NAC will take a firm hold in business networks within the next year, says Verizon Business.

The way the company looks at it, when businesses are comfortable with a technology, they are willing to outsource management of it to someone else. They’ve seen it with VPNs and they expect to see it soon with NAC. But right now, customers aren’t sure NAC meets their requirements or perhaps are unsure exactly what its capabilities are.

Whatever the case, they are just not at the point where they are willing to install the technology themselves and turn it over to someone else for management. But that day is getting closer and the working numbers for Verizon are 12 to 18 months.

The provider also sees Microsoft’s NAC products - which are called network access protection (NAP) - as getting ready to make a surge as well. Verizon sees little demand for NAP incorporated into the NAC managed service projects it has underway.

Theoretically, NAP desktop/laptop clients could be part of a NAC solution involving a range of other vendors because of its adherence to standards set up by the Trusted Computing Group. But in practice, the service provider just doesn’t see NAP use among its customers.

But Verizon expects that to change as more businesses deploy Windows XP Service Pack 3 or Vista, both of which include the NAP client, and the NAP server that is part of Windows Server 2008. While Microsoft NAP is scarce among its customers now, Verizon expects NAP to be a dominant component of its customers’ NAC deployments in a year. (Compare NAC products)

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.