Unified threat management driving security appliance market

Unified threat management remains the hottest area in security appliances, with IDC reporting 17.8% growth in revenues for UTM in Q3.

The overall security appliance market saw 9.6% growth year on year in vendor revenues to US$2.7 billion, while shipments grew 9.7% year on year to 585,282 units.

While UTM lead the way, the firewall and intrusion detection and prevention sub-markets also recorded solid growth at 6.7% and 6.6%, respectively. The content management category also continued to grow, with 1.3% growth year on year.

The only category to record a decline was the virtual private network submarket, which dropped 16.3%.

Elizabeth Corr, IDC research analyst for security products, says security products remain a growing industry as threat continue to plague companies.

"Over the past year the threat landscape has increased, leading to growth globally as no country is free from attacks," Corr says.

"This growth is reflected in the top five vendors growing a combined 9.4% year over year," she adds.

When it comes to vendors, Cisco continues to lead the way albeit with reduced market share – dropping from 18.2% in Q3 2014 to 16.3% in Q3 2015. The vendor was the only top five player to record a revenue decrease over the period, dropping 2.5% from US$447 million to US$436 million.

Check Point took second position, with 12.5% market share, and a 10.3% revenue increase to $334 million.

However, it was third placed Palo Alto Networks which saw the biggest revenue gains, up 47% to $267 million. Market share for the vendor increased from 7.5% a year ago to 10%.

Fortinet was also a big moving, with a 30% revenue gain to $226 million and market share climbing from 7.1% to 8.5%.

Fifth place went to McAfee with 5% market share – the same as a year ago – and a 9.2% revenue increase to $132 million.

While the United States remains the largest security appliance market globally, representing around 40% of the global revenue, Asia Pacific, excluding Japan, represents 22% of total global revenues and recorded an 11.9% revenue growth.