Consulting firms are cashing in as networks get more complex with the advent of mobile, video and cloud services.

IDC estimates that service firms will attribute a whopping 40% of revenues to consulting activities around networking. The types of consulting to come will cover architectural design, business process consulting and network strategy and planning.

IDC says the networking complexities that consultants will tackle include unified communications and collaboration, mobility and data center virtualization on converging infrastructures.

The consultants face challenges of their own. There is already a shortage of technical talent. Firms will need to recruit heavily in order to keep up with the demand.

The new business comes with the growth of mobile, the cloud and the increasing use of video. According to Network World, worldwide network spending should top $39 billion by the end of the year and $42.5 billion by 2013.

Smartphone and tablet growth will continue to dwarf sales of PCs and laptops. Video conferencing, combined with the huge appetite for streaming, will drive much of the network spending. Then there is the wholesale shift that companies will make to the cloud. Up to this year, the upgrades have been piecemeal. A few apps here and there were added. But now comes the time when the enterprise will begin moving wholesale, critical apps and all.

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That shift will drive the need for a simple, converged infrastructure that enterprise vendors will depend on to simply manage their networks.