Sin also predicted that multimedia applications like IPT and IP-based video communications to be big drivers next year and companies are expected to build additional capacity and management functions to manage such services.

Datacenter buildout

As firms are growing they are also expanding datacenters as capacity becomes an issue. "We see a big push in datacenter expansion for small and large firms and also consolidation which drives up bandwidth demands," said Sin.

He noted the datacenter activity has been greater in Hong Kong than in China, with high-grade datacenter building in China proving to be challenging for many companies.

The datacenter trend was also cited by Rachel Lo, senior research manager, Asia/Pacific Networking, IDC. "The market is constantly looking for ways to do things faster and more efficiently at a lower cost," she said. "Enterprises with multiple datacenters are now trying to consolidate them to lower their capex and opex."