[Heavy Reading]: The Market for DPI and Policy Control is Saturated; Yet to Double by 2018

A new report on DPI and Policy Control by Graham Finnie [pictured], Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading, finds "a significant slowdown in growth, from a whopping 30 percent in 2012 to around 17 percent in 2013. A key factor: The initial market for policy servers and deep packet inspection (DPI) gear is pretty much saturated, at least in the wireless sector .. our forecast predicts. We expect the market to nearly double from $1.45 billion in 2013 to $2.8 billion in 2018, a CAGR of 13 percent -- still pretty respectable by the standard of the overall telecom market"
 

Opportunities:
  

".. there are many new use cases driving a second or third round of spending by telcos ... enable telcos to offer a wider range of service packages and options, such as packages built around specific applications, shared usage plans, temporary passes, and so on. Support for VoLTE, telco WiFi, end-user security, prioritization under congestion, M2M, and sponsored data are also emerging on wish lists .. The good news is we've clearly moved on from theory to practical implementation with some of these ideas, with both vendors and operators reporting a wider range of new packages actually being deployed, especially in emerging economies. Here, it's not unusual to see 20 or more plans, with Facebook-only, Google Zero, and daily data passes among the options"

Challenges:

The not-so-good news is that these plans require a different kind of business justification, based on new revenues rather than lower costs -- which is often harder to justify .. Vendors report long lead and deployment times, slowing revenue recognition .. In the longer term, meanwhile, the risks are primarily associated with the transition to virtualized networks, including networks based on SDN"

See "Policy Revenues Climbing, but Hazards Loom" - here.