By Robin Gareiss, Executive Vice President

Convergence is here, no question about it. Based on findings from Nemertes’ 2006 Convergence & Next‐Generation WANs benchmark, it’s clear that enterprise organizations are deploying convergence—starting with VOIP—en masse. Fully 96% of benchmark participants are deploying VOIP today or planning to do so within the next three years. And that seismic shift places a unique burden on networking and IT staffs in several areas:

• Delivering low‐cost, high‐value networking services;
• Ensuring predictable applications performance;
• Managing and monitoring the applications (including voice) and the network;
• Leverage IT applications and networks to improve employee productivity;
• Leveraging converged applications in IT to make it easier to manage the growing number of remote employees.

The complete issue paper is available to Nemertes clients. Non-clients, please contact research@nemertes.com [1]