Interop: Wall St. Turmoil Won't Slow Network Spending

The current economic turmoil and the ongoing slowing of the overall U.S. economy aren't likely to slow spending for network management, according to a survey of attendees at this week's Interop New York.

IT professionals polled by NetQoS said overwhelmingly that they expect their network management budgets will either increase or remain flat next year. Only 15% of the more than 100 attendees questioned said they expect their network management budgets will decrease.

Calling the performance aspects of network performance "recession-proof," Steve Harriman, senior VP of marketing at NetQoS, was satisfied with the poll's results.

"While network security is always a concern, our customers tell us their fault and availability issues have largely been solved," Harriman said in a statement. "Instead, smart organizations focus on network and application performance management to understand how well they are delivering services and whether changes such as adding bandwidth or deploying WAN optimization technologies are worth the investment."

About half of the respondents reported that their budgets for security and network performance management are slated for increases, while overall IT infrastructure and management software budgets are likely to remain stationary next year.

Virtualization and wireless LAN/WAN are areas the Interop attendees have earmarked for spending increases, the NetQoS survey revealed, while spending will remain static on WAN optimization, unified communications, change management, and managed services.

NetQoS said the surveyed companies represent a cross-section of industries that include financial services, government, media, professional services, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and technology sectors.