The increasingly complex make-up of the typical enterprise network has pushed the debate over the importance of highest quality and when to buy “best-of-breed” further up the agenda of many customers. Whether their ultimate choice will rest with unshielded, fully shielded or fibre optic LAN cable at this point is difficult to gauge. Users now have a range of highly performing products from which to make a qualified choice. The challenge for the supplier industry is not to start pushing performance levels above 10Gigabit Ethernet too soon, thereby further confusing and potentially alienating their customer base. Security issues have become a greater consideration in the minds of IT managers and consultants, a trend that is likely to continue. The key concern of IT managers is to maintain network reliability and integrity.
