SDN and NFV to bring about shift in data center security investments

CAMPBELL, USA: Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest Data Center Security Products report, which tracks data center security appliances and virtual security appliances.

"Historically, data centers have been protected by big-iron security solutions and complex webs of security appliances and load-balancing infrastructure," says Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. "But as more providers virtualize their data centers and roll out SDNs and NFV, we anticipate a fairly significant revenue transition from hardware appliances to virtual appliances and purpose-built security solutions that interface directly with hypervisors, with SDN controllers via APIs, or orchestration platforms."

DATA CENTER SECURITY MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

. The ported virtual security appliances segment of the data center security market grew 10pc in 2013 over 2012, to $437 million

. Meanwhile, sales of purpose-built virtual security appliances totaled $150 million in 2013, up 44pc from the prior year

. Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet are the top 3 revenue share leaders in the data center security appliance market

. Massive interest in SDN- and NFV-compatible security solutions is expected to drive consolidation among established security players, virtualization platform vendors, and specialist vendors

. Infonetics is projecting a cumulative $1.35 billion will be spent on purpose-built virtual security appliances from 2014 to 2018