Around 80 percent of large European organisations are interested in using outsourced pay-as-you-go network services to support cloud deployments, according to research.
Market research firm Vanson Bourne questioned 400 senior IT decision makers at companies in the UK, Germany, France and The Netherlands, and found the vast majority had "an interest in a WAN connectivity model that adapts to peak and off-peak demands", otherwise known as "network-as-a-service".
Only 17 percent of those questioned ruled out such a model for their organisations.
Most interest in network-as-a-service was found in the finance and manufacturing sectors, although only 14 percent of those surveyed in the public sector were interested.
The survey found almost two-thirds (64 percent) of organisations were already outsourcing IT services.
Network integration firm Ciena, which sponsored the research, said the outsourcing trend is expected to impact the market for bandwidth-on-demand, as enterprises will look for a cost-effective connectivity model to support the bandwidth requirements of cloud-based IT services.