Enterprises drive wireless Lan bonanza

Large-scale enterprise adoption will push sales of wireless Lan equipment by 13 per cent in 2005 to $2.6bn.

According to a newly published report from Dell'Oro Group, the market will continue to grow through to 2009, by which time it is expected to have almost doubled to $4.3bn representing a compound annual growth rate of 13 per cent.

"The architecture of enterprise wireless Lans is changing to facilitate larger installations and to alleviate IT managers' security and management concerns," said Greg Collins, senior director of wireless Lan research at Dell'Oro Group.

"The centralised deployment and management solution offered by dependent access points and switch/appliance architecture will continue to become an increasingly popular method for enabling centralised management and security functions within corporate wireless Lans."

According to Dell'Oro Group, the small office/home office market for standalone wireless Lan equipment will decline, but will be more than compensated for by sales of wireless Lan tehcnology embedded in broadband customer premises equipment.