Worldwide Security Software Revenue Grew 18.6% in '08

The worldwide security software market revenue totalled $13.5 billion in 2008, an increase of 18.6 percent from the 2007 revenue of $11.3 billion, according to Gartner. The APAC region saw a growth of around 30 percent. Gartner further predicts that in 2009, the security software market will show signs of a slowdown but will continue to grow at around 9 percent.

"In 2008, the security market did not show any noticeable impact from the economic downturn," said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst, Gartner. "A double-digit growth during a slowdown shows that security remains a priority for CIOs and IT leaders," he added.

Globally, data security and privacy, along with the need to protect IT infrastructure from the increasing sophisticated and targeted attacks, are among the key drivers fuelling the growth of IT security software spending.

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 per cent, 37.7 per cent and 29.9 per cent increase respectively. Mature technologies like Web Access Management (WAM) and endpoint protection platform (EPP) were the slowest performers.

Symantec continued to be the market leader, and accounted for 22 percent of worldwide security software in 2008. While, McAfee experienced the strongest growth rate, as its revenue increased 20.5 percent in 2008.

"During times of economic uncertainty and budget restrictions, IT security leaders increasingly need to show business value and cost-effectiveness for security measures, and this has impacted and slowed sales cycles," concluded Contu. "However, new product delivery methods, such as SaaS and host based offerings, along with expected increasing interest from the SMB sector will sustain growth in the market in 2009," he added.

» posted by ITworld staff

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