Infonetics Research has released its 2014 Data Center Security Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey, which details enterprises’ plans for deploying security solutions in data centers, as well as their thoughts on leading data center security vendors.
According to Infonetics, 77% percent of survey respondents said they need need security solutions with increased session handling performance, while about 70% need products with throughput and interfaces to match new high-speed networks i.e. those with 40G and 100G interfaces and 200G+ throughput.
“The most significant transformation affecting enterprise data centers today is the adoption of server virtualization technology," comments Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. "It’s the building block of the virtualized data center and the first step towards the eventual rollout of software-defined networking (SDN) in the data center."
Wilson adds, “That said, buyers are performance hungry, and vendors must have the interfaces, connections, and throughput they require today. Buyers will switch vendors this year to get high-performance security infrastructure for the data center.” When it comes to brand strength for key data center security buying criteria, Cisco, McAfee, HP, Juniper, and VMWare topped the list among those surveyed by Infonetics Research.
For its 23-page data center security survey, Infonetics interviewed purchase-decision makers at 104 medium and large organizations in North America that operate their own data centers about their security plans. The study covers data center security purchase drivers, deployments, interface speed and throughput requirements, spending plans, and suppliers, and features enterprises’ ratings of 11 vendors (Arbor Networks, Check Point, Cisco, F5 Networks, Fortinet, HP, Juniper Networks, McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, Trend Micro, VMware) on 10 criteria.
Vendors that have a compelling roadmap for virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN) and concrete plans for products in mid-to-late 2015 stand to gain a head start in the battle for data center security dominance, predicts the market researcher.
See also: Analyst says NSA spygate underscores need for multi-layered data center security