Security Spending For Virtualized Environments To Spike

Many companies are moving to a virtualized server infrastructure to take advantage of the overabundance of computing resources in their networks, save energy and cost, and make their IT infrastructure more robust, but they are starting to realize that this may all come at the expense of security, according to a survey.

Key findings:

--  The virtual server security market is new and fragmented, marked by a mix of vendors, including virtualization vendors, application and database vendors, server and data center heavy hitters, client security players, and network security vendors

--  The top three drivers for deploying new security solutions for virtualized environments are preventing new threats specific to virtual environments, preventing inter-virtual machine (inter-VM) threats, and maintaining secure server configurations

--  The confluence of media hype, maturing product offerings, and strong buyer interest will make 2011 the year brand leadership and mindshare are established in the virtualized infrastructure security market, followed by a breakout spending year in 2012

--  Respondent companies expect to spend an average of 51 percent more on security for virtualized environments in 2012 than they did in 2010

Comment from Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research: While the market leader in the data center/cloud security space is at this point undecided, at the center of the leadership puzzle is the emerging segment of security solutions for virtualized environments. Microsoft, Cisco, and VMware lead in brand awareness and strength overall now, but this is only one (admittedly early) piece of the virtualization/data center security leadership puzzle. It's possible that when it comes down to who will actually be able to best monetize security solutions for virtualized environments, players with much lower brand presence will do better than some of the players with stronger overall brands, if they deliver a better product.

About the survey: Market research firm Infonetics Research polled end-user companies that have deployed server virtualization about their buying plans for security.The survey, Security for Virtualized Infrastructure: North American Enterprise Survey, is a 20-page report of buyer plans, deployment drivers, budgets, strategies, and ratings of vendors in the space. The survey includes respondent ratings of Check Point, Cisco, Juniper/Altor, Microsoft, Reflex, and VMware on 8 criteria: security, technology, product roadmap, management, price-to-performance ratio (value), pricing, financial stability, and service and support. Vendors named by respondents in open-ended questions or rated when prompted include Check Point, Cisco, Citrix, Crossbeam, F5 Networks, HP, IBM, Juniper/Altor, McAfee, Microsoft, Oracle, Reflex, Symantec, and VMware.

Contact: http://www.infonetics.com