On 4 January 2007, Cisco announced a definitive agreement to acquire IronPort Systems, a provider of enterprise messaging security products.
The IronPort acquisition will allow Cisco to move into the fast-growing e-mail security market, which is currently valued at approximately $850 million and growing at a rate of approximately 40% annually. The key technology value that Cisco will receive is a strategic foundation on which to begin building a security infrastructure for unified communications, including e-mail.
Gartner Analysis : The consolidation in the e-mail security market is now almost complete. Other vendors will find it difficult to compete with industry leaders Cisco, Microsoft and Symantec in the enterprise market. IBM and (potentially) Juniper Networks are the only other major vendors that have a strategic interest in this market, though BorderWare and Proofpoint remain as respected independent players. Gartner believes the two remaining service providers, MessageLabs and Postini, will likely be acquired by telecom providers in their respective markets.
Extracted from Gartner – IronPort Buy Will Make Cisco a Major E-Mail Security Player
Written on 09 January 2007
by Dicontas Blog Admin under
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Tagged with BorderWare, Cisco, email-security, email_filtering, IBM, IronPort, Juniper-Networks, market-growth, MessageLabs, microsoft, postini, Proofpoint, Symantec
“We expect compliance and policy management solutions to be protecting 110 million mailboxes worldwide by year end 2006, up 78 percent from 2005,” writes Masha Khmartseva, principal analyst of the Radicati Group, in a recent report. By 2010, the firm expects to see 517 mailboxes protected worldwide.
According to the Radicati report, the worldwide market for compliance and policy management solutions will be “over $505 million by the end of 2006, up 38 percent from 2005.” By 2010, the annual revenues will reach $1.7 billion.
The Radicati Group has put the 2006 worldwide revenue figure for outsourced email archiving at $248 million; but by 2009, the firm predicts that figure will be $1.3 billion.
The prospect of saving money in litigation searches, avoiding fines and lawsuits, could tip the scales in favor of outsourcing. For many firms, adding compliance and email security products on top of archiving could mean added cost and complexity, particularly given the costs of filtering software, which can be $25 per seat. (See Stop That Email!.)
End Result? If services function as promised, expect to see outsourcing grow in popularity as an email management option.
Frost & Sullivan finds that the World Content Filtering Market earned revenues of $1.31 billion in 2005 and estimates to reach $4.86 billion by 2012.
The content filtering market is taking over the IM market as well, since most IM vendors have been bought by content filtering vendors and most content filtering vendors now possess IM filtering capabilities. The diversification trend also applies to delivery modes. Earlier, vendors delivered solutions in the form of either software, appliances or managed services. This trend has changed and vendors are now offering two or three of the options of software, appliances and managed services.
Vendors that are competing in only web or email filtering and rely on a single delivery mode are rightfully concerned about their competitive potential. In such a scenario, considering mergers and acquisitions, or partnering in order to diversify their product offerings will prove beneficial. Diversification strategies can include both web and email filtering, strengthening outbound email filtering capabilities, or adding hardware and/or hosted services to product portfolios.