APAC leads unified threat management growth

Asia-Pacific was the fastest growing market for unified threat management (UTM) tools last year, clocking 31.8 percent increase in revenue, compared to the global average of 19.6 percent, according to a report by Gartner.

Released Monday, the report said Asia-Pacific UTM revenue reached US$204 million in 2011, up from US$155 million in 2010. Gartner said this growth was primarily driven by SECUI, an Asia-Pacific focused UTM vendor, as well as managed security vendors in the region which focused on monitoring and maintenance of UTM products as part of their overall security services portfolio.

Korea-based SECUI's saw the strongest growth among market players worldwide, increasing its revenue 59 percent year-on-year, the report said. The UTM vendor, which had a 4.4 percent global marketshare last year, is looking to expand globally and target the U.S. market.

Worldwide, UTM revenue reached almost US$1.2 billion in 2011, a growth of 19.6 percent from US$972 million in 2010, said Gartner. North America was the largest market for UTM products with US$431 million in revenues last year, an increase of 15.5 percent from US$373 million the previous year.

"The UTM market is in the midst of a transition of its customers from older technologies, such as stateful firewall inspection, to the latest next-generation firewall technology supporting application control capabilities," said Lawrence Pingree, research director at Gartner.

"Many UTM vendors delivered new products during the last several years, with some vendors performing product refresh efforts to their UTM portfolios while others worked to expand their small or midsize business offerings and wireless UTM offerings," Pingree said.