Security software market expected to grow by 11% in 2010

Gartner has predicted that the security software market will grow by 11 per cent this year.

Its analysts have said that the security software markets will weather the current economic downturn better than in 2001 and 2002, because the market conditions are dramatically different in terms of maturity, penetration, confidence in IT, and geographic and vertical mix.

With worldwide security software revenue forecast to surpass US$16.5 billion in 2010, this marks an 11.3 per cent increase from the 2009 revenues of US$14.8 billion. A key growth area is in identity and access management, which Gartner clients said takes around eight per cent of their security budgets.

Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner, said: “Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow over the next few years, although a significant degree of variation is expected between the more-established and less-mature technologies.

“Security software vendors that have a balanced mix of channel, new licence and maintenance revenue streams and flexibility in contractual terms, such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), open source and outsourcing, have the strongest options for continued growth and to even out the risk.

“Shrinking discretionary spending budgets have heightened competition for new maintenance and licence revenue streams and placed a renewed emphasis on vendor performance and viability.”

Matthew Cheung, senior research analyst at Gartner, predicted that virtual products and appliances will continue to overtake traditional software licensing as the preferred purchasing method over the next six to 12 months.

“The growing sophistication of the threat landscape - with malware composed of multiple components that can be installed after the initial infection and the exploits of socially engineered trojans, which trick end-users into downloading and executing malicious files - will push organisations and consumers to invest in endpoint security products in coming years,” Cheung said.
 
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