Satellite service providers have made limited inroads in the enterprise IP data networking market, notes Northern Sky Research in its latest series of research report entitled “Satellite IP Data Services for the Enterprise.” However, opportunities exist to improve this situation through repositioning their activities in network access and content distribution services.

In its reports, Orlando, Fla.-based Northern Sky specifically highlights return-on-investment estimations for a variety of network access capabilities and multimedia content distributions as sought by enterprise users. Key proposals include dual-access, which can represent value in services to enterprise facilities and in which conventional two-way satellite IP terminals are used to augment basic terrestrial network connectivity (via ADSL or frame relay, for example). Customers targeted in this way are in a growing market segment and are also more likely to have interests in other value-added service features.

Also, satellite-based content distribution schemes supporting multiple applications across the enterprise have reached maturity. These schemes can challenge today’s session- based ASP web-conferencing offerings, which–as based on terrestrial Internet connectivity–carry only limited features and incur significant performance and security restrictions.