It's been said for the last few years that "next year" will be the year where IP telephony really gains serious momentum. I think we're finally at that point, where IP telephony is becoming accepted as the replacement for the PABX. In some cases the PABX still has a few years of useful life, which will act as a natural "brake" on IP telephony deployment. Conversely, we're seeing an increasing number of organisations deploying IP telephony in conjunction with a traditional PABX to take advantages of IP voice applications. Video over IP will also benefit from a voice-capable, or application aware, network (especially in the current environment where reducing travel costs provides a short-term return).
According to Gartner Group research, we have moved from the Peak of Inflated Expectations and are currently climbing out of the Trough of Disillusionment towards the Slope of Enlightenment. Or, another way of stating that we have moved from the early adoption stage to mainstream, where the technology is subject to much more rigorous ROI analysis. Reflecting this is a shift in the vendors' marketing focus from infrastructure, to IP applications and business drivers such as productivity and customer service.
As telco's increasingly move to IP-based circuits, a conversation noted by Fred Knight (Editor/Publisher of Business Communications Review) is becoming convincing: "Over coffee towards the end of the show [BCR's VoiceCon2002], my colleague Sandy Borthick and I were discussing this new "reality," and Sandy came up with a historical analogy that seemed reasonable: She said "think token ring," which also had a huge and loyal installed base within the largest enterprises in the world. But token ring and its star topology was first surrounded, then encapsulated, and finally rendered irrelevant by Ethernet- and TCP-IP-based solutions. Sandy wondered whether circuit-switched voice was about to suffer the same fate."
On a different note, Gartner predicts a weakening in the security sector globally, which (at least in the Asia-Pacific region) is at odds with what we're seeing. IDC, conversely, sees security as one of the top ten growth areas of the next 12 months. From our perspective, security has become an integral part of any network deployment. It is getting harder to separate "core networking" from "security" when implementing a network. Indeed, existing paradigms of the source of perceived threats to networks are being challenged, necessitating a holistic approach to security that encompasses detection and response.
Security growth should continue to be strong in the next few years, especially in managed security services, vulnerability assessments and security management technologies that take security a step beyond the firewall. Tying these different security technologies into a single homogenous system will prove to be a challenge, since inherently as you push higher into the OSI model, you move from dealing with a few "network-level" protocols, to countless "applications", each with their own security implications.
Wireless is another technology that will experience rapid growth in the next five years. Currently lacking a strong business case for many organisations, a number of developments are converging that will drive progress in this area. Intel has announced a new mobile technology platform (Centrino) which incorporates wireless connectivity, and a number of notebook manufacturers already provide wireless-enabled notebooks, leading to rapidly increasing based of wireless-ready notebooks.
The deployment of GPRS and 3G data services will provide faster, ubiquitous access for network access, while wireless LAN costs decrease further. An increasing number of handheld organisers will offer integrated wireless technologies. And the number of wireless "hotspots" will grow (undoubtedly slower in Australia than the US and Asia due to our comparatively sparse population) fuelled by a growing base of wireless-equipped users and increasing market share of vendors (such as iPass) that provide consolidate billing from multiple networks.
Wireless technology, whether a wired LAN replacement or remote access solution, carries with it inherent security challenges. With wired networks, Layer 1 provides the first level of "strong security" - you have to be physically connected to a network to gain access. Security is often compromised in an attempt to meet the expectations of those that use this technology, something not normally expected from fixed "wired" networks: the MD expects their wireless laptop to seamlessly interoperate with the enterprise-strength wireless solutions in the office and the "consumer-grade" wireless installed at home. Resolving these issues, again, means taking a look at the overall security implications and balancing security and convenience!
The soft growth in the economy will, at least for the next year or two, also continue to influence IT spending and delay larger or "riskier" projects. However, IP telephony, security and wireless are three technologies that we feel demonstrate real value or return on investment, and therefore will result in continued growth in the forseeable future.
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