Webtorials' Editorial/Analyst Division is in the midst of a mid-year update to the data gathered for the "2009 Network Plans and Priorities State-of-the-Market Report." And while we're always a bit reluctant to share too many detailed results while in the midst of data collection for fear of prejudicing the results, we are seeing some early trends and would love to have more input to validate and/or modify what we're seeing.

The responses thus far are a roughly 50/50 mix of industry respondents (service providers, equipment providers, consultants) and enterprise communications network professionals. So we'll be looking at the data from at least two perspectives: now vs. November and users vs. "the industry."

So here's the good news and the bad news from a very high level. So far as the overall indicators are concerned, we're not seeing a drastic shift from the data collected in November. That's good. However, the down side to this is that in November we asked about predictions during 2009, and now we're asking about the "next 12 months." The fact that a goodly number of users and industry professionals are still seeing a negative impact could indicate that the worst is not yet over. However, it's encouraging that the overall picture is brighter (or at least less dark) from the users than from the industry.

As noted above, we don't want to give away too much at this point because we're hoping you'll chime in. But there is one other quite important trend. As a rule, the surveyed community has been somewhat reluctant to embrace managed services. However, when asked about the extent to which they agreed with the statement, "Managed services provide the ability to maintain (or enhance) both existing and new networking/IT capabilities with a reduced TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)," the users had over half agreeing with the statement, with the remainder pretty evenly split between being neutral and disagreeing.

There's still time to put in your two-cents worth, and you'll even get an early peek at the results. The survey is available here.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.