Virtual Security Appliance Market Heating Up, Study Says

Global revenue for virtual security appliances is expected to reach $1.17 billion by 2018, according to a new study from Infonetics. The market research firm expects the security appliance market to double in revenue from 2013 to 2018 due to enterprises, data centers and carriers seeking more advanced protection for their assets.

“Enterprises and service providers are upgrading data centers to support huge increases in traffic and handle the massive waves of attacks they face every day,” said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research, in a statement. “As a result, we foresee a growth spike in virtual appliance revenue starting in 2016 due to the deployment of the next generation of network infrastructure using software-defined networking and network functions virtualization over the next year and a half.”

The increase of SDN– and NFV–compatible security solutions is also expected to drive consolidation in the virtual appliance vendor landscape, which will help to reduce competition and too many options, according to Infonetics. In total, the company predicts worldwide revenue for data center security appliances to grow to a whopping $2.7 billion by 2018.

The study found that market share for data center security appliances closely mirrors the overall market share for security solutions, with companies such as Check Point, Cisco (CSCO) Fortinet, Juniper Networks (JNPR) and McAfee among the top players.

Infonetics predicted similar results in last year’s report, with the company forecasting that the virtual security appliance market would double between 2013 and 2017 to more than $1.3 billion.