ADC KRONE data shows 10Gb copper market has changed

ADC KRONE today announced that the 10Gbps copper market has changed since the company launched the CopperTen solution nearly 12 months ago as the world`s first 10Gbps UTP (unshielded twisted pair) structured cabling system.

Contrary to all the industry analysts` original forecasts, the major deployment in the world market for 10Gbps copper solutions has been for enterprise horizontal cabling to desktops and not just for data centres.

"When we installed the first major CopperTen* contract back in March 2004, it was for some 20km of 10Gbps augmented Cat6 UTP cable and over 2 000 ports of 10Gbps UTP patch panels," said Axel Kahsnitz, ADC KRONE`s Regional Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

"At that time, consultants, analysts and manufacturers were mostly of the opinion that the only deployments of 10Gbps copper would be within data centres where the additional cabling costs was almost insignificant compared to the hardware investment."

A review of ADC KRONE`s first year CopperTen installations, however, revealed a totally different picture.

Network managers in a diverse range of industries and organisations, most of whom had pre-approved budgets for Cat6 systems, found the case for the future-proofing opportunity of putting 10 times the data capacity immediately so compelling that they went back to their boards for renewed budget approval to spend the extra amount in order to deploy 10Gb CopperTen now.

Trek to the summit

00Days

:

00Hrs

:

00Min

:

00Sec

"The business case that the network managers put to their boards must have been extremely strong because, in most cases, their boards were convinced and gave them the additional budget to deploy CopperTen," Kahsnitz added.

A broad spectrum of companies and organisations are installing 10Gbps UTP. Universities in the US, UK, SA and Slovenia are all deploying ADC KRONE`s CopperTen system in the horizontal. Other customers include a US law firm, a UK spectroscopy manufacturer, a US engineering consultancy, an aerospace company, and banks in several parts of the world. In addition, there is an exciting application for one of the world`s leading animation studios. These are just some of the diverse organisation types that are deploying CopperTen 10Gb UTP.

It is interesting to note this early uptake of a new structured cabling technology seems to be following a similar pattern to the uptake of Cat5, 5e and 6, where up to 30% of installs were of the new technology prior to the respective standards being ratified - mainly driven by organisations` need to future-proof their networks, linked with the fact that organisations only have one chance to re-cable every seven to 12 years.

A major factor in the uptake of the CopperTen system is the simplicity of active equipment upgrades. Most actives currently ship with 1Gbps ports as standard - but because the CopperTen solution is fully backward compatible with 10/100Mbps and 1Gbps equipment, current or legacy actives can be deployed. There`s no cabling cost to upgrade to 10Gbps actives when they`re needed because it is RJ45 plug and play.

ADC KRONE forecasts that, with more than 80% of the world`s IT market being UTP-centric, uptake of 10Gbps UTP Copper Cabling solutions like CopperTen is set to ramp rapidly during 2005 and 2006.