2006 has been a banner year for the enterprise deployment of optical networks, IDC says, driven by regulatory requirements on managing, storing and recovering data as well as company mergers.
IDC says the worldwide growth of the enterprise optical networking market will exceed 17pc in 2006, a rate nearly twice as fast as the overall optical market growth – without SONET/SDH.
Deployment of optical networks, once dominated by financial services, are now expanding to include health institutions, state and local governments and utilities and this trend is beginning to extend to small businesses.
“While a number of these vertical industries offer tremendous opportunities, significant differences in the adoption of optical networking equipment exist across verticals in the US and the rest of the world,” said Daniel Corsetti, senior analyst for IDC’s Hardware and Telecommunications Vertical Views programs.
“From a regional perspective, the ’emerging countries’ where no legacy infrastructures are in place, are the fastest growing sector for deploying optical networks,” Corsetti said.
Although the enterprise is now a significant contributor to the overall growth of the optical networking market, the enterprise organization is very different from the typical telecommunication service provider, added Eve Griliches, program manager for Telecommunications Equipment at IDC.
“To ensure success, vendors should consider deploying savvy sales people who understand the enterprise environment,” Griliches said.
By John Kennedy
