The $4-billion market for high-end firewalls suffered its third consecutive quarter of year-on-year (YoY) declines which brought down the entire network security market to single-digit YoY revenue growth after eleven straight quarters of double-digit growth.
This is according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group which adds that offsetting the decline was strong double-digit growth in the $5-billion midrange firewall market and the $1-billion virtual firewall market.
“Across many technology markets we track, whether security, networking, or servers we saw a substantial jump in investment by services providers in the year or two following the worst of the pandemic in 2020 which led to massive technology vendor backlogs,” says Mauricio Sanchez, senior research director, Enterprise Networking and Security at Dell’Oro Group.
“All that gear has finally been delivered in the past year and service providers are now suffering indigestion to deploy. Fortunately, enterprise spending remained robust in midrange firewalls which helped weather the storm.”
Additional highlights from the 3Q 2023 Network Security Quarterly Report include:
* The worldwide firewall market was above $3-billion for the fifth consecutive quarter although it declined YoY for the first time since 3Q 2020 due to the 21% decline in high-end firewalls.
* The top four firewall vendors – Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Fortinet, and Check Point – owned nearly 70% of the firewall market.
* Palo Alto Networks held the number one revenue position with 28% – over 10% greater than number two Cisco.
* Revenue in the worldwide WAF (Web Applications Firewall) market accelerated for the second consecutive quarter with a 16% rise.