ATCA Adoption Remains Strong Despite New Challenges: IDC Expects Market to Reach $5 Billion by 2012

Although advanced telecommunications computer architecture (ATCA) technology remains a key influencer of next-generation telecommunications equipment being developed by server vendors, systems integrators, and network equipment providers (NEPs), its rate of adoption has been hampered over the past year. According to recent IDC research, ATCA is still poised to experience strong growth, reaching $5 billion in revenues by 2012, despite being slowed by the mergers of four major NEPs and continued high prices.

"ATCA is an important technology that exemplifies the convergence of IT and telecommunications environments within the enterprise, said Lee Doyle, vice president and general manager, Network Infrastructure and Security Products and Services. Adoption of ATCA and other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions hold significant promise as NEPs, although fewer in number, look to off-the-shelf opportunities to reduce developmental costs and accelerate time to market. Survey findings from IDC confirm the strength of ATCA among NEPs as 50% of those surveyed say their organizations strongly support ATCA and are implementing ATCA in products currently. Only 20% of respondents were unlikely to implement ATCA in the next three to five years.

Additional key findings from IDC's research include the following:

Delays in IMS deployments have also contributed to below expected ATCA adoption

Linux is changing the software makeup of network infrastructures through new devices at the control layer and network layer

High availability, with 99.99% uptime or more, must be ensured in telecommunications networks

As the telecommunications network infrastructure is built out, blade form factors are strong candidates to run the workloads

IDC's special study, ATCA Adoption in the Telecommunications Industry, 2007-2012 Forecast and Analysis, presents an in-depth investigation of issues such as the scope, attitudes, and timing of adoption of ATCA and COTS platforms by NEPs. This study provides IDC's forecast of xTCA adoption in the telecommunications industry over the next five years. The study is based on structured interviews with leading NEPs around the world. IDC provides a high-level summary of the survey results from 25 NEP executives via quantitative tables describing their adoption of COTS and ATCA. In addition, the transcripts from executive interviews of nine leading NEPs are provided.

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