By Paul Kunert
23 September 2008
Cisco is running away with the security hardware sector in Western Europe following a quarter that saw market revenues reach a record high despite a decline in the number of systems sold.
According to IDC data for the second quarter 2008, security appliance unit sales in the region declined 3.2% year-on-year with almost 144,000 boxes shipped, as factory revenues rose 19.9% to reach a $373m milestone.
“[During] this last quarter, the security appliance market in Western Europe reached its highest ever result in terms of factory revenue due to the exceptional results of high-end appliances,” said IDC analyst Roman Fouchereau.
The banking and telco as well as the public sector all refreshed their security infrastructure with “newer, high-speed, high-end security appliances”, he added.
Broken down into market segments, UTM was the largest space with total revenues of $113m, representing growth of 14.6% and the firewall/VPN arena grew 24.8% to $106.5m.
In contrast IDS appliances revenues decreased 33.7% to $6.61m as the market shifted to IPS, which soared 31.7% to $85.3m, largely driven by PCI compliance - a trend IDC reckoned will continue with more compliance issues heading to Europe.
The vendor line-up showed that Cisco is striding away with the market, having posted 31.4% growth handing it 29% of market revenues. It was followed by Juniper, with 7.9% market share after a 3.7% decline in turnover to $29.5m.
