Firewall exodus continues

Running for the hills: Firewall appliance revenues fell sharply at the expense of UTMs in Q1

Unified threat management (UTM) appliances continue to gain ground at the expense of the standalone firewall, data from IDC reveals.

According to the market watcher, the western European security appliance market registered growth in the first quarter for the first time in a year. Total factory revenues inched up 0.8 per cent year on year to $399.5m (£263m).

IDC’s figures also highlighted the speed at which end users are switching from firewalls to multi-functional UTM devices.

UTM – along with content management appliances – drove growth of the overall market as revenue from the segment rose 14.3 per cent to $124.4m. In contrast, firewall revenues sagged 20.2 per cent to $75.6m as customers continued to move to UTM at the lower end.

Meanwhile, IPS appliance revenues tumbled 30 per cent on last year to $56.7m – due mainly to the postponement of security investments – while virtual private network appliance revenues sank 17 per cent to $47m.

The top five vendors enjoyed an equally mixed quarter.

McAfee logged the highest growth of the five as its market share bounced from 5.8 per cent to 8.8 per cent, while Check Point’s market share fell massively from 10.2 per cent to 3.6 per cent.

Fortinet lost the top spot in the UTM segment to Juniper for the first time in two years. Overall market leader Cisco enjoyed a solid quarter, increasing market share to 24.1 per cent.

Romain Fouchereau, research analyst at IDC, said: “The economic downturn mainly affected the market in the second and third quarters of 2009, with a rebound already noticeable in quarter four of 2099.

“The resumed positive growth this quarter derived solely from the two largest segments, UTM and content management appliances, whereas the other security appliance functions still reported disappointing results.”