The enterprise security market in EMEA grew by 17 per cent year on year, with top two vendors Cisco and Symantec holding a combined 43 per cent share, according to a research firm.
New research by UK firm Canalys reveals that the market for enterprise security technologies continues to enjoy high growth, driven by defensive reactions to events such as virus and worm attacks and ever more sophisticated cracking of networks, along with an increasing need for mobile and remote working.
The firm also said that a clash between the networking and security industries is creating a new area of convergence. The acquisition of NetScreen by Juniper, Riverhead by Cisco and Riverstone Technology by HP ProCurve is indicative of the consolidation necessary to satisfy customer demands for manageable, cost-effective and interoperable security solutions and systems.
‘The market is ripe for the formation of partnerships that deliver more
comprehensive solutions than individual vendors can bring to market on their own,’ said Andy Buss, Canalys senior analyst. ‘Nokia/Check Point and
Cisco/Trend Micro are leading examples. However, if these hit problems,
customers may be left with an investment lacking a future. The Nokia/ISS
partnership broke down earlier this year, leaving customers facing a vendor or technology transition in a critically important part of their operations. Some notable vendors, including HP and Microsoft, have not yet made a big push into this market, but this will come, and will further shake up the competitive landscape.’
The Canalys research, which covers both software and hardware, shows that firewalls are the biggest single segment by value, representing almost a third of total enterprise security expenditure, followed closely by anti-virus and VPN.
Cisco dominates this market with just under half the market share, followed by Nokia and Checkpoint. Symantec leads the anti-virus space with just over 40 per cent share, ahead of Trend Micro, CA and McAfee.
The leading players in the newer, less well developed segments do not dominate to the same extent, Canalys noted. For example, in intrusion protection (around 10 per cent of the total enterprise security market) Canalys puts Symantec (18 per cent) and Cisco (16 per cent) only slightly ahead of ISS (13 per cent) and Computer Associates (12 per cent).
‘Channel strategy and channel education are vital to the success of the
security vendors,’ commented Canalys analyst Rachel Power. ‘Established
networking vendors are working hard to turn their broad channel coverage into an extensive security channel, but the incentives are taking time to produce the desired effect. Security specialist vendors have developed a similarly specialist channel, which is well regarded but is limited in scope and will become more vulnerable as the security market moves toward greater commoditisation.’
16/08/04
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