Asia Pac security appliance market grew 14% to $1.1 billion in 2010

Highly publicized cases of security breaches brought the security appliance market a whopping $1.1 billion revenue in 2010 as companies try to protect their sensitive information.

The security appliance market in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region grew to US$318.2 million in factory revenues in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker. This represents a growth of 6% from the same quarter in 2009. Overall, the security appliance market enjoyed healthy growth of 14% from 2009 and reached US$1.1 billion in factory revenues in 2010. The strong growth was largely driven by Firewall/VPN, Unified Threat Management (UTM), and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appliances.

"The year 2010 started off with overall enhanced security awareness, after a number of highly publicized security breaches made the news headlines. This increased awareness of security threats drove firms to spend more on security appliances helped make 2010 a good year. Recent security breaches have fueled significant growth in the number of security offerings and standards in the marketplace. Organizations have to protect sensitive information and, in many cases, need to fulfill specific regulations to ensure the proper safeguarding of information," says Naveen Hegde, Senior Market Analyst of Asia/Pacific Software Research at IDC.

Content management market, which includes Web and messaging securities, has registered a strong 48% year-on-year growth in 2010. Web 2.0 presents a significant information leakage challenge for the enterprises which need to deal with social media risks as well as compliance driven demands. The trend of users choosing cost effective and easy-to-manage security appliances with combined functionalities continued in the region. Thus the UTM market saw a 16% year-on-year growth. IPS market grew 13% for the same period. Compliance regulation such as PCI, drove the IPS market.

The security appliance market in Asia/Pacific is set to grow to US$ 2.8 billion by 2015 in customer revenue at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%. Asia/Pacific is the quickest and fastest growing region and the outlook remains relatively positive. IDC expects the growth to be strong especially in the emerging markets like India, China and the ASEAN. Security is mission critical and increases in complexity of infrastructure, making CIOs and end users in all industries trying to optimize it. The UTM function is leading the demand curve taking a share of 39% of the total security appliance market by 2015 as against 27% in 2010.