Financial Service Vertical Leading-Edge in Networking Equipment Deployment

The high-tech market research firm finds that while this market experiences a critical need for reliability and performance, it is hindered by its extremely cautious approach to IT spending and network implementation. The financial services vertical is, in many ways, very similar to other verticals, in terms of their networking and connectivity needs-there is an increasing demand for faster, more reliable, more secure access to both internal and external information. In addition to this, the industry must meet rigid service levels and, thus, the network must be available. This is especially true for security solutions, for which the financial services market is among the more sophisticated verticals. In-Stat/MDR has also found that: The backbone environment in financial institutions has largely migrated to higher bandwidth technologies, with relatively few organizations currently relying on 10 Mbps shared Ethernet and the majority migrating to Fast Ethernet, or even Gigabit Ethernet, in some instances. While Gigabit Ethernet is still relatively rare at the network edge, many organizations are using this higher-speed technology in the network core. However, IT budget cuts have resulted in an overall decrease in total switch shipments to this vertical over the past several years. This trend is expected to reverse in 2004, as shipment levels again begin to increase. While the financial services market may drag in switch shipments, this market is at the leading edge of security. Security solution shipments to the financial services market will experience healthy growth over the forecasted period (2001-2007). In contrast to security, for which the financial vertical is a primary area of activity, Wireless LAN has not been as strongly adopted in this vertical. There are a variety of barriers to the adoption of WLAN, but two principal concerns are cost and necessity. Nevertheless, over the last 6 to 12 months WLAN has slowly begun to appear in this market. Many vendors view financial services as a future growth opportunity for WLAN, especially as security concerns are addressed and IT budgets begin to open. The report, Show Me the Money: Networking Trends in the Financial Services Vertical, examines trends in infrastructure/switching, security and WLAN for the finance vertical. Forecasts (5 year) and primary research are featured for each subject explored.