Wikibon published a report about the outlook of Ethernet and Fibre Channel in 2012, highlighting the main trends likely to drive the market throughout next year.

Adoption of server 10GbE may speed up, thanks to Intel’s upcoming Romley chip, according to some experts who believe it may rise to as much as 50 percent.  This is a big increase considering only one quarter of the 8 million servers shipped in 2010 supported 10Gb Ethernet, and that it took several years for the protocol to settle in within the network.

When it comes to Fibre Channel however, the predictions vary. Stu Miniman wrote:

“FC is the leading technology for storage networking. For at least the last three years, I have read predictions that FC revenue would turn flat or negative in “near future” (12-18 months). According to Dell’Oro (in this QLogic PR), FC adapter revenue will continue to grow through 2013. So, we are still in that “12-18 month” window for the FC revenue to go negative as pricing decreases outpace port growth.”

Miniman believes that regardless of where Fibre is heading, the balance sheets of the three main vendors in this segment – QLogic, Broadcom and Emulex – will remain intact as Ethernet compensates for the loss.  All three have seen growth in 10GbE sales. QLogic decided to expand on this approach last month when it announced its 8200 Series 10GbE converged network adapters have been certified to power QFabric deployments.

Emulex is also looking towards Ethernet developments, and will continue to do so throughout 2012. This will be especially true if a court decides it can’t sell a number of its fibre channel products in the U.S, now that it has been ruled they’re infringing two Broadcom patents.

Wikibon’s report continues to point out the three key disruptors in the network. One of them is big data, which was a noteworthy point made in one of Miniman’s previous posts, and the other two are equally formidable buzzwords: cloud and flash.