Today's UTMs offer eight to 10 security features. These features are firewall, VPN security, automatic fail-over, load balancing, bandwidth management, URL filtering, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, antivirus, and anti-spam. Since they pack so many features at a relatively low pricing, UTMs have always been targeted at SMBs and mid-market customers right since the early days.

Some of the brands who operate in this category are Checkpoint, Cyberoam, Fortinet, Gajshield, SonicWALL, StoneGate, and WatchGuard.

Size of the market

Mohit Puri, Enterprise Sales Head India/SAARC, WatchGuard Technologies says, "UTM market in India was about $50 million in 2009 and is expected to grow by 30 per cent this year.

Mayur Trivedi, Regional Manager - Channel Sales, Gajshield estimates, "The market of the pure UTM category, excluding the complem entary products, was close to Rs 80 crore last year."

Citing an IDC report, Shubhomoy Biswas, Country Director - India and SAARC, SonicWALL says, "The worldwide UTM market was worth $2 billion in 2008. The UTMs should have outgrown the traditional firewall/VPN appliances sector garnering 58 per cent of the overall market. The global UTM market is growing at 35 per cent CAGR."

Top customers

Biswas of SonicWALL states that there is a huge demand for UTMs from government, BFSI, large IT houses, manufacturing conglomerates. "ITeS, education, and healthcare are other demand centers for UTM. Even the banks and service providers consider UTMs as the right solutions to be deployed at their branch offices," he says.

Puri of WatchGuard foresees government and education as the emerging opportunity sectors for channel partners with respect to UTM sales since there is a tough competition in rest of the top verticals. WatchGuard is collaborating with the government agencies for State WAN project.

According to Tushar Sighat, VP-Operations, Cyberoam India, even the very small companies such as SOHOs are showing a keen interest in UTM appliances. "The SOHOs want to achieve an optimal utilization of internet resources. At the same time, they also want to protect their business-critical information. Our entry-level UTM, CR15i fulfils all these needs at an extremely low cost."

Peter D'Costa, Head - Technical Sales, Allied-CNT sees the SMB segment across verticals as the top opportunity area for partners. "Over the past few years, several SMBs have expanded their branch networks. UTMs come as ideal options for these customers," says D'Costa.

Agreeing with him, Trivedi of Gajshield says, "Not all mid-sized companies can afford to invest in full fledged multi-location solutions like MPLS VPN. UTM with built-in VPN functionality prove useful for their security and management requirements."

Demand drivers

According to Abhilash and Dev Chakraborty, the research analysts with AMI Partners, the biggest benefit that UTM offers is the convenience it offers at affordable pricing. "Today's UTMs combine several security features in a single box. Due to its features such as easy installation and maintenance, it has become the right product for the resource-constrained, cost-conscious SMB customers."

The killer benefit of a UTM, according to Puri of WatchGuard, is the convenience it offers at an affordable price. "Unlike point products that require 5-6 people to manage them, a UTM is not resource-intensive. Its features such as single console and easy to deploy and manage, make it the product of choice for SMBs," he says.

SonicWALL's Biswas says: "IT budget constraints, widening geographical reach, increasing demand for low total-cost of ownership and simple solutions, growth of the mobile workforce, growth in organizations using internet-based business model and a rise in prevailing security threats are some of the key drivers for UTM in India."

Security software Vs UTM

Over the past few years, most security software vendors have added multiple new features such as anti-spy, firewall, on-access protection, etc. to their traditional antivirus products. However, according to D'Costa of Allied-CNT, such multi-functional software products do not pose a serious threat to UTMs. He explains that the software products also come with high costs and issues related to OS and application licensing. And this makes the software products an expensive affair for the SMB customers.

Moreover, the software products also require a greater level of human involvement for their installation and management, according to Trivedi of Gajshield.

Market trends

According to Peter D'Costa of Allied-CNT, use of UTM for its VPN functionality has become the latest trend amongst mid-sized companies with up to 20 branch locations.

Trivedi of Gajshield says, "Specialized solutions may prove too costly for enterprises when the new branch set-ups have too few employees. UTM comes as a ready product for such needs. Our UTMs also offer an additional benefit of data leakage protection, a feature of great value to mid-market and enterprise-class companies."

According to Tushar Sighat, the features such a bandwidth optimization and content filtering to ensure high productivity at the workplace are being looked upon at as important aspects leading to higher sales of this device.

According to Biswas of SonicWALL, virtualization is becoming the new mantra for network proliferators today. "Enterprises who have expanded their networks are coming to terms with the security risks their networks are prone to. They are seeking safe consolidation, to avoid risking their networks with the advanced fraud industry."

Making a similar point, Mohit Puri of WatchGuard states that several enterprise class customers are moving to UTMs rather than buying special purpose security products for their branch office requirements.

Moves by the vendors

WatchGuard has introduced a proprietary operating system Extensible Threat Management (XTM) for its appliances. It has also added several reporting features and network capabilities to them.

SonicWALL has launched Authorized Training Center (ATC) in India by joining hands with WestconINDIA for specialized training and development of VARs.

Sighat of Cyberoam informs that his company has started organizing several channel-training road shows in class B&C towns. It has already conducted CCNSP training at 15 locations in the country last year. The vendor continues to cover more cities under this program.

Allied-CNT is in the process of roping in new partners for its network solutions line-up including UTM. The distributor offers brands like Checkpoint, Gajshield, and StoneGate. The company also plans to conduct business road map planning engagements with the new partners. At present, Allied-CNT works with 25 solution partners.

Gajshield plans to focus on new opportunity areas for partners around the DLP functionality that its UTMs offer. According to Mayur Trivedi of Gajshield, partners must focus on building a sound understanding of the technology. Gajshield operates through 120 channels and Avaya Global as its technology and sales partner. Trivedi says that there are several post-sales support and services opportunities that ensure annuity for partners who build technical expertise and are ready for support services.

Biswas of SonicWALL says that partners should focus on UTM's capabilities such as content filtering, virtualization, URL filtering, bandwidth management, multiple load balancing, network traffic inspection, identity management, and gateway failover and routing."

– Nagesh M Joshi