The recession is doing its bit to kill off large-scaletraditional communications investments, but there are some growth areas outthere, according to Canalys’ latest figures on the EMEA enterpriseinfrastructure market.
The clearest evidence for the slow death of the PBX came inthe call control system market, where shipments in Q4’08 fell 11% year-on-yearacross the region to 5.8 million.
“Enterprisetelephony sales are primarily driven by replacement and these are typicallylarge CAPEX-based deals,” explained Canalys senior analyst Matthew Ball.
“With pressure to cut costs immediately, many sales thatwere expected to close in Q4 were delayed. Some telephony projects will becancelled altogether as needs are re-evaluated and a greater emphasis is placedon RoI in the future,” he continued.
In contrast, the security and networking markets are in rudehealth, with investment remaining resilient, albeit helped along by dollar toeuro exchange rates. Hardware and software security revenue was up 12% to €793mas enterprises looked to consolidate their infrastructure and adopt a singleappliance for all security functions.
Networking – by which Canalys means enterprise and serviceprovider routers, switches and wireless access points – also put in a strongfinish at the tail-end of 2008, with end-user revenues climbing to €2.5bn.Investment here was driven by service providers replacing networks to cope withgrowing demand for mobile broadband, video-on-demand, IPTV and other unifiedcomms solutions.
Looking ahead, Ball predicted a tough year for allenterprise infrastructure segments: “Budgets will be under pressure, butCanalys expects investment in enterprise security to remain strong duie tocompliance requirements and the continued threat of attacks.”
Ball added that client security software spending woulddrop, however, as the PC market continues its downward spiral, and telephony investmentwill also drop off the list of priorities.
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation