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And it’s not just happening on the desktop; MacDonald points to the convergence of firewall and IPS products and that of e-mail
security offerings such as anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-phishing, and compliance.
As security companies add protection from additional threats to their offerings, customers are taking this path of least resistance.
About 80% of the customers who use ScanSafe’s managed Web filtering services opt for both virus and spyware protection, says
Dan Nadir, the company’s vice president of product strategy. “They kind of back into it, instead of saying `I have a project’”
to add protection from emerging threats, Nadir says.
Also pushing security prices downward is the emergence of open-source tools, says Gartner’s MacDonald, since these tools offer
more functionality at little or no cost. Even customers who don’t choose to go the open-source route benefit, since it makes
vendors of closed-source products think twice about pricing their offerings too high.
“It makes it hard for vendors to charge a premium when these low-cost alternatives are available,” he says.
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