Networking services market to fall in next two years

IT buyers are moving away from using external networking services, according to new research from Computer Weekly and TechTarget.

The survey showed 55.5% of organisations had used outside services for their networking, wide area network (WAN) and unified communications deployments. However, just 33% said they planned on outsourcing these tasks in the next two years.

Only 13% of those who hadn't used external services for networking before planned to try it for size in the next 24 months.

A drop in budget was the main reason for moving away from the services, as 28% believed their specific service budget would fall – half of which said it would go down by more than 10%.

Two thirds said it was because they already had the skills in house, with just 9% blaming it on being too expensive.

Cisco was still the dominant provider of services for these companies. A significant 50% of respondents said they got their services from the networking giant, whilst 25% said they sourced it from Cisco authorised resellers or integrators.

The nearest significant player after that was HP, which 24% of the IT buyers said they got services from, followed by IBM at 18.5%.

The top two reasons for choosing the providers were the expertise they had on specific networking disciplines or due to an existing relationship – cited by 58.7% of respondents equally. Yet, even in times of tightening budgets, only 33.7% said best price was their main driver when choosing a service provider.

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