Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Cost-cutting dominates European enterprise plans for wide area networks (WANs) for 2009. This is the top priority for almost three-quarters of enterprises as part of IT budget cuts mandated at board level. At the same time, network traffic is growing rapidly to support projects like server centralization, data center consolidation, videoconferencing, and collaboration that will reduce IT and travel costs. Firms will need to innovate constantly to meet these apparently contradictory objectives. MPLS IP VPNs are in mass adoption, but some enterprises are starting to replace them with carrier Ethernet any-to-any networks based on the virtual private LAN service standard (VPLS). Europe continues to buy more managed telecom services than North America. European firms are making strategic decisions to purchase managed services, driven by a long-term plan to focus on core competencies and the simplification of operational management, rather than by a short-term imperative need to reduce capex budgets or headcount during the current recession.

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