Enterprises take to optical networking

2006 will be remembered as "a banner year" for enterprise deployment of optical networks, IDC reported today.

Driven by regulatory requirements governing the management, storage and recovery of data, as well as by company mergers, the analyst firm estimates that worldwide growth of the enterprise optical networking market will exceed 17 per cent in 2006.

IDC said that this rapid rate is nearly twice as fast as overall optical market growth, without Sonet/SDH.

The deployment of optical networks, once dominated by financial services, is expanding to health institutions, state and local governments, and utilities. It has even begun extending to small and medium sized 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 telecoms vertical views programmes.

"From a regional perspective, the 'emerging countries' with no legacy infrastructure are the fastest growing sector for deploying optical networks."

Eve Griliches, programme manager for telecoms equipment at IDC, added: " Although the enterprise is now a significant contributor to the overall growth of the optical networking market, the enterprise organisation is very different from the typical telecoms service provider.

"To ensure success, vendors should consider deploying savvy sales people who understand the enterprise environment."