Networking vendors escape recession

The UK's largest organisations are still buying networking equipment despite recessionary cuts in general IT spending - but they are buying incrementally rather than waiting for the big, one-off projects which were popular a few years ago.

That's according to research from Z/Yen Aspect, carried out on behalf of 3Com, which is looking to exploit the incremental approach users are adopting.

"All the indicators tend to suggest the market is soft but the fact that people are buying continuously shows the network is now an integral part of the business," said Paul Malcolm, 3Com country manager UK/Eire.

Z/Yen found that for networking equipment companies are no longer investing speculatively but instead measuring return on investment. The market research firm interviewed 40 board members at Times Top 1000 companies.

Stephen Martin, a director at Z/Yen Aspect, said: "The big change in the last two years has been the permission for non-IT board members to question IT spend. They're a tough filter."

Clive Longbottom, analyst at Quocirca, said: "Budgets are now in the hands of the lines of business meaning wholesale changes to infrastructure either need a major sponsor from one line of business or overall support across the lines - which is unlikely to happen."

However, the bad news for 3Com and others, according to Longbottom, is that most technology has been commoditised, which is allowing the main move to be towards gradual expansion and away from higher cost and higher risk replacement.

3Com's Malcolm said: "The research surprised us but it sits well with what we're trying to do."