The Asia-Pacific managed security services (MSS) market is forecast to exceed $4bn by end-2015, with revenues rising at a compounded growth rate of 19.7% annually for the next five years, according to a new study by Frost & Sullivan.
The firm expects growing adoption for MSS by small and medium businesses (SMBs). The market – covering 14 Asia-Pac countries, including Japan – grew an estimated 15% in 2009, clocking revenues of just over $1.31bn. By the end of 2010, revenues are expected to hit close to US$1.55bn, rising 18.2% over last year.
According to Frost & Sullivan, large enterprises that have historically been the biggest consumers of IT services, are likely remain so for a long time. This sector made up the bulk of MSS users in 2009 at approximately 75% of the region’s revenues. The monitoring/management services, which include round-the-clock monitoring and log analysis, are the most outsourced functions, accounting for about half of the total MSS revenues in 2009.
Cathy Huang, industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said: They large enterprises prefer instead to outsource the remote monitoring and management element of their security needs while hosting the infrastructure in-house.
The managed model is a compelling option for SMBs who can ill-afford large capital expenditure (CAPEX) on security solutions, nor cope with the complexity of an endless onslaught of newer and increasingly targeted threats.
The past two years saw many companies trimming their IT budgets and looking for more cost-effective ways of meeting their IT needs; network security included. Hosted security services would appeal to the SMB sector even more when the service is bundled with other Internet or communications services.
