Ethernet Fabric – Importance of a Flat Network Architecture in Cloud Implementation.”

Commissioned by Brocade, the report indicates rapidly increasing usage of server virtualisation, which is driving enterprises towards Ethernet fabric technology to help fully realise the benefits of business agility, operational efficiencies and lower costs.

Findings of the study are based on a survey of 328 IT decision-makers from across the region.

About two-thirds of those surveyed have adopted server virtualisation, and 46% of them are now running production environments on virtual machines, the survey stated.

“What jumps out from this new report is just how fast Asia Pacific enterprises are now moving towards cloud computing architecture,” said John McHugh, chief marketing officer of Brocade. “They are certainly not all there yet but roadmaps are in place and there is a high level of awareness about the issues they need to address. Creating a data centre networking architecture that is simple, secure, flat and virtualised is a top priority for the region’s IT decision makers.”

An Ethernet fabric architecture will be piloted by more than a third of respondents within the next six months, analysts said. About 25% of those surveyed plan to pilot within 12 months.

35% of organisations had already adopted some form of cloud computing and according to the findings of the survey, private clouds are more common than either the public or hybrid cloud delivery models.

Also, adoption of cloud-enabled infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service saw a huge spurt in the past 12 months, according to Brocade.

“Rolling out cloud computing is complex, which is why it is recommended that organisations address the data centre network challenges head on rather than wait for bottlenecks to appear,” said Andrew Milroy, VP – ICT practice for Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific.

“That means virtualising the network layer; optimising infrastructure through flat architecture; introducing VM-aware automation to enable elastic scaling; and proactive management to maximise availability and minimise Opex [operating expenditure]. We therefore see Ethernet fabric becoming the critical data centre network technology due to its scalability, flatness and efficiency,” added Milroy.