Tuesday, June 23, 2009

GLOBAL SECURITY SOFTWARE MARKET GROWS 18.6 PERCENT

Bhaskar Hazarika, New Delhi
Financial Chronicle

Despite companies cutting down on their IT budgets, organisations are not compromising on security. The worldwide security software market revenue touched $13.5 billion in 2008, an increase of 18.6 percent compared to the previous year.

The security software industry recorded $11.3 billion in 2007. IT research and analysis firm, Gartner Inc. in its report has stated that the global recession has no impact on the security software market. However, it stated that in 2009, the security software market will show signs of slowdown but will continue to grow at around 9 percent.

“A double-digit growth in a challenging economic climate shows that security remains a key priority for CIOs and IT security leaders,” Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner said. The key drivers in the security software space are data security and privacy.

“The combined top five vendors’ market share is gradually falling in favour of smaller players, a sign that security remains a dynamic market where smaller players, new entrants and specialist vendors provide an effective challenge to the established leaders,” the report stated. Symantec continued to be the market leader, accounting 22 percent of worldwide security software in 2008. The company’s market share was down compared to 2007 when it accounted for 24.4 percent of the market. McAfee experienced the strongest growth rate among the top five vendors, as its revenue increased 20.5 percent in 2008.

The segments in the appliance-based products that recorded the fastest growth in 2008 were, security information and event management (SIEM), e-mail security boundary, and secure web gateway appliance with 50 percent, 37.7 percent and 29.9 percent increase respectively. Eastern Europe was among the fastest region with 35 percent growth in 2008. The growth Eastern Europe was influenced by the strengthening of the euro against the dollar. It was followed by Middle East and Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions, which saw growth increasing of around 30 percent.

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