Network equipment maker Dimension Data has issued a report claiming more than 51% of all corporate network devices are ageing or obsolete, with 11% completely obsolete, thus exposing corporates to hackers.
According to the report the percentage of obsolete devices in the corporate networks is highest in six years, which could indicate that the global financial crisis still having its shadow, forcing companies to sweat the aging network devices.
The study claimed that 27% of devices had passed their useful life and vendors had stopped providing support for these devices.
Across the regions, the Americas region has the lowest percentage of aging and obsolete devices with 44% them being obsolete.
Dimension Data Business Development Director for Networking Raoul Tecala said, "Over the past few years, we’ve seen the proportion of aging and obsolete devices steadily increase, and the conventional assumption was that a technology refresh cycle was imminent.
"However, our data reveals that organizations are sweating their network assets for longer than expected," Tecala said.
The report says that the companies could be sweating their ageing network to keep their cost in check by reining in their capex budget following financial crisis.
Other reasons of continuing with ageing network devices could be due to growing availability of as-a-service ICT consumption models, which relieves companies from investing in their own infrastructure.
Arrival of software-defined networks (SDNs) could be one of the reasons as companies could be waiting to implement new technology.
"We expect that growth in cloud computing, mobility and the number of connected ‘things’ will put additional strain on the network and that clients will have to re-look at their network architecture, not the individual devices," Tecala added.
The report found that older devices fail less frequently and take less time to repair.
But older networks have special support requirements, particularly sparing and device swap-out strategies and without them the devices could require longer time to repair if they fail.
Dimension Data has prepared the report based on the data gathered from 288 client TLM Assessments throughout 2013, which include 74,000 network devices in organisations different sizes and industry sectors spread across 32 countries.
