NEW DELHI, INDIA: Here is an Extreme Networks perspective, presented by Jitendra Gupta, Country Manager, India & SAARC.

With tough days ahead, there will be a pressure on IT heads and networking vendors to provide the products that can reduce the OPEX, CAPEX figures for their organizations. The challenge will be to deploy efficient technology solutions. Hence, here are certain catalysts of high importance that must form the parameters for organizations to deploy networking solutions.

1. Migration from IPv4 to IPv6: Increasing number of IP devices translates to the requirement of IPv6 by customers looking for enhanced mobility and scalability. A major catalyst for the migration is limited number of addresses available in the IPv4 system and the increasing number of devices requiring access to the "new" Internet. Currently, the world at large runs on IPv4, while it is noteworthy, that many governmental organizations have received mandates to migrate their systems and help drive the worldwide adoption of IPv6.

2. Achieving more with less: Customers will have to opt for products which are next generation and can assure them of investment protection for next immediate years to come. For instance, in case of Giga bit connectivity, 10 Gig is suitable for better connectivity with the core, easily manageable and has no extra cost attached for up gradation.  

3. Automation framework: This shall be a key requirement trend to be acknowledged by companies in order to save deployment cost of equipments complemented with lower OPEX.

4. Power efficiency: Lower power consumption and energy efficiency is a strategic concern for all IT Heads. This is a twin powered decisive factor that reduces OPEX and helps resonate with the Go-green motto.

5. 802.11n adoption: Adoption of 802.11n in wireless connectivity to provide high performance and reliable wireless control and tracking solutions 10 Gig.

6. Quality of Service: This allows deploying rich multimedia / voice / video without performance penalty to existing applications.

7. Growth of 10GbE: Demand for high bandwidth due to converged services will drive the  growth for 10GbE  and it will be accelerated with the significant (as much as 2x to 3x) reduction in price of 10GbE optical transceivers, 10G compatible copper cables as well as low cost 10GbE NIC on servers.

8. Security: Built-in security features that authenticates each user and blocks unauthorized users even if they come from the same port and hardware based sFLOW which provides in depth visibility and network usage statistics without performance penalty , sampling of data on wire speed (10Gig) with technology like Clear Flow.

9. XML API: XML Application Programming Interface (API) functionality, allowing for third party applications to securely integrate business process with the network infrastructure.

10. Higher Speeds: Roadmaps for 40Gbps and 100Gbps speed will be set in 2009.