"This quarter shows the first positive growth in the total security appliance market since 1Q09," says IDC research analyst (right) Romain Fouchereau. "The economic downturn mainly affected the market in the second and third quarters of 2009 with a rebound already noticeable in 4Q09.

"The resumed positive growth this quarter derived solely from the two largest segments, Unified Threat Management (UTM) and content management appliances (CMA) whereas the other security appliance functions still reported disappointing results."

High-end firewall growth 
The firewall market represented $75.56m in 1Q10, a 20.2% decrease over last year's first quarter. The firewall/VPN market is becoming more mature in Western
Europe and has seen slow growth in the last few quarters. As in the past few quarters, however, 1Q10 has seen very strong growth for higher-end firewalls.

Lower-end firewall appliances didn't perform as well, as end customers prefer to deploy UTM appliances rather than dedicated FW standalone solutions. Cisco remained number 1 vendor in the segment, followed by Checkpoint, with Juniper in third place.
 
UTM was the largest market of the tracked security appliances, with total revenue of $124.4m in the last quarter, for 14.3% growth over 1Q09. During the current economic uncertainty, UTM vendors should do relatively well, due to integrated solutions offerings by UTM appliances, with customers wanting more for less from vendors. For the first time in two years, Fortinet came second, leaving the top spot to Juniper, with Watchguard taking third place.
 
Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) solutions decreased 29.7% over last year's first quarter, for a market value of $56.7m. IPS was the security appliance segment most affected by the recession, one of the reasons being the postponement of security investments. Here Cisco was market leader, followed by IBM-ISS and McAfee.
 
Content management appliance revenue showed the strongest growth again this quarter, with a 42.4% increase year on year, reaching $92.2m in 1Q10. In 4Q09 it became the second largest segment behind UTM and now represents 23% of the total market. Cisco remained number 1 vendor in content management appliance segment and the messaging security subcategory. McAfee leads the Web security and the Web and messaging (WAM) subcategories.
 
The Virtual Private Networks appliance market reached $47m in 1Q10, a 16.6% decrease over 1Q09. IDC believes that with the ever increasing number of remote and mobile workers, the VPN market has strong potential for growth in the years to come. Juniper was market leader, followed by Cisco, with F5 in third place.