The market for disaggregated WDM systems is growing, according to a recent report by market information firm, Dell'Oro Group.
The Optical Transport Quarterly Report covers manufacturers' revenue, average selling prices, unit shipments (by speed including 40Gb/s, 100Gb/s, 200 Gb/s, and 400 Gb/s). It tracks DWDM long haul terrestrial, WDM metro, multiservice multiplexers (SONET/SDH), optical switch, optical packet platforms, and data centre interconnect (metro and long haul).
The latest publication found that revenue for WDM systems grew 142 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2018, with an annualised revenue run-rate for the period of $800 million. This is forecast to surpass $925 million for full year 2018. The high level of growth was largely attributed to new markets – outside of web-scale companies and data centre interconnect (DCI) – adopting the technology.
Jimmy Yu, vice president at Dell'Oro Group explained: ‘Small form factor, disaggregated WDM systems were developed for the hyperscalers. And for a long period of time, they were the only large purchasers. However, now we see a growing number of buyers that include cable operators and wholesale carriers. We think this is just the start of a good thing, and expect demand for these disaggregated systems will continue to grow at a hyper-scale rate.’
Amongst the report’s other findings, Ciena and Infinera were cited as the top two vendors in the category, with a combined market share of approximately 60 per cent for the trailing four quarter period ending in the first quarter of 2018.