SaaS Leads To Stronger Security Deployments Overall: Infonetics

Infonetics, an international market research firm, has released its findings related to SaaS security technology. As per these findings, Zscaler, a provider of cloud-delivered, multi-tenant Security-as-a-Service (SaaS), was in the top four brand names when enterprises were asked about SaaS security providers. The vendors were judged on key metrics like price-to-performance ratio, service and support, and financial stability.

This research was conducted in July 2009 and was not limited to Web SaaS security but covered all segments of SaaS security. In aided brand awareness for SaaS security, Zscaler ranked ahead of Cisco, Symantec, Google, Trend Micro and Websense. According to Infonetics research, customers are clearly responding to the availability of services, financial pressure, and the need to improve the overall performance of their security deployments by evaluating, purchasing, and deploying SaaS for security.

“Strong execution, great price/ performance and purpose-built Web SaaS security technology has led to strong brand awareness for Zscaler in a very short time,” said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst, Network Security at Infonetics. “When new markets emerge, new, innovative entrants often have an opportunity to leapfrog bigger, established players, who are hampered by their legacy solutions.”

Other Key Research Findings

* SaaS leads to stronger security deployments overall, and for 81 percent of respondents, that’s a key driver for moving to SaaS.

* Over 75 percent of the respondents were planning to use SaaS security to augment, not replace existing solutions. With so many decision makers looking to add a new layer of security, flexibility of features becomes very important.

* In June 2009, Infonetics sized the security SaaS market at $381Mn worldwide in 2008, growing 68 percent to $641Mn in 2009, and then growing another 61 percent to just over $1Bn in 2010. There is a sense of immediacy in the security SaaS market, and the data in this research report supports that.