“Historically, data centers have been protected by big-iron security solutions and complex webs of security appliances and load-balancing infrastructure,” says Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. “But as more providers virtualize their data centers and roll out SDNs and NFV, we anticipate a fairly significant revenue transition from hardware appliances to virtual appliances and purpose-built security solutions that interface directly with hypervisors, with SDN controllers via APIs, or orchestration platforms.”
Some highlights of the report:
- The ported virtual security appliances segment of the data center security market grew 10% in 2013 over 2012, to $437 million
- Meanwhile, sales of purpose-built virtual security appliances totaled $150 million in 2013, up 44% from the prior year
- Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet are the top 3 revenue share leaders in the data center security appliance market
- Massive interest in SDN- and NFV-compatible security solutions is expected to drive consolidation among established security players, virtualization platform vendors, and specialist vendors
- Infonetics is projecting a cumulative $1.35 billion will be spent on purpose-built virtual security appliances from 2014 to 2018.