The need for innovation to safeguard corporate IT security is creating a highly fragmented vendor market in which the giants are sure to lose and never regain their stranglehold on customer numbers.

That’s the view of Ruggero Contu of Gartner, who notes that the top five security incumbents (Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, IBM and EMC) have already lost 16 per cent of their marketshare since 2006. Although consolidation is likely in the next few years, Contu insists that the nature of IT security means that there will always be upstart challenges to marketshare.

“Market expansion and innovation are driven partly as a result of new start-up players entering the market. New players bring innovative technology solutions to cater for end-user requirements that in turn are created as a result of the new threats, often introduced by cybercriminals taking advantage of new vulnerabilities created by changes to IT ecosystems.”

Those IT leaders looking to simplify IT by working with a single security supplier are likely to be disappointed. “While end-user organisations have shown an increasing preference to use a suite of products from fewer suppliers, the complexity of end users’ product portfolios will not be solved in the short term because new, stand-alone niche tools will continue to be purchased to solve new rising threats and vulnerabilities that incumbent players haven’t been able to address,” concludes Contu.