Top 5 Best-Selling Security Appliances In Q2 2015

Security Spend

Security continued to soar in the second quarter, with vendor security appliance sales jumping to $2.6 billion worldwide, according to IDC. That's an increase of 12.2 percent year over year and represents the 23rd consecutive quarter of growth. IDC Senior Research Analyst Ebenezer Obeng-Nyarkoh credited the growth to the continuing challenges the business community is seeing around cybercrime, driving particular demand for intrusion detection and prevention solutions.

"Cybercrime remains a growing global problem and attacks against mission-critical and sensitive services or systems that leads to a massive data leak continue to have far-reaching effects," Obeng-Nyarkoh said in a statement.

With all the opportunity out there, take a look at which five vendors did the best at grabbing hold of market share.

5. Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat held onto the fifth spot on IDC's ranking of security appliance revenue with 4.3 percent of the market. That is down 0.02 percentage points from the same quarter last year and a 0.04 percentage point drop sequentially. Blue Coat also has been expanding beyond the traditional network, picking up cloud access security brokerage startup Perspecsys for an undisclosed amount in July. The acquisition was part of a push by the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company to invest more in the cloud security market and a cloud-based security platform, President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Fey said at the time.

4. Fortinet

While it remained in fourth place in security appliance sales, Fortinet grabbed hold of more market share in the second quarter, rising to 8.3 percent. That is up from 7.2 percent in the 2014 second quarter, a jump of 1.1 percentage points. Over the past few months, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has been investing big in expanding its portfolio and building better programs for its partners, including acquiring Meru Networks in May to dive deeper into the enterprise secure wireless market and launching a new partner program in the same month. The result was growth that was up significantly from the year before. Fortinet had the second highest revenue growth in the quarter, rising 30.3 percent (only falling behind Palo Alto Networks).

3. Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks had the biggest jump in market share this month, rising 2.4 percentage points to hold 9.4 percent of the security appliance revenue. Palo Alto Networks only entered the top five of the IDC market share report for worldwide security appliances in 2013, but since then has steadily increased its revenue at a pace exceeding the market, IDC said. CEO Mark McLaughlin reiterated that idea at the company's recent Sales Kick Off in Las Vegas, telling top partners and sales leaders that the company will continue to fire on all cylinders to grab market share from its top competitors.

2. Check Point Software

Check Point held onto the second-place spot in the second quarter despite dropping slightly in market share. The company fell from 12.8 percent in the 2015 second quarter from 12.9 percent last year, as well as dropping from 13.4 percent of the market in the first quarter. However, its security appliance revenue did rise 11.9 percent year over year to $328 million. In response to climbing market share from Palo Alto Networks, the company ramped up its partnership with VMware, as well as launched a new threat detection solution that competes with its rival's WildFire solution.

1. Cisco

Landing in the No. 1 spot yet again is Cisco with 17.1 percent of the security appliance revenue market share in the second quarter. That's down from 18.2 percent in the second quarter of last year and from 17.6 percent in the quarter prior. Cisco has been investing big in its security portfolio, saying it will win in the market by providing an end-to-end security architecture. The company has put major firepower behind that vision, naming former CEO John Chambers as the "executive sponsor for security," as well as executive chairman of the board. The company's revenue in security grew 5.9 percent in the quarter to $438 million.