Dell’Oro Group says the traditional approach of deploying hardware ‘just doesn’t cut it anymore’, as the market for virtual and SaaS network security clocks its twentieth consecutive quarter of growth.

According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the worldwide market for virtual and SaaS based network security solutions clocked 20% revenue growth in Q1, which we’re told was over twice as strong as traditional network security hardware appliances.

Cloud-centric, or virtual/SaaS-based network security products may take the form of firewalls, security service edge (SSE), secure web gateway (SWG), and web application firewalls (WAF), and Dell’Oro says enterprises are increasingly turning away from hardware in favour of them.

“The shift to a cloud-centric IT architecture created a seismic shift in how enterprises consume network security technology with virtual- and SaaS-based network solutions grabbing the limelight,” said Mauricio Sanchez, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “In a world where applications, data, and users are all over the globe, the traditional approach of deploying hardware just doesn’t cut it anymore, and it’s the flexibility and agility of software and cloud-delivered form factors that are the better fit for the modern enterprise.”

In terms of the big market players, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, and Akamai accounted for over a third of the virtual and SaaS network security market. Zscaler was the top vendor in the SSE market, which is entirely SaaS-based (cloud-delivered), Palo Alto Networks made gains due to successes in the SSE and virtual firewall markets, and Akamai was the top dog in the SaaS-based WAF market.

We’ve been inundated with warnings that security threats from all sorts of nefarious actors are on the rise for some time now, and enterprises have even been encouraged by President Biden no less to ensure make sure their houses are in order, as well as a host of security agencies on both sides of the pond. This climate will not have hurt the fortunes of firms trading in cutting edge security tools.

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