Frost & Sullivan: Cisco, Check Point, Fortinet and Juniper recognised as champions in the Network Firewall Frost IQ matrix in Asia Pacific
~ Increasing demand for network firewall vendors and the emergence of value-added services in a market forecasted to reach US$2.9 billion by 2019
SINGAPORE, Nov. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Across the Asia Pacific region, key trends such as cloud computing, enterprise mobility and mobile technology matched by rising business activity have led to more enterprises seeking to expand their networks. This has in turn led to rising demand for network firewalls.
Frost & Sullivan has evaluated the top eight network firewall vendors in the Asia Pacific region and assessed them using the Frost Industry Quotient (Frost IQ) matrix. The Frost IQ matrix comprises of four quadrants: champions, challengers, defenders and explorers.
The Frost Industry Quotient - Frost IQ, is a proprietary Frost & Sullivan vendor assessment tool that accurately operationalises and captures the merits and challenges faced by technology vendors in their respective segments and geographies. The tool aims to provide key decision makers with a localised yet objective perspective of the industry in a highly heterogeneous business environment.
In the Frost IQ for Asia Pacific Network Firewall Vendors 2013, Cisco, Check Point, Fortinet and Juniper have been positioned in the champions' quadrant, based on a combination of market share performance and future growth strategies as determined by Frost & Sullivan research studies.
Network security has rapidly become a top IT investment priority for many organisations in the Asia Pacific region. It remains a major foundation and critical component in enterprise security architecture.
The status of the network firewall as the crucial component in the area of network security is also likely to bolster related investments over the next few years. This is especially so given the rapid emergence of integrated appliances, which are able to offer greater value and more defense-in-depth capabilities. Trends such as virtualisation, cloud computing and software-defined networking are also expected to drive greater adoption of the software form factor.
Edison Yu, Associate Director, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific says, "The strong demand recorded in the network firewall segment can be attributed to the fresh perspectives introduced over the past few years in this segment of the security market, be it more application-centric feature sets, or high performance integrated platforms."
Besides technological capabilities, the network firewall market has also witnessed the emergence of value-added services, as vendors seek to differentiate themselves by offering greater value to customers. These services can range from visibility and forensics reports to advisory services looking at risk management.
Yu added, "Enterprises in Asia Pacific are increasingly looking at vendors to offer value-added services to better optimise the value they are getting out of their product investments. Moving forward, this places the onus on vendors to not only focus on product development, but to continually enhance the calibre of service offerings that they are providing to enterprise customers."
In 2012, the network firewall market in the Asia Pacific region was largely dominated by four main players in terms of their market share performance; Cisco, Check Point, Juniper and Fortinet. In total, the top four vendors accounted for almost 70 per cent of the revenue generated in the segment.
From a future growth perspective, the Frost IQ also recognises the efforts of Fortinet, Check Point and Palo Alto Networks in raising the bar in the network firewall market, be it with regards to the technological excellence they have shown, or in the effective go-to-market strategies they have adopted.
Despite the dominant position of the top four global vendors, domestic players from China and South Korea are steadily emerging in the Asia Pacific region. These include the likes of Topsec and Neusoft, both of which are China-based and are featured in the Frost IQ.
Emerging markets continue to present strong market growth rates with Indonesia, India and Vietnam recognised as the fastest growing network firewall markets in the Asia Pacific region, posting year on year (YoY) growth rates of 25.6 per cent, 21.6 per cent and 20.3 per cent respectively.
"With the barriers to entry for the network firewall market significantly lower in such markets, many Asian-based security vendors have set up business here (in emerging markets) with their ability to offer competitive pricing a major part of their appeal," states Yu.
The Frost IQ (FIQ) for Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Network Firewall Vendors 2013, covers firewall and/or IPSec VPN on a single platform across different form factors in the Asia Pacific region. The base year of the study is CY2012. The parameters used to determine relative positioning on the FIQ matrix include market share, product/service strategy, people/skills strategy, ecosystem and business strategy.
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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
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