Enterprises will probably start testing out Fibre Channel over Ethernet products this year, followed by limited deployment in 2010 and mass adoption in 2011 or later, according to Marty Lans, Brocade's senior director of product marketing.

Brocade's new products will become generally available through OEM vendors over the next couple of months, Lans says.

Villars agrees with Brocade's assessment that FCoE won't become a big deal in the enterprise until 2011. But those overseeing data centers using Fibre Channel over 4- or 8 Gigabit Ethernet will be intrigued by the new technology, he says. 

Most iSCSI users seem not to be interested in Fibre Channel over Ethernet, because they want to avoid the complicated physical connections and management schemes related to Fibre Channel, Villars says.

For customers running blades and virtualized servers, the move to FCoE will significantly reduce cabling needs, according to Villars. But in order to gain mass adoption, server and storage vendors will likely have to tweak their own products to support the new protocols.