Even with a relatively flat third quarter and an expected down fourth quarter, the market for data center network equipment is poised to grow 67 percent in 2010 over 2009, hitting a milestone $7.6 billion worldwide, according to Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics (News - Alert) Research's directing analyst for enterprise networks and video. The market watcher attributes this growth to a new round of data center upgrades, driven by virtualization, surging amounts of data, the growing need for storage, under-investment in 2009, and renewed life in the financial sector.

The data is taken from market research firm’s data center network equipment market share and forecast report.

According to the report, worldwide revenue from data center network equipment, including data center Ethernet switches, application delivery controllers (ADCs), and WAN optimization appliances, grew 2 percent in 3Q10 over 2Q10 to $1.9 billion. This growth was led by activity in North America and EMEA. Likewise, 10G accounts for 14 percent of data center switch ports in 3Q10, much higher than in the total Ethernet switch market

The report predicts 10G port penetration to reach about 50 percent by 2014, aided by rapidly falling prices. Also, the ADC (News - Alert) segment is getting a big boost from telecom carriers, a healthy-again financial sector, and the general trend of data center upgrades.

While F5 continued to build its lead in ADC revenue share in 3Q10, and Citrix revenue jumped 25 percent, surpassing Cisco for the first time. And Riverbed's (News - Alert) WAN optimization appliance revenue surged 22 percent in 3Q10, enjoying a double-digit lead over its nearest competitors. Likewise, Force 10 Networks has a strong presence in data center Ethernet switching space, and is poised to grow with the market.

In a company statement, Zeus Kerravala (News - Alert), senior vice president and distinguished research fellow, Yankee Group, said “As the adoption of 10 GbE on servers and storage systems accelerates, an end-to-end solution delivering high-density 10 GbE aggregation at the network edge coupled with 40 GbE interconnects in the core is increasingly becoming a necessity in data center networks.”

He added, “With its core-to-edge 40 GbE solution, Force10 is well positioned to capture additional market share as customers look to attributes such as high port density and lower power consumption – attributes where their ExaScale switch/router competes effectively.”

According to Infonetics, its Data Center Network Equipment report is updated quarterly and provides worldwide and regional market size, market share, forecasts, and in-depth analysis for data center Ethernet switches (general purpose, purpose-built, and blade switches), application delivery controllers (ADCs), and WAN optimization appliances. Companies tracked include ADTRAN, Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, Avaya, Blade, Blue Coat, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Enterasys, Expand, Extreme, F5, Force10, H3C, HP, Huawei (News - Alert), Ipanema, Juniper, NETGEAR, Radware, Riverbed, Silver Peak, and others.