Demand rockets for cloud security

Beverley Head
Thursday, 15 December 2011 10:13

Demand for cloud based security services has taken off like a rocket in Australia with the market now valued at $38.4 million.

According to Frost & Sullivan demand for security as a service has soared 17.2 per cent during the year, with predictions that the market will continue to grow, reaching $83 million by 2016. However Andrew Milroy, vice president of the ICT practice in APAC, has warned that there might be a dip in demand in 2012 given market uncertainty related to the current global financial situation.

The analyst claims part of the reason for the rise this year has been a drive by organisations to move to an operating expense, rather than capital expense model for IT investments. It also claims that organisations have been challenged to find security skills for in-house positions which has forced them to consider a move to cloud based security.

The analyst identifies the major local players as Symantec.cloud, Websense, ZScaler, Cisco, Trend Micro, McAfee, Microsoft and Google.