For most of the telecom industry, it is well understood that over the last seven years, the AdvancedTCA (ATCA) standard has developed from infancy into a mature and successful platform for the telecom network central office. As a result of a well-documented proliferation of successful deployments, the business benefits realized by network equipment providers (NEPs) and operators are now driving enhancements to the technology and extensions to the standard itself to address additional applications outside of the central office and, in some cases, the telecom industry altogether. That’s why many industry analysts forecast that ATCA will represent the majority of the market’s embedded computing spend for telecom applications over the next five years and beyond. The market for ATCA merchant platforms and blades was recently projected by analysts to be worth around $600 million in 2009 and potentially $1.3 billion in 2012 despite the effect of the current recession.
ATCA: Then and Now
From the beginning, ATCA was designed to serve as an ideal basis for network-ready, carrier-grade common platforms. Following the burst of the telecom bubble in 2001, major NEPs began to recognize the imminent need for an alternative approach to simply building more proprietary platforms. Furthermore, regardless of the market fallout, the revolution toward next-generation networks was just getting underway, turning attention to common platforms as an ideal means to reduce total cost of ownership for new equipment development. These market conditions, coupled with the fact that NEPs took an active role in the standard’s development, paved the way for ATCA to become the ideal basis for these common platforms.
While ATCA deployments initially centered on control plane applications – such as IMS core and signaling functions, customer databases and 2G/3G base station controllers – the next-generation applications later emerged thanks to the advent of 10Gbps fabric switching technology and later the launch of 40Gbps-ready infrastructures. All of this development has driven further application and volume expansion.
The ATCA ecosystem now extends to over 50 main suppliers and more than 100 related suppliers providing NEPs with a combined portfolio of over 360 ATCA products. And the number and value of “server class” opportunities for ATCA tripled from 2007 to 2008, including many new opportunities outside carrier-grade telecom.
