* Study finds biggest corps are reluctant to use IP VPN services
A study released last week by a financial firm found that the people buying telecom services for the biggest corporations are reluctant to use IP VPN services because such technologies rely on best-effort Internet services and are susceptible to attacks.
The authors, who interviewed 27 Fortune 500 executives who make decisions about what WAN services to buy, say the respondents find IP services “to be less reliable than circuit-switched alternatives. In addition, security is perceived to be compromised because of the shared nature of IP networks, which are subject to viruses and other forms of attack.”
The study was by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., and said the executives interviewed felt IP VPNs were less reliable and less secure than frame relay and ATM, “partly from experience and partly due to the instinctive association of any IP-based technology with the ‘best efforts,’ shared nature of the IP protocol.”
These are pretty surprising responses, given that the perceived drawbacks have been acknowledged and addressed by many service providers to the point that service-level agreements on uptime, packet loss, latency and QoS in general are readily available. Even more surprising, considering the answers were given by people holding down responsible jobs in the largest businesses and who are expected to be tech-savvy.
Layer 2 MPLS VPNs are widely regarded as secure as any other Layer 2 services such as frame relay and ATM, and by no means have to be best effort. And most major U.S. carriers that offer MPLS VPN services integrate MPLS-connected sites with existing frame relay and ATM networks, so customers don’t have to alter their entire WAN to adopt and IP service.
While these findings may raise some eyebrows, the study also points out that most of the businesses interviewed are using VPNs to some extent already and plan to do so more widely as time goes by. So whatever the negative impressions, they don’t seem strong enough to keep customers away.
The bottom line here is a message to service providers. They need to make a bigger effort to overcome the negative impressions if they want to customers to adopt their IP services more quickly.
But perhaps they don’t. After all, the IP networks are relatively new and might not be able to stand a wholesale shift from frame relay and ATM. Gradual change may be what carriers desire.
