When IHS Infonetics interviewed North American enterprises with 100 or more employees, it found that the overall outlook for network spending through 2016 looks healthy. Overall, the 208 organizations that responded to the survey said they expect double-digit growth in expenditures in 2015 and 2016.
"The outlook for network equipment spending in North America remains robust, driven by the move to cloud architectures and the never-ending quest to make IT infrastructure more secure," commented Matthias Machowinski, research director for enterprise networks and video at IHS. "The biggest beneficiary of these trends is the wireless LAN segment, which is growing its share of the overall expenditure pie as organizations seek to support the wave of mobile devices and enable anywhere-anytime connectivity to reach cloud-based applications."
One of the survey questions from IHS Infonetics asked which network segments are in greatest need of upgrading. Forty percent said wireless LAN access points fit that description, and thirty-six percent said wireless LAN access point backhaul is in greatest need of upgrading.
IHS also noted that on average, respondent organizations spent more than $400,000 on networking equipment in 2014, and expect 2015 expenditures to rise by 19 percent. Cloud and security are their two top networking initiatives over the next 12 months.