Managed Security Shift: IPSec to SSL

border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085539964711321346" /> The managed security service market is forecast to more than double between 2006 and
2010, when it will reach $12.1 billion, says Jeff Wilson, Infonetics Research principal analyst. But the composition of sales is changing, with more security being embedded directly into the MPLS infrastructure, says Wilson.
The managed encrypted VPN service market inched up four percent between 2005 and 2006 to $20.5 billion, but is expected to decline in coming years, says Wilson. In 2006, 49 percent of security service revenue comes from managed firewall services, 27 percent from content security and 24 pecent from other security services.

By 2010, SSL VPNs will outpace IPSec VPNs.

“Security and performance are the top driving factors when respondents are trying to decide between IPSec and SSL for VPN use, and user experience is at the bottom of the list. Many IT managers think strong security and a good user experience are mutually exclusive. It’s up to vendors to show this isn’t really the case any more,” says Wilson, principal analyst for VPNs and security at Infonetics Research.

In the managed services space; 35 percent of respondents overall (46 percent of federal government respondents) think it's critical that their provider offer SSL VPN services, says Wilson.

“MPLS services are really starting to steal business away from encrypted VPNs. This is having a significant impact on spending for managed IPSec site-to-site VPNs, especially among large organizations, who are starting to migrate from complex self-managed IPSec VPNs to simpler carrier-managed MPLS services,” Wilson says.

Google Buys Postini

Putting Google in a major position as a provider of enterprise managed email security services.

This has to be Good for 3G, 4G

According to a recent survey of about 1,000 enterprises by FreeForm Dynamics, mobile connectivity for PCs appears to be more "mission critical" than remote email access, at least in some markets. North Americans love their Blackbery and other mobile email access, to be sure. But mobile PC access arguably is more important. Forced to choose just one, I'd have to vote for mobile PC access as well, either 3G or 4G.

Enterprise IM Shift: What to Do with the PBX?

Though we take it for granted that businesses "must" use a business phone system, that might be quite so true in just several years. In fact, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat at the largest global enterprises.

Gartner estimates that 95 percent of workers in leading global organizations will be using IM as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013. If that proves correct, we may now be witnessing the last wave of business phone system upgrades, as lucrative as the IP phone business, in its managed, hosted and premises-based incarnations, now appears to be.

There are other possible changes in store. Voice has been a one-to-one sort of communications pattern; mostly real time but with an ever-increasing asynchronous format. But with wikis, blogs, Plaxo, Facebook and other tools with a social and "push" updating capability, more forms of communication shift to a one-to-many, asynchronous mode.

One sort of "broadcasts" what one is doing, working on or needing help with, and the network just sort of responds as appropriate. Not good for control freaks, the ego-obsessed, the self-absorbed or mildly incompetent. People who are more respected, more trusted, more helpful, more knowledgeable and open will get more help than those who are in some significant ways "non-social." Winners and losers will be produced by the shift of communication modes.

As AOL's third IM survey shows, "everybody" now uses IM in their "consumer" life roles. The issue is how that will play out in the business context.

And though one might not yet see the change in the small business market, IM systems have moved from the fringe to become a key part of an enterprise’s collaboration infrastructure and increasingly are displacing existing forms of communications from ad hoc telephone calls and emails to pre-planned meetings and video conferences, says Gartner.

For many knowledge workers, instant messaging (IM) is as critical as having access to a telephone or to e-mail and enterprises that haven’t already done so should start incorporating IM into their critical business processes immediately, say analysts at Gartner.

“Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25 percent currently to nearly 100 percent by the end of the decade,” said David Mario Smith, Gartner research analyst.

Midband Ethernet, Everything Else is Growing...

It has been a good year for suppliers of midband Ethernet connectivity equipment and access services. Heck, it's arguably been a good year for access services, period. Where providers used to get asked for T1s, they now get asked for DS3s. Where they used to get asked for DS3s, now customers are asking for optical connectivity. It's the same story on the consumer access front: more bandwidth, more often. That's what video will do to a network.

80% of Mobile Calls Go to Just 4 People

"Although mobile phones make it easier to keep in regular touch, a typical user spends 80 percent of his or her time communicating with just four other people," says Stefana Broadbent, an anthropologist with the User Adoption Lab at Swisscom. Think of it as the long tail of communications.
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Broadbent also says different channels get used for distinct reasons. Mobile calls are for last-minute coordination. Texting is for “intimacy, emotions and efficiency.” E-mail is to exchange pictures, documents and music. IM and VoIP calls are “continuous channels”, open in the background while people do other things.
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Also, you won't be surprised by this finding, but texting is on the increase. “Users are showing a growing preference for semi-synchronous writing over synchronous voice,” says Broadbent.

And though enterprise IT managers might not like the idea, private communications are invading the workplace. Workers expect to be plugged into their social networks while at work, whether by email, IM or mobile phone.
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iPhone Breaks Record

In case you were wondering, Apple over the weekend sold more than 700,000 iPhones to rocket past analyst predictions and shatter AT&T's record by selling more iPhones in three days than Motorola's RAZR did in its first month. Some say that isn't unexpected, and the real challenge is selling the next couple of million. So far, consumer behavior is in line with the hype and at&t's and Apple's expectations.