Security Software Still Selling Like Hotcakes

Published: October 5, 2009

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In the spring of 2008, the analysts who track what is hot and what is not at Gartner said that, despite what then was a slowing economy that had not turned into a meltdown, sales of security software would be one of the bright spots in 2008 and beyond. And as it turns out, this is still true.

Gartner is now projecting that the worldwide security software market is going to grow by 8 percent this year, to $14.5 billion. While security software sales certainly took a hit in 2009, considering sales had grown by 19 percent from the $11.3 billion level hit in 2007 to reach $13.4 billion in 2008, an 8 percent sales increase in 2009 is like hitting a grand slam in terms of IT revenues. And perhaps more significantly for the IT budgets and vendor sales next year, Gartner is projecting that global security software sales will accelerate by 13 percent in 2010, reaching $16.3 billion.

"Although the worldwide security software market is affected by the economic downturn, the growth will continue to be strong in 2009 as security remains a critical area where drastic cuts cannot be afforded," explained Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner who monitors security software. "In the medium term, the greatest growth opportunities will come from software as a service (SaaS), appliance based offering and small and medium businesses (SMBs), which are in security catch-up mode compared with large companies and therefore spend a higher percentage of their budgets on security."

Gartner breaks down the security software in this manner. In 2009, enterprise-level security software, which copes with endpoint protection, email security, user provisioning, and other corporate jobs, will account for $10.9 billion in sales, rising by 9 percent compared to last year. Consumer security products will account for about a quarter of total revenues worldwide, at $3.6 billion, and is only growing at 4 percent.

If you want to drill down into the security software racket, you can check out Gartner's latest report, Market Trends: Security Markets, Worldwide, 2007-2013, here.

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