VPN and firewall sales rocket

Worldwide Virtual Private Network (VPN) and firewall hardware and software sales jumped 11 per cent to $733m in the first quarter of this year over the last quarter of 2003.

And the market is expected to grow 12 per cent, to $823m, by the first quarter of 2005, according to calculations by Infonetics Research.

The market researcher found that while most VPN vendors reported single-digit growth this quarter, Cisco enjoyed a "phenomenal quarter", driving the market to double-digit growth.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research, said in a statement that appliances in the middle price bands - $1,500 to $10,000 - and application security gateways will drive growth in 2004 and beyond "because of large site-to-site and broadband VPN deployments, upgrades of firewalls to the latest technology, and SSL VPN deployments for the next generation of enterprise remote access".

Cisco was named as the worldwide revenue market share leader. The company showed an increase in total VPN and firewall appliance and software revenue in the first quarter of 2004, and strong growth in areas including routers and appliances - particularly high-end appliances.

Check Point was found to take the second largest share of worldwide revenue, and has a significant presence in the market, especially with appliance partners such as Nokia.