Unified Threat Management was main driver of the EMEA Security Appliance market

IDC currently forecasts the security appliance market to reach nearly $4.2 billion in value by 2018, growing at a 5.4% CAGR over the five-year forecast, according to the new release of the security appliance tracker forecast.

EMEA Market Highlights
Cisco remained the top overall security appliance vendor with 18.9% market revenue share for 4Q13 and 19.4% for 2013. In 2013 the gap between Cisco and Check Point, its closest rival, shrank to 1.7 percentage points (3.3 points in 2012).

Unified threat management (UTM) remained the largest and the fastest growing security appliance product category. In 2013 UTM appliances increased by 33.2% year on year, representing nearly 45% of total market revenue.

"The security appliance market in Europe, Middle East and Africa will continue to mature with the emergence of IDC's 3rd Platform — the new technology platform enabling growth and innovation, driven by new IT capabilities including mobile devices and apps, cloud services, mobile broadband networks, Big Data analytics, and social technologies — as new risks emerge and the network perimeter of any organization is becoming exposed to new threats," said Romain Fouchereau, manager, security appliance program at IDC.

Western Europe Market Highlights
The Western European market showed similar flat growth in security appliances, with $522.7 million revenue in 4Q13, representing 0.7% growth over the same quarter in 2012. Total revenue generated 2013 reached $1.94 billion, with yearly growth of 2.4% for the same period last year.

IDC predicts the Western European security appliance market to reach $3.1 billion in value in 2018, growing at 5.0% CAGR over the forecast period.
"Demand for single function standalone security functions has decreased in Western Europe this year as the shift towards unified threat management continues," said Romain Fouchereau. "Unified solutions (of which next generation firewalls are a segment) remain the largest and fastest growing product category in this very distributed geography and will continue to gain share of the market over the next five-year forecast."

Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa Market Highlights
The security appliance market in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) showed a moderate contraction of 3.6% year on year in 4Q13, reaching $165.8 million in vendor revenue. CEMA vendor revenue for 2013 totalled to $601.0 million and rose 2.4% compared to 2012.

The forecast value growth in CEMA for 2014 was reduced from 6.6% to 4.1% year on year due to worse than expected economic recovery in CIS countries and current political unrest in Russia and Ukraine, which could have a long-term negative impact on the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. The total CEMA market is expected to grow in value at 6.3% five-year CAGR by 2018.

"In 2013, UTM appliances reached almost 40% of the total revenue share following the worldwide trend," said Oleg Sidorkin, senior research analyst at IDC. "Customers still focus on essential security functions and buy mainly firewall and IDP solutions. The market for single-function appliances is shrinking fast and this trend will continue in 2014."