#DPI Equipment Market to Soar

The market for DPI solutions is set to soar, according to research by analysts at Heavy Reading. But much of the next generation of DPI equipment will incorporate off-the-shelf OEM solutions that enable the application providers to leverage technology advances and stay abreast of network enhancements.

By embedding OEM solutions into DPI equipment, vendors can focus on their core differentiation and leverage advances in technology that enable the deployment of DPI solutions in emerging optical networks, first at 10Gb/s and then 40Gb/s and beyond.

DPI solutions are being deployed to enable operators to manage traffic more effectively, to deploy richer customer experience solutions and to support innovative billing plans, but the applications behind DPI need to keep up with network migration towards faster and faster transmission speeds. This presents a challenge – more traffic means more data to manage.

For this reason, OEM DPI solutions that can be embedded in off-the-shelf platforms liberate the application provider from concerns about changes to the underlying network infrastructure. By using solutions that are adapted to different transmission rates and interfaces, the DPI application vendor can focus on differentiating their applications and delegate the process of filtering and inspecting packets to the OEM solutions they choose.

OEM solutions for DPI also enable a broader range of solutions and extend the ecosystem, enabling more vendors to incorporate DPI capabilities into their products. The DPI market will grow rapidly, but the growth will be helped, not just by demand, but also by the widespread availability of solutions that reduce the barriers to entry by offering OEM DPI capabilities in packages that can be embedded with other components to deliver a turnkey solution.

As the network continues to evolve, this will be a key means by which DPI application specialists maintain their competitive advantage, as they can focus on their applications and leverage off-the-shelf solutions that connect directly to optical transport and enable them to interface to 10, 40 or 100Gb/s pipes.