Australia’s secure content management (SCM) market is expected to double by the end of 2010 as businesses continue to migrate to outsourced services to cut costs, according to an analyst firm.
According to Frost & Sullivan, Australia’s SCM market is projected to grow some 15.9 per cent this year, an increase from 7.7 per cent in 2009, and the firm expects revenues to hit $US110 million by the year’s end.
Frost & Sullivan industry manager, Edison Yu, said enterprises were fast seeing the benefits to the services approach.
“Content security, particularly email filtering, has proven to be a suitable ‘poster-technology’ for security services since diverting emails to a third-party vendor for security scans is generally perceived as having no direct tangible effect on end-user experience,” Yu said in a statement.
“In truth, the ability for such [email security] services to offer enterprises with ‘spam-free’ bandwidth is enticing from an operational, productivity and cost perspective.”
According to the company, Australia and New Zealand’s SCM market will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.2 per cent from 2009 through 2016 with projected revenues of $US288.1 million by the end of that period.
The Asia Pacific SCM market, encompassing 14 countries, including Japan, will have a CAGR of 18.4 per cent from 2009 to 2016, with forecasted revenues of just under $US1.5 billion.
Australian email filtering services are expected to see a compounded growth of 13.5 per cent while web security services will record a CAGR of 22.2 per cent from 2009-2016.
According to Yu, the requirement for enterprises to secure their Web gateways has become of paramount importance across the past two years with the growing take-up of Web technologies.
“The rapid emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the importance of the WebSphere in driving business processes saw companies placing greater emphasis on securing their Web fronts beyond just the traditional URL filtering,” he said in a statement.
According to Yu, Web security will experience significant gains in the coming years with a growth in converged services including anti-malware, application control and data protection being added to the offerings of security vendors.
Additionally, he expects the convergence of technologies to push the integration of content security conditions across both email and Web security while driving the integration with technologies such as data loss protection or network security.
“The ability for content security vendors to offer extensive portfolios of solutions across both email and Web security, along with options for converged platforms, will be key in enhancing their competitiveness in what is an increasingly crowded marketplace,” he said.
“This is especially valuable as enterprises look for defense-in-depth, with simpler management and lower costs.”