Mobility, video and cloud will drive network revenues up 8.7% in 2012, IDC says

Network World - A perfect storm of growth in enterprise mobility, video consumption and cloud infrastructure will come together just in time for a major refresh cycle in 2012, driving worldwide enterprise network revenues to $39.4 billion by the end of the year, IDC predicts.

Based on its research during the third quarter of 2011, IDC forecasts 8.7% growth in enterprise network equipment spending in 2012, a substantial increase from the 3.8% growth the firm saw in the market last year. Another contributing factor is the end of many companies' five-year refresh cycles for network equipment purchases and upgrades, according to IDC.

Cindy Borovick, research vice president for IDC's Enterprise Communications and Datacenter Network services, says spending will rise because "the enterprise network is becoming much more critical" to high-priority business initiatives that will gain further momentum this year.

"When you think about planning for 2012, certainly cloud, mobility and video will drive the market," Borovick says.

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The effect of mobility on the network stems from continued rapid growth in smartphone shipments, which doubled those of laptops last year, IDC says.

"As we saw last year in 2011, mobility clearly made a lot of waves, raised a lot of flags in terms of the best ways to contain handheld growth from a technology perspective and from a business perspective, while empowering users with the devices of their choice," says Rohit Mehra, IDC's director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure.

Sales of consumer-targeted mobile devices will continue to have an impact on the enterprise, with employees further perpetuating the bring-your-own-device trend that has gained momentum in the past few years. Consumerization will generate an increase in network equipment spending as more companies reevaluate their network resources in order to support a diverse range of smartphones and tablets.

However, the rise of consumerization does not mean the end of traditional enterprise mobility practices, according to Mehra.

"BYOD will continue to proliferate. At the same time, with IT now getting more of a handle on these devices, and corporate policy starting to change, we see that BYOD will not take over the enterprise," Mehra says. "I think we are well on our way to finding the right balance between BYOD and other ways that corporate IT supports mobile devices."

Similarly, video consumption in the enterprise will also grow as a result of consumer activity on enterprise networks, IDC predicts. In 2011, an estimated 590 million people around the globe watched streaming video over the Web. With more employees, especially those with mobile devices, now connected to social media and entertainment sites more often, the amount of video content employees access on the company network is set to rise.