Data Center Hardware Market Booming for Variety of Reasons
… “it’s not very clear that they’ll be doing any investment whatsoever — in any type of equipment,” Galabov said.
But he expects the headwinds some are experiencing and the tailwinds others are experiencing to balance each other out overall.
Telcos’ Drive to Disaggregate and Innovate Fuels OCP Momentum
Servers have and continue to be responsible for most of the overall OCP hardware volume acquired each year. But the variety of technologies developed within the OCP framework is growing. That’s especially true in the telco category. It’s partly the reason Omdia expects the category to continue playing such a big role going forward, Grossner said.
There is a lot of activity within OCP around cell-site network gateways, routers and servers. That activity aims to specifically address telcos’ needs at the edge.
“It’s a market that’s looking for brand new solutions,” he said. “And that’s the time when new vendors and innovators can jump in.”
Telcos are drawn to OCP partly because of the innovation in the ecosystem and partly because the disaggregation that’s been a big design goal across its many projects helps them avoid vendor lock-in, Galabov explained. The next thing telcos want to disaggregate is core routing, Grossner said.
Telecommunications equipment is notorious for big and expensive proprietary solutions, where all the components in a single box (both hardware and software) are designed to work together. Open specifications required by OCP allow different vendors to design different components that are interchangeable and can all enable a single solution. They’ve also allowed for new vendors to enter the space.
More Enterprise Types Interested
Last year, the non-board OCP market’s enterprise portion jumped substantially, from below 30% to above 40%. And that’s because more government agencies, gaming, e-commerce, and energy companies are buying the gear. There is also a modest increase in automative and industrial users deploying the gear.
Many of the companies told Omdia they were deploying OCP to enable high-performance computing infrastructure. Automotive and industrial users have deployed OCP proof-of-concept installations to support edge computing for connected-car and internet of things initiatives, respectively.
Access Remains an Issue
While the non-hyperscale market for OCP equipment is growing, the equipment continues to be relatively difficult for smaller-scale buyers to source. Most of the big players on the vendor side have traditionally focused on hyperscalers. They haven’t built the supply chain and support infrastructure smaller companies look for in their hardware suppliers.
Access has improved over time, but it’s still an issue.
“That barrier is still there today, but to a lesser degree,” Grossner said. “It’s not a totally solved problem.”
Some vendors have started offering server orders as small as one or two servers. And in some locations there are already solid networks of OCP resellers and integrators, Galabov said.
“I tried to order myself a couple of servers, and I was able to do that,” he said. (Galabov is based in London.)
Omdia has also identified “circular economy” as a new, potentially major growth driver for non-hyperscale OCP adoption. ITRenew, which specializes in decommissioning and reselling used equipment from hyperscale data centers, has been reconfiguring some of it into broad market-friendly solutions, certified for traditional software platforms, such as VMware. The company has seen a lot of interest in these solutions, especially by tier-two cloud providers, its president, Ali Fenn, told Data Center Knowledge.
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