North American Business Customer Adoption Of MPLS And Ethernet Services In 2007

Deployment of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) and Ethernet services continues its upward tick — 33% of North American enterprises have deployed MPLS, and 22% have deployed Ethernet services. Moreover, the funnel is still strong: in each case more than 30% of the companies we surveyed are in earlier stages of the MPLS or Ethernet deployment process — such as piloting or evaluation. SMB adoption of both services is less pronounced, but current and planned adoption increases with size. Irrespective of size, certain vertical industries are stronger adopters of these services and include retail/wholesale; finance and insurance; and media, entertainment, and leisure. Still, a fairly large percentage of North American businesses don't plan to move to MPLS or Ethernet WANs. To encourage continued migration, providers should improve the functionality of both MPLS and Ethernet along a number of critical dimensions and create a compelling managed services offer designed to meet the unique requirements of each key market segment.