European appliance sales speed on

SME sector presents major potential

Security appliance shipments in western Europe now account for a quarter of global sales, with the channel meeting increasing SME demand, according to IDC's Western European Quarterly Security Server Appliance Tracker report.

Virus and hacking fears are boosting sales of security server appliances in the region, with factory revenues in the third quarter of 2003 climbing to $86.1m.

IDC insisted that there is major potential in the SME sector, which has traditionally under-invested in security. This sector now embraces security appliances as an easy way to fulfil security requirements without adding large administrative overheads and complexity to company networks.

Lee Harrison, business development director at distributor e92plus, said: "The security appliance market is out of the blocks and running. Security used to be overpriced for the SME, but in the past 12 months vendors such as NetScreen and Trend Micro have introduced competitively priced products."

Harrison added that new appliance-based security also simplify the technology for small businesses. "They are not just packaging multiple products together but making them easier to use and deploy," he said.

IDC found that the region is leading security appliance sales, now representing 25.8 per cent of worldwide revenues for the sector. Unit growth remains strong, with 40,563 units shipped in Q3, the equivalent of 24.6 per cent of all units shipped globally.

The analyst firm said the firewall/virtual private network market has reached maturity, now accounting for 85 per cent of all security appliances shipped. The intrusion detection software appliance market is still immature, but showing triple-digit growth.

Daniel Fleischer, senior research analyst at IDC, said vendors are focusing on two areas: the convergence of multiple security applications into a single high-end box and driving these appliances into enterprise data centres.

"However, it remains important to understand that, while at the low end security may be the 'appliance', at the high end the appliance forms just a single component of an all-encompassing security fabric," he said.