LONDON -- Sales of security appliances in Western Europe during the first quarter of 2005 generated £175 million in revenue, according to the 1Q05 results from IDC's Western European Quarterly Security Server Appliance Tracker. Compared to the corresponding quarter of 2004, security appliance revenue was up by 21.2% and unit shipments increased by 18.8%, with close to 95,000 units shipping.

Growth over the fourth quarter of 2004 was 6.0% with respect to units, while revenue decreased by 4.6% - a relatively good performance when considering that the first quarter of the calendar year is traditionally weaker than the year-end quarter. While the total security appliance market felt the effects of this seasonal weakness with sequential growth down, the unified threat management (UTM) category of security appliances exhibited strong growth over 4Q04 and triple-digit growth over the annual period.

"The growing demand for UTM security appliances showed no signs of relenting during the first quarter," said Oliver Harcourt, senior research analyst for IDC's European Enterprise Server research team. "During this period, growth of UTM security appliances was also helped by vendors that in the past were classed as firewall/VPN security appliance vendors, becoming UTM security appliance vendors following the integration of additional security features on their platforms. The number of vendors with UTM products will continue to increase as vendors look to exploit the strong growth opportunities this market represents."

IDC