Data centres spending on security is rocketing, and almost by definition, solutions need to be virtualised. The market is very competitive, with no dominant brand, but lots of emerging players.
Technology market research firm Infonetics Research talked to US firms that operate their own data centres and found that 76% of respondents consider virtualisation to be an important driver for purchasing new security solutions.
"The battle for data centre security domination is raging, particularly at the high end of the appliance market. 2014 brought major market share changes, and this will continue in 2015 as buyers jump ship to get the throughput, interfaces, connection performance, and detection and mitigation technologies they need," said Jeff Wilson, research director for cybersecurity technology at Infonetics Research, now part of IHS.
"The somewhat isolated market for virtual appliances and virtualisation-aware security solutions is merging with software-defined networking (SDN) in the data centre, and this combination will lead to explosive market growth," Wilson said.
Businesses participating in Infonetics' survey spent an average of $9.6 million on data centre security solutions in 2014, with plans to grow spending 57% in 2016. Cisco did very well across the board in respondent data centre security solution supplier leadership ratings: its lowest score was higher than any other vendor's highest score. Strength in data center security buying criteria is primarily a function of overall brand strength, but there are some interesting peaks and valleys in vendor ratings by enterprises participating in the study: Juniper jumps up for technology innovation and price while Palo Alto has a surprisingly high score for management relative to its overall brand awareness and strength