2013/08/08 Network upgrades forcing enterprises to buy faster firewalls

Campbell, CALIFORNIA, August 2, 2013—Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its new High-End Firewall Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey, which explores the drivers, strategies and technology choices that are shaping enterprises’ use of high-end firewalls.

“Without a doubt, the move to faster network technologies is forcing enterprises to look at upgrading every moving part of their IT infrastructure, firewalls included,” explains Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. “Many enterprise buyers are eyeing firewall products with 100G-plus aggregate throughput and support for 40G and 100G ports over the next year.”

• Buyers have a need for speed: Upgrading to high-speed network interfaces on security appliances was named as the #1 driver for investing in high-end firewalls by over 3/4 of enterprises surveyed
• Security leads the list of criteria for selecting a high-end firewall supplier by a wide margin
• 57% of respondents plan to spend $500,000 or more on high-end firewalls in 2014, signifying a shift to higher spending categories
• Infonetics expects 2013 to bring market share changes as Fortinet, Check Point, Palo Alto, and Dell SonicWALL get their high-end firewall offerings into more data center and large campus deals while Cisco and Juniper continue to fend off challengers