A new industry group called the 2550100 Alliance was formally announced this week, adding another organization to the increasingly crowded landscape of vendor-led groups advocating new Ethernet speeds.
The 2550100 name is an amalgam of 25, 50 and 100, which are three Ethernet speeds that the new alliance advocates. While 100 Gigabit Ethernet has been in the market for several years, 25 and 50 Gigabit Ethernet are still relatively new ideas.
The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium was announced back in July 2014, while another group, the NBASE-T Alliance, which advocates its flavor of 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet standards, was announced in October 2014.
Looking at the new 2550100 Alliance, the initial group of members are Amphenol, Cavium, DataCore, Finisar, Hitachi Data Systems, Huawei, Ixia, Lenovo, SUSE, Telesoft Technologies, X-IO, QLogic and Zadara.
“Other groups focus on promoting standards and explaining how it works,” Ahmet Houssein, senior vice president and general manager, Ethernet Products at QLogic, told Enterprise Networking Planet. “The 2550100 Alliance picks up where they leave off. The 2550100 Alliance is focused on bringing interoperable solutions to the channel and IT organizations.”
In addition to the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium, both the IEEE and the Ethernet Alliance are also working on 25 and 50 Gigabit Ethernet efforts.
“The 2550100 Alliance is not aligned with IEEE or the Ethernet Alliance, but instead complements their work,” Houssein said. “The 2550100 Alliance was formed to facilitate collaboration in bringing solutions to market.”
The market for 25 and 50 Gigabit Ethernet is still in its earliest stages, given that products are largely not yet generally available. Market research firm Infonetics expects 25 Gigabit Ethernet (25 GbE) switch ports to start shipping in the fourth quarter of 2015.
While the membership of the 2550100 Alliance is not large, Houssein noted that the group was announced only recently.
“We’re working with many companies to confirm membership, which can take time with approvals, etc,” Houssein said. “Also, we expect more companies to join after the Ethernet Technology Summit, April 14-16.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
