5. A Massive Shift To 100 Gigabit Ethernet

Enterprises are signaling a shift to 100GbE, with 25 percent of respondents having implemented it already, and 66 percent planning to do so by 2017. In perhaps a clearer sign that 100GbE is catching on, the percentage of respondents who said they had no plans to deploy it was halved, from 56 percent in the 2015 study to 28 percent.

Adoption of 25GbE and 40GbE interfaces has remained consistent year over year, with 25 percent saying they had already deployed these speeds in 2015 and 2016. 

As higher speeds are introduced, solution providers will need to redesign their installation, monitoring and troubleshooting processes to maintain performance visibility.