Many things are moving to the cloud and cybersecurity is no laggard: According to Infonetics Research, the managed security services market is projected to grow 45 percent over the next five years, barring any unforeseen roadblocks. Cloud-based security service revenue is forecast by Infonetics to grow at a 10.8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2012 to 2017, to reach $9.2 billion. Add managed CPE in there and the total is more than $19 billion.
“The long-term outlook for managed security services, and especially cloud services, is quite strong, but there are some potential stumbling blocks,” cautions Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. “Improvements in the efficacy and ease of management of security products could decrease the urgency to move to the cloud, and regulatory drivers are forcing some customers to keep all data on premise.”
Channel partners should note, the managed security market is being driven by a number of factors, including a steady increase in the volume, variety and complexity of threats of all types. This is only exacerbated by the fact that most businesses are becoming distributed workforces. The proliferation of bring-your-own device (BYOD), where employees use personal smartphones and tablets for work, is erasing network perimeters and introducing additional security holes. Often lacking resources to keep up with the escalating threat level, many IT departments are turning to third parties to help.
Also, the market is seeing what Infonetics calls “security product sprawl,” or the proliferation of types of security approaches, which very often are difficult to knit together. Again, when faced by this level of complexity, many IT departments prefer to outsource the management of the environment so they no longer have to worry about integration and constant patching.
The vendor community meanwhile has yet to fully organize a response to the opportunity, the firm noted. Though prominent SaaS providers like Google and Microsoft are transforming the standalone security business and bundling security functionality with business apps (Google Docs/Drive and Office 365), they remain serious competition for traditional managed security vendors, Infonetics noted.
