How AdvancedTCA Could Fall Off the Tracks
By Lars Johan Larsson, Modt AB

Actual AdvancedTCA shipments in 2007 were well above what leading analysts predicted. Now 2008 is ending, and interim vendor reports show continuing progress. Not everyone is happy, but most major players are. The trend remains that a few suppliers dominate the market and are doing well.

AdvancedTCA is mainly taking market share from in-house proprietary systems. TEMs that have done initial AdvancedTCA applications now plan to replace more in-house systems with the new technology. Otherwise, the numbers and market shares show little change. HP and IBM’s Carrier Grade proprietary blade servers are holding their ground but not expanding. Carrier Grade rackmount systems continue to be used for smaller applications. MicroTCA is still in the feasibility study phase and is not yet visible in the statistics. Finally, the few holdouts who remain committed to proprietary in-house systems show no signs of changing their minds.

So AdvancedTCA is established and nothing can go wrong! Or can it? Let us look back at similar points in history.

In the 1980s, VME was the tree that was growing to heaven. Graphics applications in the printing industry and military training systems were most of the business. However, then the Apple Macintosh came along and could do a good enough job at a fraction of the cost. VME rebounded later in other military applications, but at much lower volumes than were once predicted.

CompactPCI in the 1990s is probably still fresh in most minds. The war was won, and market predictions were in the billions of dollars. The dot-com crash made mincemeat of those estimates.

So what can go wrong this time? Obviously, the global economy is in bad shape. Predictions about how it will evolve and impact the high-technology industry are filling the media so there is no point in adding to them. We can assume that it will hurt for a while (and the pain may be both long and deep). The real question is then: What will happen to technology in the meantime? Will Carrier Grade and NEBS still be the key words or will the 4G environment be based on IT technology?

Where will we be in the technology curve when markets finally revive? Will telcos survive and in what form? Will they need carrier-grade equipment that can last for long periods, or will they be more like data centers with short lifecycles and constant upgrades? Will we do everything with commodity devices (and hot or cold spares as needed to keep things running)? Does the whole idea of “carrier-grade” make sense when it means higher costs, more complexity, and higher overhead? What is the best policy for gear that will rapidly become technologically obsolete? The future of AdvancedTCA will be a minor episode in a fast-changing worldwide saga.

Lars Johan Larsson is Chief Analyst at Modt AB and a Contributing Editor to this newsletter. You can reach him at lars@atcanewsletter.com.