CRN head to head: “What will be the biggest trends in networking for 2008?"

Nathan Godsall, business development manager.

As much as I hate to use a much overused term in the networking industry, I’d have to say one of the biggest trends I see happening in 2008 is “convergence”. This time though, I mean in the sense that I see one of the key trends being a convergence of multiple technologies into a single box that is easy to deploy, configure and support in to the small business. Vendors such as Cisco and Nortel see it as a new market space for them – when you take a look at the number of small businesses in Australia the figures are staggering. The technologies are now also at a level of maturity and affordability that makes deploying applications such as IP telephony and wireless networking, or even the combination of both with voice-over WLAN (VoWLAN), a viable option for businesses even in to the sub-50 user space. As long as resellers are able to incorporate telco costs, deployment and support in such a way as to maintain profitability, then we should see a strong uptake in the small business space in Australia for 2008.