Smart cities, big data to drive comms T&M space by 2020

The future of the communications test equipment market will ride the unrelenting and rising wave brought about by connected living, big data, smart cities and wearable computing. This is according to Frost & Sullivan, which also revealed that the demand for flexibility will bolster software-based tools and product integration to lead the market. More than 70 per cent of test equipment will be virtualised and software-defined in 2020, predicted the market research firm.

As software technologies and connectivity become more pervasive and a digitalised world becomes inevitable, the complexity of smart devices, networks and applications will create the need for customised testing and monitoring solutions.

"The emergence of smart energy, smart building, smart mobility, smart healthcare, smart infrastructure, smart technology, smart governance and smart citizens will create tremendous opportunities for test equipment vendors," said Frost & Sullivan measurement and instrumentation program manager Olga Yashkova-Shapiro. "The increasing complexity of smart consumer devices will also require testing be integrated earlier in the product lifecycle."

As businesses migrate to the cloud, monitoring and management solutions become must become more dynamic and adaptable.

The communications test and measurement value chain consists of component providers, device vendors, network providers, platform providers and system integrators. This extremely fragmented value-chain highlights the lack of a one-stop-shop solution provider offering end-to-end solutions. Testing providers must explore a more efficient way to provide bundled solutions in order to address this challenge.

"With the advent of virtualisation, infrastructure testing participants need to develop products that can be tested on major hypervisors as well as other virtualised network components," advised Shapiro. "Testing vendors must also ensure interoperability, standardisation and the general consolidation of infrastructure deployed on the cloud to strengthen their position in the global communications test and measurement market."