Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Thursday, March 16, 2006 -Various multimedia,
including VoIP, videoconferencing, instant
messaging and streaming video, are required to communicate and transfer
information between offices. These new technologies require massive
investment in new networking equipment, and the high-end router will be
key to managing the entire communications process.

Frost & Sullivan IP Communications Group finds that World Enterprise
Router Markets earned revenues of $7.3 billion in 2005 and estimates this
to reach $12.2 billion in 2012.

“The high-end router market is driven by the demand for global
communications,” notes Frost & Sullivan Strategic Analyst Shirley Hunt.
“Large corporations require high-performance equipment that can handle the
wide variety of networking protocols and technologies that are used in the
enterprise global network.”

However, the massive install base of legacy equipment, combined with
restricted corporate budgets, will pose a daunting challenge for IT
departments to upgrade to the newest technologies. In addition, corporate
purchasing policies restrict the ability to change vendors or add new
products, due to the certification testing requirements.

“Enterprise IT managers must upgrade the network in stages, which
minimizes the business disruption,” explains Hunt. “Security and
interoperability testing must happen before the upgrade takes place in
order to maintain a smooth transition to the new technologies. This
challenge slows the penetration of new high-performance routers into
existing enterprise networks.”

Router vendors can help enterprise managers by making the upgrade process
as simple and least disruptive as possible. By doing extensive
interoperability testing and maintaining support for legacy products,
vendors can increase the speed of the upgrade process, which should
improve the sales of their new router products.

Global corporations must upgrade their communications infrastructure in
order to more efficiently take advantage of opportunities around the
world. Most of these companies have legacy routers that must be upgraded
to process multimedia traffic, and router vendors must help their
customers by simplifying the installation and management programs, which
will speed up the upgrade process.

Enterprise Routers is part of the IP Communications Infrastructure
service, which also includes research in the following markets: enterprise
switches, media gateways, soft switches, and other carrier infrastructure
products. All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market
opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following
extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews are available to
the press.