THINGS ARE JUST BEGINNING TO hot up in the IT security industry.
We are seeing the consolidation of numerous smaller security companies by the larger players. Another move hightlights that security organisations are changing with the times. Some are evolving from being a pure enterprise portfolio to one that also encompasses the strategic SMB market.
CRN talks to John Walters, director, commercial and solutions division at Ingram Micro, who has witnessed these events
first hand.
CRN: How do you view the current IT security landscape in Australia?
JW: From a general channel perspective, this has been a huge growth area and will be for a number of years. I have seen more consolidation from the likes of McAfee and Symantec, who are building product sets to encompass the enterprise, mid-market and SMBs. These guys are offering more under their vendor banner.
These consolidations haven't shrunk the security market, instead a lot of smaller companies have popped up as well. From a reseller perspective, the changes in the marketplace have had an interesting impact as vendors have more of a holistic approach to security. Vendors such as McAfee and Symantec spread themselves from the big end of town to the individual home user.
CRN: What are the main areas of security that are driving the sector?
JW: I think it is a combination of hardware and software. With the emergence of IP phones, IPTV, biometrics and IP telephony, companies need to look at not one vendor, but multiple vendors for an all-encompassing solution. At an enterprise level, the big guys are looking at governance, the needs of the board of directors and disaster recovery. Going down to the SOHO and home-user level issues such as spam, AV security and desktop security is what's driving the whole thing.
CRN: How does our market differ from the rest of the world?
JW: It's a challenge to live in a large country such as Australia because the majority of the country's population lives along the coast. This creates a lot of remote offices and for most companies, security presents a particular problem.
More and more people are moving out of cities and into remote regions and setting up small businesses, which need security solutions. These businesses need to have the right solution for remote settings. That brings up other issues such as how do you get good security at that level?
In these regions, the majority of service providers are all things to all people and they might not have a deep understanding of security products.
CRN: What can resellers expect in the next six months?
JW: I think there will be continuing consolidation. One interesting form of security to emerge in the past couple of years is Software as a Service (SaaS), which is gaining momentum in America and Asia. For a software security vendor, the application allows for variable cost opportunities not offered to smaller organisations.
In Australia, the question of who will be the providers will be through an ASP - which could lead to bandwidth issues. The other big thing centres around data storage and vendors such as EMC and Symantec have started to address that with acquisitions.
CRN: What do you think the security sector will look like in three to five years?
JW: Bigger players in the security market will be tackling enterprise-level solutions through consolidation. Security vendors in the SMB space will be looking for ease of understanding, ease of implementation and ease of manageability products for their end-users. With consolidation, niche players will emerge, just because you close one door, then another one will open another. Hackers will become quicker at releasing bugs and finding holes in software gaps and throwing something into that gap. Vendors will need to be able to isolate and lock it down in remote areas instead of allowing it to spread, rather then locking down the whole system. It's much like a military organisation - if something happens then there will be a quick reaction team to allow only relative traffic to the incident. The security market is the same.
CRN: What would you recommend to a reseller looking to succeed in security?
JW: I think they have to have a holistic view - no one vendor can provide one solution. Most decent companies would want layering effect, with two or three solutions to protect the organisation. Then resellers need to be able to understand how to manage a holistic approach and redefine themselves from a product fulfilment partner to an integrator.
CRN: What is the standout technology in this field at the moment?
JW: The area I think will be the biggest challenge is the storage of data. For most corporates the area which is exploding is email and I think there will be significant enhancement to the whole email issue including, spam, archiving and retrieval
from viruses - which are expanding at
a rapid rate.
CRN: There are a number of security vendors - is this market being congested?
JW: Market dynamics will always sort itself out and there has been a lot of big consolidation from Symantec and Veritas, EMC and RSA.
However it's a market with innovation, focus, growth and dynamics.
Different view on security
To show the need for diverse security products Ingram Micro took on the distribution of products by Swann Communications. The home-grown vendor is a provider of security monitoring solutions and IT peripherals targeting consumers through retail channels.
The company's products are mainly do-it-yourself (DIY) product packaging aimed at home, office and small-to-medium retail users. For customers needing more high-tech solutions, Swann Communications also has a range of products including wireless connectivity, professional quality CCTV cameras with infra-red night vision, digital video recording with motion detection and networkability, web surveillance and remote notification.Swann Communications serves 70 major blue-chip retailers, including Harvey Norman and Good Guys.
Mathew Sanderson, director of products at Ingram Micro said taking on
the distribution of Swann Communications is a fantastic opportunity for Ingram Micro.
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