As more businesses and enterprises move toward hosted and cloud-based solutions, strength of security has surfaced as a driving factor in terms of adoption.

 

According to the Infonetics Research User Plans for Content Security study, the majority of respondents said the current global economic climate is not forcing them to cut content security spending, noting that compliance projects must continue and the fundamental need to protect confidential information and contain threats remains. Sixty percent of respondents planning to roll out a SaaS (News - Alert) solution cited strength of security as a chief driver.

 

“When we asked companies what kind of products they are using to combat viruses, spyware and adware, most said they use a mix of host products, gateway appliances and gateway software, including purchased standalone software products and licensed SaaS clients,” said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for network security at Infonetics Research. “This phenomenon is one of the biggest drivers for many companies to move to hosted and cloud-based solutions; appliance sprawl and large and unwieldy client deployments are time consuming and expensive, and the promise of moving that headache off to somebody else is very tempting.”

 

Cisco rated highest overall in user ratings of content security manufacturers, but only by a slight margin for most criteria, followed by Symantec. According to Infonetics, ratings are based on eight criteria: technology, product roadmap, security, management, price-to-performance ratio, pricing, financial stability, and service and support.

 

Other highlights of the study include:

 

·         Cost is the number-one barrier affecting customer deployment of new content security solutions

·         The combination of the high cost of multi-box solutions and the current economic environment has driven cost to the top of the list

·         Respondents show a good increase in plans for virtual appliance deployments

 

According to a recent report from Gartner, worldwide software as a service revenue will reach $7.5 billion in 2009, a 17.7 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $6.4 billion. The market will show consistent growth through 2013 when worldwide SaaS revenue will total over $14 billion for the enterprise application markets.

 

The study features brand awareness and ratings of content security manufacturers and hosted/cloud-based service providers, including scorecards revealing user perceptions of their strengths and weaknesses, top vendors and providers, plans for switching vendors, selection criteria, and most important product and service features.

 

Companies named in the study include 3Com (News - Alert)/TippingPoint, AT&T, Anchiva, Barracuda, Blue Coat, Check Point, Cisco, Citrix, eSoft, F5 Networks, Facetime, Fortinet, Google, IBM/ISS, IronPort, Juniper, Kaspersky Labs, McAfee, Microsoft, MX Logic, Panda, Perimeter eSecurity, Postini, ScanSafe (News - Alert), Secure Computing, SonicWALL, Symantec, Trend Micro, WatchGuard, Websense and zScaler.

 

Infonetics’ content security study provides analysis on organizations deploying content security over the next two years, and their plans for protecting against Web, IM and e-mail threats, and from viruses, spyware, malware, data leakage, and other content-related attacks. The study is based on interviews with purchase decision makers at 240 U.S. and Canadian small, medium, and large organizations, also covers trends, drivers, barriers, expenditures and more.