China Outruns the Overall the Market
China is expected to show a 37.5% CAGR in the data center structured cabling market, while the overall structured cabling market will demonstrate only 13.6% growth.

AMI Research projects the healthy growth in China to be driven by the following factors: Cable TV is set to play a pivotal role in Chinas converged media environment as triple play services begin to be delivered over cable TV infrastructures. China has the largest cable TV network in the world; Chinas online game sector will see very high double-digit growth rates in the coming years as more Chinese gain access to the Internet. China is a big hub for game distribution, which involves huge amounts of data. This, in turn, raises demand for data centers, according to AMI.

The most rapid growth in Internet usage last year came from blogging. China now has 20.8 mn bloggers. Top blogging sites are hosted by Sina, Qzone and Microsofts MSN. Other new Internet services that are gaining particularly wide acceptance include personal Web pages similar to those on MySpace, video-hosting and video-sharing based on the Web 2.0 standards, as well as a service called Wit-Key that allows users to post their questions for solution tips from online pals.

The popularity of video-hosting and video-sharing services has led to a surge of 76 mn users by the end of 2006, more than traditional Internet services in e-commerce, automobile or real estate networks.

Mature Markets Continue to Grow
According to AMI, in mature markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, South Korea and Japan, the data center structured cabling business is expected to register a robust CAGR of approximately 15-26%, with Singapore (25.3%) and Hong Kong (25.8%) leading the pack.

Hong Kongs growth leadership is driven by its Digital21 Strategy. The Hong Kong Government is making special provisions for data center and call center locations, thus playing an active role in promoting data center facilities in the Special Administrative Region (SAR).

On the other hand, AMI Research suggests that Singapores healthy growth in the data center structured cabling market is being driven by the following factors: SingTel, the countrys biggest telecommunications operator, has jumped into the triple play bandwagon with the launch of its Generation Mio service; iN2015, the nations new infocomm development master plan, includes the Next-Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure, (NII) which will be put in place by 2012. The NII is capable of delivering broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps while offering extensive connectivity around the country. The infrastructure will also be IPv6-compliant and will enable an exciting host of new broadband-enabled services and applications, such as immersive learning experiences, telemedicine, high definition TV, immersive videoconferencing and grid computing.

Also, the Singapore government will roll out further e-services to provide better citizen-to-government interaction. This is expected to require more data centers.

Companies who deploy higher performance cabling experience less network downtimea key issue for IT managersaccording to the latest report by AMI research. The key conclusion drawn from the survey is that a number of factors, including bandwidth-hungry applications, businesses demand for increased network uptime, and the need for efficient network management and monitoring, should be driving the selection of cabling infrastructures and investment in higher performance systems, rather than initial cost.

Sufia Tippu
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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