Wondering what the drivers are for 10-Gigabit Connectivity in small and medium sized businesses? Wonder no more. The increase in mobility, voice and video, combined with virtualization and the doubling of data every 2 years (2×2), make it easy to see why SMBs now need 10-Gigabit connectivity: in order to avoid ten bottlenecks.
33% of all SMB networks already used 10-Gigabit switching in early 2016, and 75% will be deploying 10Gb before the end of 2017. 100% of SMBs (up to 500 employees) foresee the need to deploy to this switching technology to be present in their network now or in the near future.
Here is a list of the top 10 reasons why your SMB might need to upgrade to 10-Gigabit switches:
1) BYOD & IoT – Employees are bringing increasing numbers of personal devices, such as tablets and smartphones, which require WiFi access. Businesses are also more often using smart devices like door locks, thermostats, badge machines that are Internet connected. All of this drives increased bandwidth, which 10-Gigabit Ethernet provides.
2) Data Continuously Increasing – Data requirements are doubling every 2 years. All this data growth means that more bandwidth is required for your Business. As data increases, the network and the Internet is getting used more often and for longer. There is more streaming happening, and with increased file sizes.
3) HD Streaming – There is more data now on video, and businesses are using HD and 4K resolutions more often.
4) Existing Congestion – If your company is growing and your number of employees is increasing, the number of network users will be increasing, and you will find moving to 10Gb speeds the best way to avoid user congestion.
5) Faster WiFi standards get deployed. Higher WiFi speeds, from particularly new generations of wireless technology like Wave2 AC WiFi, require more than 1Gb bandwidth (one gigabit Ethernet port) per Access Point for better coverage and speed.
6) Rack Saving Space – If your networking rack is getting full, it’s only logical to replace your 1Gb switches with a 10-Gigabit switch, saving space while adding more connectivity. Especially if you rent this space in a wiring closet or local datacenter.
7) Premise Expansion – 1 in 3 SMBs are said to be migrating to 10-Gigabit switching solutionsto accommodate new premise expansion.
8) Virtualization & Hyperconvergence – Server virtualization relies heavily on both networking and storage. Virtual machines grow and require larger amounts of storage than one physical server can provide. Network attached storage (NAS) or storage area networks (SANs) provide additional, dedicated storage for virtual machines. Connectivity between servers and storage must be fast to avoid bottlenecks. 10-Gigabit Ethernet provides the fastest interconnectivity for virtualized environments. The same goes for object storage, storage virtualization and big data applications in the SMB space.
9) Flash-based Storage – The higher speed in flash memory based data storage requires a higher speed network.
10) Pro-AV applications
As the AV industry inevitably transitions to AV-over-IP solutions, more bandwidth is certainly required for uncompressed, zero latency 4K transmission with new SDVoE Alliance applications. HDMI 2.0 over commercial CAT7 cabling requires 10-gigabit Ethernet switches with lots of multicast intelligence.
SMB users now want to be able to connect with any device, anywhere and anytime with high quality, super-fast connections and no downtime. 10-Gigabit is the new Gigabit!
Vice President of SMB Product Line Management
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