Data leakage prevention (DLP) has been earmarked as the top channel opportunity for the next six months by distributor Bell Micro.

Speaking at the CRN Channel Conference earlier this week, Bell's director of enterprise Europe Colin McGregor claimed DLP is finally taking off and would outgrow all other areas of Bell's portfolio.

Cloud computing, virtualisation and compliance were highlighted as three other major market opportunities.

"But the biggest one is around DLP," McGregor told a roomful of resellers at Whittlebury Hall Hotel in Northamptonshire.

"The market is anticipated to increase 16-fold over the next two to three years. In 2014 the market opportunity will be $4.5bn at a conservative estimate. And in our portfolio we have three DLP market leaders – IBM, Symantec and Websense."

Ed Callacher, networking and security divisional manager at Bell Micro, admitted that most early DLP deployments had been conducted by vendors themselves into their lighthouse accounts.

"People were talking about it but not buying," he said. "Over the next six months you will see that ramp up, especially as the government is doing such a great job of publicising its own losses. And with Bell being positioned with a storage background, DLP is the next logical step."