Introduction
The era of reckless IT spending is over. The recent economic slowdown has resulted in company budgets being slashed, forcing enterprises to focus more on their existing infrastructure and to find ways to use it more effectively. The days of implementing new, expensive solutions to solve each individual networking problem have also come to an end.
In order to make sense of the conflicting messages in the marketplace and to identify immediate opportunities, Datamonitor has conducted a study interviewing 200 major enterprises across Europe - target interviewees were large enterprises with over 1,000 employees and revenues in excess of $500m per annum. Interviewed companies were split relatively evenly among six key European geographies and six vertical market sectors.
The study focuses on the business drivers and key inhibitors believed to influence technology spending decision-making at a strategic level. It helps readers to understand critical end-user perceptions, implementation strategies and market drivers that will be essential in working out how to exploit the opportunities provided by new networking services and security practices.
Technology overview
In addition to gauging the state of the overall networking and security market, this study highlights opportunities in the following technology areas.
Survey results and analysis
The drivers of IT investment
The results of this survey indicate that the key drivers of IT investment for European enterprises are those related to improving the quality of communications, whether they are internally or externally focused.
IT solutions increasingly need to offer clear ROI
The current state of the economic environment has forced companies to closely evaluate new IT solutions before they are purchased and implemented to ensure that they provide both financial and business benefit. The need for clear and demonstratable ROI is of key importance in light of the current economic restrictions, with IT vendors needing to be able to provide evidence that their solutions will offer significant advantages to their clients.
Almost two-thirds of respondents stated that they would only consider investing in an IT solution that offered a clear ROI, with around 45 per cent of these interviewees strongly agreeing that this criteria would need to be met. With only 17 per cent of respondents feeling that proof of ROI would not be required, the results indicate that this is an area that IT vendors need to ensure that they have covered.
Investment priorites
LAN investment remains key
Although many companies have already invested heavily in their LAN, this remains a key investment priority for European companies, with 29 per cent of respondents citing this as their key area of focus over the next few months. IT security and disaster recovery systems are also seen to be high priority areas, with the events of September 11th having reinforced the need for investment in the latter area in particular. In addition, the much-publicized spate of security breaches over the past 12 months, which include Code Red and Nimda, have forced many companies to re- evaluate their security strategies.
Wireless LAN solutions
Despite only being pushed wholeheartedly to end-users for the past couple of years, wLAN equipment is already beginning to make its mark on the enterprise arena. Almost 20 per cent of interviewees claim to have already deployed some form of wLAN system, with a further 18 per cent either testing or evaluating the technology.
Datamonitor research shows that the majority of enterprise deployments to date have been relatively low scale, with companies looking at ways to utilize the technology before widespread usage is considered. Many of the organizations interviewed for this study commented that wLAN would need to demonstrate cost-related benefits before deployment would be considered. In addition, there are currently a number of perceived flaws of wLAN equipment that are restricting uptake.
Voice & data convergence
Overall, 20 per cent of respondents already run voice services over their data networks, with a further 12 per cent actively evaluating solutions. However, around two-thirds of interviewees stated that they were either not currently considering, or would never consider, such a system. This is worrying news for vendors providing solutions in this area, as it means that the viable target market for converged voice services is significantly reduced.
Remote access services
58 per cent of European companies currently offer remote access services (RAS) to home workers, while over half provide this functionality to their sales force and traveling executives. The relatively high penetration of these services indicates that European enterprises are increasingly allowing employees to access central networks via remote access. However, the low penetration of services to partners and suppliers suggests that companies are not quite as willing to allow third party access to their network assets.
Managing and securing the network
The majority of companies expect to improve IT security in the near future
Overall, 74% of European enterprises expect to invest further in their eSecurity systems in the near future, suggesting that this is still an area that companies are closely examining. French companies are least likely to invest further in their eSecurity systems in the short term, with only half of respondents stating that they expected further expenditure in this area over the next few months.
Intrusion detection solutions (IDS)
After firewalls and anti-virus solutions, IDS is predicted to be "the next big technology" in the network security product market. As hack attacks increase, companies are looking to increasingly monitor their network traffic to spot attacks as they are carried out. The alerts can then be acted upon and the appropriate modifications to the firewall made to end the attack and limit the amount of damage done to the network.
Monitoring employee Internet access
Giving Internet access to employees has enabled them to harness the power of the Internet and makes them much more efficient and effective - essentially allowing them access to Internet-based applications and information sources. However, many companies have also begun to realize that the Internet can also be a major source of distraction. To counter this problem, many firms have begun looking to URL-filtering or conditional access solutions to prevent employees accessing sites that they deem to be offensive or non work-related.
40 per cent of European firms regularly monitor employee Internet usage
Overall, almost a third of the 200 companies interviewed for this study claimed to monitor employee Internet usage, with 40 per cent doing this on a regular basis. Of the 37 percent of companies that do not currently monitor Internet usage, around two- thirds are not currently considering deploying a solution of this kind.
Die vollständige Studie kann bei Datamonitor erworben werden.