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(PRIORITIES2008) consolidation
Where Are All the Startups?
Priorities respondents aren't reluctant to buy security from an infrastructure player.
Are we soon going to look back at 2007 as the year it all started--the year the security industry started to slip away?
RSA, ISS, Cybertrust, IronPort, SPI Dynamics and Watchfire all have been acquired in the last 20 months--all by traditional IT companies. The number of big standalone security companies is dwindling, and according to the 700 who answered a Priorities 2008 question about consolidation, that's just fine.
Companies like IBM, EMC, HP and Cisco have been spending billions on security. Enterprises with established relationships with these vendors aren't reluctant to extend those relationships to security.
"I wouldn't discount the one-throat-to-choke aspect, if you've got an existing relationship with an infrastructure provider," says Andrew Braunberg, research director at Cur- rent Analysis.
"[For example], Cisco shops are a pretty loyal customer base. As long as Cisco can make these security solutions available to its installed base without having to do radical upgrades and add capabilities to an existing device without a major up-grade, that's an attractive sell."
We asked and you answered loudly. Almost 60 percent of respondents say they'd be reluctant to buy new products from smaller security vendors or startups, while 75 percent say they would not be reluctant to buy new products from a vendor that had been acquired, a la RSA or ISS.
Braunberg cautions it is early.
"You hear so much emphasis on the UTM market, you'd think UTM is a good case study in this distinction between best-of-breed, standalone and suites, but we get mixed results from our clients," he says. "UTM spending is a low priority, and it makes us wonder where people want this functionality to reside; whether it's pushed into the network or OS infrastructure, or into the cloud and away from the network perimeter with carriers providing SLAs."
--MICHAEL S. MIMOSO
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