ACG Research, specialists in networking, software and operational trends for the global service provider community, recently authored an analysis, “Succeeding on an Open Field, the impact of open source technologies on the CSP Ecosystem.” It is a comprehensive report and well worth review by anyone wanting a better understanding of market trends in the industry.
ACG summarizes what is happening across all SDN and open source fronts in telecom in 2018. The monolithic nature of proprietary designs is giving way to a model that disaggregates key components and allows them to be integrated on a more flexible mix and match basis that aligns with any specific solution goal.
The industry wants a nimbler way of aggregating components into solutions. The number of services affected, from mobile 5G to optical transport, is wide ranging, and the amount of capex/opex savings will be significant.
Forecasting the open source telecom market, ACG predicts that by 2023, there will be an $11B open source opportunity and this will equal a quarter of the total market. Today, open source solutions are deployed in cloud and virtual infrastructures with rates of adoption also growing in SDN networking/control, followed by network and services orchestration. Future areas of investment, already under development today, include transport network infrastructures especially in data center switching.
101% Growth Rate for CORD
ACG states that based largely on the growth in CSPs’ use of virtualized infrastructures and cloud-native designs for several services and in their newer use cases, they expect the market for data center switching in their infrastructures to more than double by 2023, from $8.1 billion in 2018 to $19.9 billion in 2023. The fastest growing of these cases will be vco/CORD and MEC edge installations, which we project will grow at compound annual rates of 101% and 87%, respectively, through 2023.
Also noted, open source networking software (OSPC Software offering) is used in white box switching platforms. Together these will grow at a compound rate of about 40% through 2023 and are projected to earn an approximately 15% market share by that date.
Carriers and Vendors Will Cooperate to Create a More Robust Supply Chain
One of the most interesting tenants of the study discusses the push and pull relationship that open source requires of the vendor supply chain and the participating carriers, who are doing the pulling. As stated in the report, adopting open source requires the vision to establish leadership by vendors, and that is followed by their investment of time and capital in the products to serve the market. The process enables vendors to become strategic collaborators within the ecosystem to expand their addressable markets.
We urge you to look at the study closely, and let us know your thoughts!
