Virtual-Security Appliances Winning Users Over Traditional Messaging-Security Software
There's no question enterprises want messaging security -- the market for products and services worldwide reached almost $3.2 billion last year, up from $2.7 billion in 2010, and will grow to $4.78 billion in 2015, according to research firm IDC. But a fundamental shift is occurring that foresees businesses favoring virtual-security appliances over more traditional messaging security software.
Tue, January 10, 2012
Network World — There's no question enterprises want messaging security -- the market for products and services worldwide reached almost $3.2 billion last year, up from $2.7 billion in 2010, and will grow to $4.78 billion in 2015, according to research firm IDC. But a fundamental shift is occurring that foresees businesses favoring virtual-security appliances over more traditional messaging security software.
Just over a year ago, messaging security software for anti-spam, antivirus filtering and content monitoring of email, instant messaging and social-messaging platforms made up about 42% of the entire market, says IDC. But this share for software, traditionally run on a server or dedicated appliance, is expected to plummet to about 27% by 2015.
MORE PREDICTIONS: IDC on 2012: prep for cloud wars, mobile expansion, higher IT spending
"It's going to shift to virtual appliances," says Phil Hochmuth, IDC program manager in the area of security products, adding that "there will either be agents which run on top of, or at the same level as, the hypervisor in a virtual system." Most of what's out there today is being sold for VMware, the dominant virtualization platform at present.
Though also software, virtual security appliances are bringing a fundamental change as a more '"built-in" approach to messaging security as third-party products become more optimized for virtualization, says Hochmuth. He adds McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro, among others, are showing the capability to do this well. IDC predicts that virtual appliances for messaging security, which accounted for only $50.3 million and 1.8% share in 2010, will leap to $585.2 million in 2015 to achieve 12.2% market share in the messaging security market.
In contrast, the third major segment IDC tracks, messaging security appliances -- hardware-based products that sold for about $978 million last year -- will be simply holding steady from 2010 to 2015, growing modestly from about a quarter of the market today to roughly 28% in 2015.
The fourth major segment, cloud-based security as a service (SaaS), is picking up speed from about $788 million in 2010 (at 28.9% share of messaging security overall) to reach $1.5 billion and an expected 31.2% share in 2015.
IDC believes the virtual-appliance trend in security is also evident in the areas of intrusion-prevention systems and firewalls, but the shift in terms of market share is most visible in messaging security at present.
"We need security controls to become virtualized," comments Gartner security analyst Neil MacDonald, who points out that according to Gartner analysis, about 50% of enterprise servers are virtualized today primarily using VMware; desktop virtualization is just starting to happen, with Gartner estimating that to be in the 4% to 5% range.
