Communications and Technology Industry Research

Despite a still uncertain economy, the managed security provider market is strong and growing, according to the results from an industry study, which expects the MSP market to grow by 13 percent by the end of this year.Market research firm Infonetics (News - Alert) Research released figures and findings from its “Managed Security Services and SaaS” report, which analyzes and forecasts the market for security-as-a-service and CPE- and cloud-based security services managed by service providers for small, medium, and large businesses. The MSP market is being driven by increasing security threats, the use of mobile devices and the shift to the cloud, according to the firm’s research.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research (News - Alert), said that despite the global economic meltdown that began in mid-2008, the security services market is “strong and growing.”

“It's often cheaper for companies to hire a service provider to manage their security than to do it themselves, and with the growing complexity of security solutions, this outsourcing trend will continue,” Wilson said in a statement

Based on the latest research, Infonetics expects the MSP market to grow about 13 percent in 2011, and “see healthy annual growth through at least 2015, when we forecast it to reach $16.8 billion, with the strongest growth coming from the SaaS (News - Alert) segment,” Wilson added.Among the researcher’s other key findings are:

• The security SaaS segment of the market is expected to more than double between 2011 and 2015 as companies wrestle to keep up with the short window they have to protect themselves against Web threats and to protect a geographically diverse user base accessing corporate data and applications from an immense variety of devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, kiosks, etc.).
• By 2015, CPE-based security services revenue will drop to 54 percent of the total managed security market while cloud-based services and SaaS grow to 46 percent (from 38 percent in 2010).
• Small and medium organizations are increasing their spending on managed security services, such that, by 2015, Infonetics expects medium and large business to spend the same amount on security services, and expects small organization spending to grow to more than 1/4 of the global market.

In related news, TMCnet’s Ed Silverstein reported that networks – as well as MSPs – are increasingly important for small businesses.

“Without their networks, most small businesses today are dead in the water,” Mike Byrne, director of MSP for Quest Software, said during a recent interview with MSP News™ Group Editorial Director Erik Linask (News - Alert). Current big markets for the company include medical, legal, and engineering firms, as well as professional services companies – all because of dependency on the network. MSPs may do such tasks as keeping the network up, being responsible for the help desk, or managing a network’s peripheral components.