The Convergence
Conundrum
Abstract: Convergence has come in many forms, and made and broken many
promises over the last 10 years. IP appears to have delivered a common
denominator upon which both users and operators can build a solid converged future,
but do their efforts and aspirations match up?
By
Chris Lewis
VP EMEA, Yankee Group
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The Convergence Conundrum
Convergence has come in many forms,
and made and broken many promises
over the last 10 years. IP appears to
have delivered a common denominator
upon which both users and operators
can build a solid converged future, but
do their efforts and aspirations match
up? Chris Lewis, Yankee Group’s VP
EMEA, investigates.
Within the operator, the collapse of different network
elements and infrastructures into a single platform
supporting voice and data services makes the
network much easier to manage. More importantly
infrastructure convergence is set to halve existing
operational costs, according to some operators that
have already initiated a move to full migration. More
than 80 percent of major operators in EMEA have
clear plans for migration to a converged IP-based
infrastructure. This 80% of operators are in
advanced pilot and field test mode today, with the
final roll-out planned over the coming 36 months.
Within European businesses, there is also a drive
toward convergence, focusing on collapsing
separate voice and data infrastructures. By
integrating voice and data into a single corporate
backbone, enterprises are, like operators, achieving
operational efficiencies. The difference between
operators and end users is that 39% of Yankee’s
recent GNS survey of Europe’s MNCs are already
actively converging their voice and data themselves,
with a further 37% planning to do so over the next
24 months. This gap between the operational
efficiency of the service providers and user demand
is also set to be addressed by ot