"This quarter shows the first positive growth in the total security appliance market since 1Q09," said Romain Fouchereau, research analyst at IDC. "The economic downturn mainly affected the market in the second and third quarters of 2009 with a rebound already noticeable in 4Q09. The resumed positive growth this quarter derived solely from the two largest segments, UTM and content management appliances, whereas the other security appliance functions still reported disappointing results."

The firewall market represented $75.56 million in 1Q10, a 20.2% decrease over last year’s first quarter. The firewall/VPN market is becoming more mature in Western Europe and has seen slow growth in the last few quarters. As in the past few quarters, however, 1Q10 has seen very strong growth for higher-end firewalls. Lower-end firewall appliances didn’t perform as well, as end customers prefer to deploy UTM appliances rather than dedicated FW standalone solutions. Cisco remained the number 1 vendor in the segment, followed by Checkpoint, with Juniper in third place.

UTM was the largest market of the tracked security appliances, with total revenue of $124.4 million in the last quarter, for 14.3% growth over 1Q09. During the current economic uncertainty, UTM vendors should do relatively well due to the integrated solutions offered by UTM appliances, with customers wanting more for less from vendors. For the first time in two years, Fortinet came second, leaving the top spot to Juniper, with Watchguard taking third place.

IPS solutions decreased 29.7% over last year’s first quarter, for a market value of $56.7 million. IPS was the security appliance segment most affected by the recession, one of the reasons being the postponement of security investments. Cisco was market leader, followed by IBM-ISS and McAfee.

Content management appliance revenue showed the strongest growth again this quarter, with a 42.4% increase year on year, reaching $92.2million in 1Q10. In 4Q09 it became the second largest segment behind UTM and now represents 23% of the total market. Cisco remained the number 1 vendor in the content management appliance segment and the messaging security subcategory. McAfee led the Web security and the Web and messaging (WAM) subcategories.

The VPN appliance market reached $47 million in 1Q10, a 16.6% decrease over 1Q10. IDC believes that with the ever increasing number of remote and mobile workers, the VPN market has strong potential for growth in the years to come. Juniper was market leader, followed by Cisco, with F5 in third place.