NAC appliance market to grow 84pc in four years

CALIFORNIA, USA: The network access control (NAC) enforcement appliance market is in transition, moving from the promise of a great standalone opportunity to the reality of 2010, says Infonetics Research.

Worldwide NAC enforcement appliance revenue has increased sequentially for the past 4 quarters. Infonetics predicts NAC appliance revenue will increase 24 percent in 2010 over 2009, and another 84 percent between 2010 and 2014, when it will near $400 million worldwide.

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Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security, Infonetics Research, said: "NAC enforcement appliances are a niche opportunity with a relatively low revenue ceiling. This transition isn't about a decrease in interest in NAC: the drivers for deploying NAC solutions are still very much here. It's just that many companies are turning to built-in NAC functionality in infrastructure (especially switches) or to software and management tools."

The NAC appliance market peaked in 2008 just north of $250 million, and after the meltdown of 2009, it will climb back to a modest $400 million or so by 2014.

NAC appliance spending is expected to reach its previous 2008 peak levels by 2011. The long-term drivers for deploying NAC technology (regulation and compliance, growth in number of threats, and the smartphone explosion) in large part are divorced from macroeconomic drivers.

The remaining standalone NAC vendors are expected to either expand into new technology markets or get acquired by a larger security company.