Madhura Mukherjee

NEW DELHI, INDIA:The network security market segment this year has witnessed a growth of 21.6 per cent, taking the overall Indian network security revenue to Rs 900 crore. The revenue last year stood at Rs 740 crore. The growth from last fiscal is driven by company's gaining awareness of the importance of security services and hence, investing in it.

This year, the market leaders in the network security services segment was HCL Comnet, posted a revenue figure of Rs 120 crore. The company's network security arm has a market share of 13.3 per cent. A section of its 14.3 per cent growth from last year is attributed to government projects that the company has achieved this year.

Taking the second place is, Datacraft, which posted a revenue of Rs 102 crore, a 7.4 per cent growth and a market share of 11.3 per cent. Datacraft is followed by network security giant, Fortinet, which according to VOICE&DATA estimates, has garnered a 12.5 per cent growth, taking its figure up to a healthy Rs 72 crore for last fiscal. While the company has grown in the services sector, this year, they have made a conscious effort to bring out more products in the ever-challenging network security market.

The network security market in India is coming of age, largely driven by the businesses recognizing the importance of security. Some of the major players in the network security sectors include Cisco, HCL Comnet, Juniper Networks, Elitecore Technologies, Fortinet, Wipro, Sify and Datacraft amongst others.

Growth Drivers

The earliest adopters of network security have primarily been the banking and finance verticals, closely followed by the ITeS and BPO sectors. Traditional enterprises, namely retail, health and education are now gradually catching up with the market tempo. Enterprise customers are a high priority target market since a substantial volume of sensitive information and e-commerce transactions are exchanged over corporate networks and the Internet daily. Large corporations with 10,000 employees are expected to be the top network security spenders, with security budgets increasing proportionately to the company sizes. However, in the slowdown phase, the enterprise segment became strict with regard to their IT budget.

The BFSI sector remained the leading adopter of network security solutions in 2009, followed closely by service providers and the government sector. Government agencies are a particularly lucrative market for the information security industry since they are major directories of highly sensitive information.

Market Trends

This year, the buzzword of the industry has been data center consolidation and virtualization with regard to cloud models. In terms of security, multiple vendors and multiple technology developers are moving towards products and technologies that will have the ability to recognize these virtual machines and virtual connections to keep track of the users on one end and virtual infrastructure on the other end. Hence, a lot of network security solution vendors have integrated this cloud model in their offerings.

Another emerging trend in this segment is WLAN. With 3G and WiMax technology setting in, telecom operators now need to carry not just voice but also data, which opens a whole new ground for network security threats from hackers, viruses, trojans, and more. There is more traffic, and hence higher probability of security attacks coming in from online sources increasing the need for a secure network.

Key Players

Cisco is one of the biggest players in the network security arena. Among the new technologies, Cisco's Secure Borderless Network architecture deserves a mention. Apart from that, the vendor has also announced an AnyConnect Secure Mobility Solution, which integrates functionality across the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client. Keeping the new trends in mind, the company introduced significant enhancements to its cloud security platform last year. Cisco's 2009 acquisitions included PostPath, which is the provider of email and calendaring software; Jabber, a provider of presence and messaging software; and Tidal Software, a provider of data center solutions.

Fortinet, an established player, has emerged as the worldwide UTM market leader. This year, the vendor introduced an offering for the WLAN market. FortiAP is a secure enterprise class WLAN strategy, which works in conjunction with FortiGate multi-threat security appliances, acting as the thin access-point controller to provide a single platform that combines wireless networking with integrated network protection.

Juniper announced the OEM agreements with Dell to offer networking solutions under Dell's PowerConnect brand, and with IBM to resell Juniper's Ethernet networking products and support IBM's data center customers. In addition, they entered into a joint venture with Nokia Siemens Networks to develop and resell joint carrier Ethernet solutions.