In Q2 2014, the South African security appliances market declined 0,6% in value year-on-year to $11,92-million, according to the EMEA Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker published by international market intelligence and research agency IDC.
In spite of the Q2 market value decline, the tracker predicts that market value will increase at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2,8%, from $49,4-million in 2013 to $56,78-million in 2018, driven by the growth of unified threat management (UTM).
“The growth of UTM appliances will be driven by demand in the midmarket for new software features, virtual applications, cloud services, and vulnerabilities associated with internet of things,” says Jiaqi Sun, a research analyst at IDC South Africa.
“The ultimate objective of security technology development is to protect data or information assets – in other words, minimizing data loss within corporate networks if all layers of an enterprise security system fail.”
In terms of market volume, 2 669 units of security appliances were shipped to South Africa in the second quarter, representing year-on-year growth of 6,5%. Total shipments are expected to increase from 10 845 units in 2013 to 13 904 units in 2018, representing a five-year CAGR of 5,1%.
Although infrastructure consolidation and virtualization have been primary causes for the decline in traditional firewalls, they have been growth drivers for midrange to high-end UTM appliances on which multiple virtual security applications operate.
As an add-on to enterprises’ existing security systems, midrange to high-end appliances such as virtual private network (VPN), intrusion detection and prevention (IDP), and content management appliances will remain relevant and a market value driver in the short-to-medium term.
“With increasing zero-day and advanced targeted attacks, the mature enterprise segment is expected to deploy niche features such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) and network content analytics appliances in the future,” adds Sun. “These niche appliances would enhance enterprises’ existing protection systems in terms of proactiveness and predictive and response capability, in addition to IDP.”