Virtualisation and differentiation are the key themes currently dominating the deep packet inspection (DPI) market, says Shira Levine, research director, service enablement and subscriber intelligence, IHS Technology.
The majority of DPI vendors are tackling the virtualisation trend head-on, introducing virtualised versions of their products, developing partnerships with other players within the network functions virtualisation (NFV) ecosystem and working with their customers on early deployments. This activity is projected to drive the market for DPI as a virtual network function (VNF) from 19% of the total DPI market in 2015 to over 50% in 2020.
At the same time, as hardware becomes increasingly commoditised, the major DPI players are looking to expand their capabilities in adjacent areas by offering use cases that their technology can enable, including security, analytics and value-added consumer services.
Security continues to be a strong DPI use case, particularly in the wireless realm, as subscribers accessing the internet with their mobile devices increase the risk of security breaches and viruses. This is driving partnership and acquisition activity in the market, including Allot’s acquisition of Optenet and Sandvine’s partnership with Symantec.
And net neutrality remains a challenge in several markets — most recently India, which enacted rules earlier this year — but regulators in markets such as Western Europe and the United States seem to be softening their stance on the issue and opening the door to some degree of prioritisation and/or zero rating and sponsored content.
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