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Security
By Aaron Tan, ZDNet Asia
Security software companies like Symantec and Trend Micro, as well as managed security service providers like IBM and Tata Consultancy Services, have reason to smile.
Despite the pressure on IT head honchos to do more with less, one area that is not likely to see budget cuts is security. According to Gartner, security was the one item that faced the least budget cuts, even as companies scaled down their IT spending.
In a separate Gartner survey on Asia-Pacific IT budget trends in 2004, enhancing security was rated by respondents to be the most likely initiative to be undertaken in most industries and markets. Most respondents also rated this initiative as having the highest priority in terms of budget allocation.
The hype about cyber terrorism may also have given businesses reason to loosen purse strings on security. Also, regulatory requirements presented by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will continue to keep security from being a target of budget cuts among businesses.
Gartner predicts that antivirus, content filtering and access management will be the fastest-growing product categories through to 2007.
Antivirus vendors are also most likely to benefit from strong consumer buying, because of higher consumer awareness of security protection. And spam, a rising concern among enterprises, will drive the demand for content filtering, such as Web filtering tools.
Overall, the security software market in the Asia-Pacific region will hit US$1.3 billion in 2008, a compound annual growth rate of 19 percent, according to IDC figures. The biggest markets in the region are Australia, Korea and China.
Enterprises have always been the focus of security software vendors as large projects are often the most lucrative, IDC noted. However, this segment is becoming very competitive with few untapped opportunities. Vendors are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate their offerings, given the dearth of technological breakthroughs in the last 12 months, resulting in intense price competition, and subsequently declining margins.
As such, IDC has observed vendors introduce a flurry of SMB-tailored security solutions in the past 18 months. Solutions that come with bundled features, are easy to deploy, and take into account the resource and technology constraints of SMBs, have been well-received by the market.
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Top Tech 50 companies in Security
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Altiris
Altiris was founded in 1998 to develop tools that reduce the cost and complexity of managing the IT lifecycle.
Emerson
Consumers, homes and businesses rely on Emerson for a myriad of things. Founded in the United States in 1890, Emerson is a global company that uses technology and engineering to provide innovative solutions for a wide range of industrial, commercial, and consumer markets.
F5 Networks
Best known for its server load balancers, F5 Networks pioneered the traffic management market. Its load-balancing switches, working behind the scenes, ensure traffic loads are evenly distributed across Web servers.
IBM
Over the last 10 years, IBM has succeeded in transitioning from a mainframe systems company to a top provider of IT business services. This business now accounts for about half of its revenues.
Intel
Intel is one heavyweight difficult to bring down, despite fervent and highly-publicized attempts by its rivals to do so.
Microsoft
This company needs no introduction. What started in 1975 as two college boys' aspiration to turn PCs into useful machines, Microsoft has since blasted its way into becoming a key player in the software industry today.
Motorola
These days, you'd probably know Motorola from its slender clamshell RAZR V3 mobile phone, or for introducing the world's first commercial handheld cellular phone, the Motorola DynaTAC, in 1983.
NEC
An industry veteran, NEC was founded in Japan in 1899. Originally known as Nippon Electric Company, the company's early business dealt with the production, sales and maintenance of telephones and switches. Its global expansion took place in the 1950s, with the setting up of Nippon Electric New York (now NEC America). It was also during this period that NEC ventured into computing systems.
Nokia
Cellphone giant Nokia is continuing to expand worldwide. In April, it announced that it would start a manufacturing facility for mobile devices in Chennai, India--its tenth production facility globally.
Qualcomm
As the inventor of the CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) standard, Qualcomm has been reeling in big bucks in recent years as operators around the world started rolling out third-generation (3G) cellular networks based on wideband CDMA.
Symantec
An ambitious Symantec has been beefing up its security prowess and expanding its offerings through acquisitions.
Tata Consultancy Services
A company as old as Tata Consultancy Services risks being overshadowed by hungrier newcomers, but the software-services giant, founded in 1968, knows exactly how to edge forward.
Trend Micro
In just over a decade, Trend Micro has established itself as one of the key players in secure content management.
ZDNet Asia Top Tech categories
Systems | Networking and communications | Storage management | Security | Software Infrastructure | Services | Business applications | Internet services
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