With 2012 now just a memory, the folks at TechNavio earlier today rolled out its report titled "Global Data Center Ethernet Switch Market 2012-2016", out to run down the state of the market in ethernet switches for the data center market worldwide, as well as make some predictions about its future state.

The TechNavio report covers a wide plane of geography, focusing on the market in the Americas, as well as the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region as well as the Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, giving it a general rundown over much of the world. The report was generated via input from multiple industry figures, and contains both market and vendor landscape as well as a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of the vendors in question. But it's what the TechNavio report in general revealed that provides the most interest.

One of the key points in the TechNavio report is the overall change in the kinds of data traffic in the last few years. While previously, according to the report, traffic profiles were heavy on things like e-mail messages and client-server applications, those traffic profiles have since expanded to things like video and audio content. Naturally, a rise in large-scale data traffic that's extremely sensitive to things like network latency is changing the picture of the network as we know it, and in turn, changing what particular items are demanded by the network to keep it up and fully operational.

With trends like voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), bring your own device (BYOD), cloud storage and big data coming into play, that's changing the fundamental layout of the network by changing how businesses react to it. One of the main growth drivers in the market, according to the report, is the increased virtualization of networks, which is requiring more multi-core and blade servers to keep up with the demand. But at the same time, with more demand comes more competition, and this in turn gives rise to one of the market's main challenges: falling equipment prices.

The report also goes on to cover a variety of topics, like the total projected size of the market in 2016, what else--besides the rise of network virtualization--is driving it, and where other threats besides the falling prices on equipment can be found. Vendors involved in the survey include such major names as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Juniper Networks, Huawei (News - Alert), and several others.

Indeed, the content of networks is changing, and it's perhaps easiest to spot at the residential user level. Where even just 10 years prior, a night of Web surfing might cover mainly text pages about certain television shows, or perhaps text-based chat, we now watch those very same shows directly on streaming platforms and talk about them via voice or outright video chat. That's a lot of extra traffic on the network, and requires a fundamental change in the way networks are built and maintained in order to continue operating.

TechNavio's report, meanwhile, will likely go a long way in defining what the changes are, and what measures are required to take fullest advantage of these changes as well as protect against future potential disaster.