Impending Deployment of 5G Boosts Demand for Data Center Testing Equipment

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As data centers shift from multifiber push-on (MPO)-8 to MPO-12 and, eventually, MPO-24, the demand for more versatile fiber-optic testing equipment is intensifying. Data centers are also transitioning from 100G to 400G calls for carrier aggregation technologies that enhance the network broadband. To test the Ethernet, data center end users require solutions that can validate FlexE and FlexOtechnologies.

In addition, the migration from large, pedestrian data center infrastructure to smaller, modular, software-defined and virtualized data centers due to a surge in data traffic will enhance the requirement for equipment that can test the data center at a component level. This demand from high-density data centers and the anticipated deployment of 5G are expected to drive the $5.58 billion market toward $11.67 billion by 2024.

“The rollout of 5G will encourage the adoption of underlying technologies such as faster transceivers and Ethernet interfaces which will, in turn, drive the need for equipment and solutions with superior testing and monitoring capabilities,” said Rohan Joy Thomas, Industry Analyst, Measurement & Instrumentation. “As 5G will be engineered to handle higher data transfer speeds and lower latencies, the network infrastructure will have to be re-engineered. This includes upgrading conventional transceivers with faster, more energy-efficient systems, and traditional copper wiring with a denser fiber medium.”

Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Growth Opportunities in the Data Center Test and Measurement Market, Forecast to 2024, presents a holistic view of the data center industry, key drivers for testing & monitoring equipment manufacturers, and the main market challenges. It identifies the testing equipment that is most likely to be used. It also presents the market shares across the regional markets of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest-of-the-World.

“North America is a key region due to the higher market share of solutions used to monitor and manage network performance as well as applications that reside on top of the network,” noted Thomas. “Meanwhile, several emerging markets from Asia-Pacific are expected to play a bigger role in the development of the data center ecosystem. China is making rapid strides in the R&D and production of more powerful chipsets for data centers; this spurt in activities will drive demand for general-purpose testing equipment in the region.”

The changing trends in the data industry create additional growth opportunities for testing equipment manufacturers. For long-term growth, solution providers are likely to:

• Transition from predominantly hardware-based solutions to software-based ones; these can be easily deployed across the mobile edge and across a virtualized network infrastructure
• Provide end users with a complete lifecycle management tool that spans from the device all the way to the network infrastructure
• Offer solutions that can cost-effectively bring on-board business-critical Internet of Things (IoT) applications to the cloud environment
• Engineer a common platform, which is interoperable with application programming interfaces (APIs) and third-party software
• Partner with small Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) firms
• Deliver relevant, software-defined solutions that can be used to validate the hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
• Create solutions that data center operators can use to optimize their infrastructure and check the compliance of augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) devices and applications on their networks
• Collaborate with leading cloud computing service companies to offer testing solutions in the cloud environment

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