Date: 13/06/2012

Virtual and data center security appliances to reach $4.4 billion by 2016, forecasts Infonetics

Infonetics Research has released its latest Data Center Security Appliances market share, size and forecast report. The report identifies that the data center and virtual security appliance market is on track to grow to a $4.4 billion opportunity by 2016.

"In the already big and growing data center security appliance segment, we see a potential battle looming for vendor market share," predicts Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. "Cisco leads now, with nearly a third of global revenue in 2011, followed by Juniper, McAfee, HP, and Fortinet. But there are a number of appliance vendors that don't yet crack the top 5 that we expect will have a strong position in data center security overall later this year, and others already in the top 5 that we expect will strengthen their positions, including McAfee, Trend Micro, Check Point, Arbor, Palo Alto, SonicWALL, and F5."

The highlights of the data center and virtual security appliance market:

1. The virtual security appliance market is smaller but growing faster than the data center security appliance segment, as threats intensify and cloud buildouts continue.

2. Global sales of virtual security appliances that includes VPNs/firewalls, SSL VPNs, IDS/IPS and content security gateways, grew 57% from 2010 to 2011.

3. The larger data center security appliance market is forecast to grow 8.7% in 2012 that includes integrated security appliances, IDS/IPS, content security gateways and DDoS appliances.

4. Both segments are primed for growth over the next 5 years, driven by the increasing volume and variety of security threats, new security challenges being presented by cloud and virtualization technologies, service provider data center upgrades, and the cost and ineffectiveness of some traditional security solutions in data center environments.