Security proving a secure market

Louise Durack.

The security market continues to grow unabated, and with new business areas frequently arising, along with the increasing amounts of data that companies amass (and the growing legislation requiring them to keep it secure), there seems little chance of things slowing down.

A review conducted by IDC has estimated that over 80 percent of all security software in Australia and New Zealand was sold through the channel in 2007. Senior analyst for security solutions, Patrik Bihammar, confirms that the channel is crucial to the security vendor community as it is the “frontline of understanding customer needs as they often own the customer relationship”.

“Unlike the enterprise market in which vendors can closely manage the relationships with their largest clients, the majority of SMBs are managed indirectly through partners,” he said.

Bihammar agrees it is important for vendors to continue on their path of building strong and sustainable partnerships with the channel in order to gain and maintain market share.

One reason for the expansion is the exponential growth in the amount of data that has to be stored and secured. This, coupled with the regulatory compliance such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, is driving the demand for large amounts of storage, and ultimately robust security solutions.

Range of opportunity

There is certainly a wide landscape full of opportunities for resellers within the security market. From end point security and security management to network security and compliance and data loss prevention (DLP), resellers have a whole range of areas – both established and emerging – from which to choose to concentrate their efforts in.

But which offering and vertical markets provide the most chance to excel and more importantly, how many areas should a reseller specialise in, in order to call themselves a specialist?