Security Management Top On The IT Expenditure List

The security appliance market in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region grew to US$267.11 million in factory revenues in the second quarter of 2010, according to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker. This represents a strong growth of 24.2% over the same quarter in 2009.

“As a result of the growth of increasingly sophisticated threats to businesses, the need for security has never been greater. Many executives recognise that security is a business function and have learnt that a multilayered approach is necessary to protect their networks. The security appliance market continues to expand in response to new threats and customer demands on advanced security protection,” says Naveen Hegde, Market Analyst- Asia/Pacific Software Research, IDC. “This is why security is usually on the top of the list when it comes to prioritisation of IT expenditure.”

Users tend to choose cost effective and easy-to-manage security appliances with combined functionalities. Thus the Unified Threat Management (UTM) market saw a 30% quarterly growth. Content management, particularly in terms of Web and messaging securities, registered a strong 128% and 98% growth respectively. This year-on-year growth presents a growing interest in content management solutions in the region, which can be attributed to the growing sophistication of Web-based threats such as anti-spam, cross-site scripting, and email-based fraud attempts.

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With APEJ recovering ahead of and faster than the US and Europe, the outlook of security appliance market remains relatively positive and is expected to reach US$2485 million in customer revenues by 2014. IDC expects the growth to be strong especially in fast-growing emerging markets like China, India, and the ASEAN where the IT infrastructure has not matured despite the growing awareness from enterprises, SMBs and end users. In the next five years, UTM appliances will lead the demand curve, covering 38% of the total security appliance market by 2014 as compared to 26% in 2009.

Naveen adds, “As the economy recovers and opportunities return, businesses are demanding security projects to be deployed with greater efficiency, in shorter time, and with a better alignment to their needs. Overall, IDC expects the security appliance market to enjoy healthy growth across various market segments, particularly in the UTM, content management and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) segments. Due to the growth in cyber attacks, security management remains high on most companies’ agenda. There is a critical need to improve security measures to protect networks as the complexity of threats increase.”