New Industry Alliance to Bring 25Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb Ethernet Technology Standards

In today’s digital environment the ability to not only scale, but hyperscale is becoming a key requirement as more organizations move to the cloud with hosted IT solutions. They want the capability to increase the services they offer as needed ASAP, and this is putting a lot of pressure on data center and network operators around the world. With a highly competitive global market place, operators are always on the lookout for an economical solution without sacrificing quality of service. A new alliance spearheaded by QLogic Corp. looks to move forward the standards development and promotion of the Ethernet Alliance and 25G Consortium by delivering 25Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb Ethernet innovations to the market.

The 2550100 Alliance is composed of server, storage, networking and software companies collaborating to bring solutions based on new 25Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb Ethernet technology in order to support cloud providers with hyperscale needs. According to QLogic, the alliance is looking to provide an affordable solution between 10Gb and 40Gb by highlighting the benefits of 25Gb economics.

With hyperscale and enterprise organizations looking to increase their capacity, a forecast by Crehan Research has predicted shipments of 25Gb adapter and LOM ports will achieve the one million mark in less than half the time of 10Gb. Currently 10GB is the technology that is being used for high server connectivity. The group wants to educate vendors, channel partners and IT organizations on the viability of 25Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb products and how they can implement it for increased efficiency.

“25Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb represents multiple breakthroughs for the Ethernet industry. 25Gb brings economy to high performance networking, 100Gb puts Ethernet at parity with InfiniBand, while the underlying chips and protocol stack are designed to meet the needs of both hyperscale and enterprise customers,” said Ahmet Houssein, senior vice president and general manager, Ethernet Products, QLogic.

Some of the 2550100 Alliance charter members include, Hitachi Data Systems, Huawei, Lenovo, Telesoft Technologies and others, whose goal is to develop the technology with a set of programs by assisting:

• Hardware and software vendors with early access to 2550100 networking products, and to work together efficiently to develop solutions.
• Channel partners with online and hands-on training so they can guide their customers through the migration.
• IT professionals with education, hands-on training and early access to 2550100 networking products needed to evaluate and deploy the new technology.

A report by the Dell’Oro Group revealed server network ports are expected to exceed $1.7 Billion in revenue and 40 Million ports by 2018. It goes on to say 25 Gbps speed is projected to drive the second highest server Ethernet port sales and shipments. When Google, Microsoft, Broadcom and others created a consortium backing 25 Gbps in July of 2014, the technology gained more traction. The new 2550100 Alliance will further establish the technology as a viable alternative for very large cloud providers and other who need the ability to hyperscale cost effectively.

Edited by Maurice Nagle