This IDC study provides IDC's 2006 worldwide market analysis and forecast for a critical component in the market for network storage solutions, Fibre Channel (FC) switches. It forecasts port shipments as well as factory and market revenue for the sale of FC switches in four segments: chassis switches, 16?64 port fixed port switches, entry-level switches, and blade server embedded switches.

This study discusses how future trends in virtual server and volume server shipments, the deployment of storage in small and medium-sized businesses, and competing technologies such as iSCSI will affect the competitive position of FC switch vendors. It also discusses how continuing industry consolidation will affect future developments and provides specific advice to these companies on how to best take advantage of the changing world of networked storage.

"The next two years will be a period of solid revenue growth for the consolidated group of remaining FC switch suppliers as companies continue their move toward comprehensive, SAN-based storage architectures that support virtual server environments and bladed server architectures," said Richard Villars, vice president, Storage System at IDC. "As the market reaches a level of saturation, however, FC switch suppliers must extend their focus into file-level storage and greater management of data across the extended enterprise."