McAfee tops in corporate anti-virus solutions

BANGALORE: McAfee Security, a division of Network Associates, has been named as the market leader in corporate anti-virus software solutions by technology research and analyst firm IDC.

The report titled "Antivirus Software 2002: A Segmentation of the Market " confirms McAfee Security's leadership in the corporate anti-virus software solutions market for the fifth consecutive year, a statement from Network Associates claimed.

"McAfee Security continues to be the dominant anti-virus vendor in the corporate space," said IDC eBusiness Infrastructure and Internet Security services program vice president Chris Christiansen. "It's evident that enterprise customers depend on McAfee Security solutions to provide manageable virus protection for today's demanding ebusiness environments."

Network Associates Country Manager SAARC Vishwajeet Deshmukh, said, "As an organisation, we have always been focussed on the enterprise segment. With our frontrunner, the McAfee Active Virus Defence offering key features as enforcement of security policy, ease of management of desktops over a LAN/WAN environment and excellent graphical reporting capabilities, it provides for 'must have' features that IT administrators typically look for. It is not surprising therefore to see ourselves as the leader in the anti-virus segment."

According to the report, in 2001 the corporate anti-virus market reached over $1.2 billion, a 23 percent increase over 2000 figures that represented 72 percent of the total anti-virus software market. McAfee secured the highest combined total revenue generated from the sale of anti-virus technology for the client, server and gateway platforms, including products such as VirusScan, Desktop Firewall, GroupShield, NetShield, WebShield Appliances and ePolicy Orchestrator.

Over the next five years, IDC expects the corporate share of the market to continue to increase, reaching nearly $2.7 billion by 2006. Cyber attacks from blended threats on corporate networks, both wired and wireless, will continue to become more sophisticated and more frequent and the increased acceptance of Internet-enabled mobile devices, also susceptible to security concerns will generate revenue growth.

"This annual report from IDC reaffirms our successful continued leadership in the anti-virus corporate software solutions market," said McAfee Security senior director of product marketing Michael Callahan. "These results prove to us that we are on target with providing world-class products to our customers that enable them to leverage the Internet to grow their business, with the knowledge that they are protected against the virus threats that continue to plague corporate networks."