Security software market grows 7.5pc to US$17.7bn – Gartner

Small or mid-size business (SMB) demand, advanced persistent threats and compliance helped drive worldwide security software revenue up 7.5pc to US$17.7bn in 2011, up from revenue of US$16.4bn in 2010, Gartner, Inc, reports.

“Growth in the 2011 security market reflects a continuation in demand for consumer and enterprise security tools,” said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner.

“However, despite overall solid growth, some regions did not experience the high double-digit growth of emerging Asia/Pacific and Eurasia, which has been driven by ‘greenfield’ projects and buoyant economies. Western Europe remained the laggard because of the region’s uncertain economic situation.”

The security software market continued to show resilience at a time of IT budget restrictions and despite Intel writing down considerable revenue following its acquisition of McAfee in February 2011, which prevented the market from reaching double-digit growth.

Security software providers

Intel’s decline in revenue in 2011 was due to the fact that, as a result of normal purchase accounting rules, Intel was required to write down about 30pc of McAfee’s US$1.4bn of deferred revenue.

Gartner analysts said McAfee has a strong brand and market presence which originates from its primary focus and specialisation on security, in both the consumer and enterprise markets.

On the enterprise side, McAfee has been expanding its security software offering to network security following its acquisition of Secure Computing in November 2008.

With Intel, McAfee aims to build on both companies’ competencies and have better integration between hardware and security. The McAfee DeepSAFE, a new low-level security agent that runs below the OS on Intel Core I-series processors, is an example of the innovation that this new corporate entity aims to bring to the market.

Trend Micro was the other major market share leader in the security software market, with a strong presence in both the consumer and enterprise security space.

During 2011, Trend Micro grew 11pc, generating US$1.2bn revenue, growth that unlike that of its main market competitors, was organic rather than from acquisitions.

Symantec recorded an annual growth rate of 17pc, retaining its market share lead in both the consumer and enterprise security space.

Symantec has continued to expand is offering beyond the traditional endpoint security market by leveraging its competency and mind share in the storage/data backup space and by putting a new focus on securing data, both at rest and in motion, through its data loss prevention (DLP) and encryption products, Gartner said.

“Products within the security market are undergoing rapid evolution, in terms of both new delivery models — with security as a service (SaaS) showing increasing popularity — and new technologies being introduced, often by start-up companies,” Contu said.

“Key vendors continued to expand their product portfolios in 2011, buying companies where appropriate and expanding their reach into emerging markets. Merger-and-acquisition activity also has been an important factor in shaping the market landscape, at least during the past five years. “

Table 1
Security Software Revenue Market Share Estimates, Worldwide, 2011 (Millions of Dollars)

^{Source: Gartner (April 2012)}