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06.23.06
Antispam Market Benefits From Spam
 By
David A. Utter
The 2005 revenues for the antispam software industry hit $4 billion for the year, a 13.6 percent jump from 2004.
Users may curse the criminals and opportunists who continue to plague inboxes with junk email, but the software industry that fights them probably can't help but smile a bit away from the public eye.
A Gartner report on the global antispam market as cited by IDG News sees double-digit growth again for the short term. Gartner analyst Nicole Latimer-Livingston sees a "suite" future for security products in her assessment:
"The market for stand-alone antivirus and antispyware products for businesses and consumers will eventually start to decline as interest for endpoint security product suites continues to grow."
Latimer-Livingston also referenced the debut of Microsoft's OneCare service as a likely threat to market leader Symantec and its close competitors:
"Microsoft's entry into the consumer antivirus market is expected to unleash stronger price competition, which will likely lower the overall market revenue opportunity."
Translation: Microsoft has a chloroform-soaked rag and a windowless van following the industry's revenue stream, and could be in position to do a Buffalo Bill to the competition.
Microsoft has also released its Antigen email security products for the enterprise, and will go head to head with existing companies in that sphere as well as the consumer level with OneCare. One of those products, the Antigen Spam Manager, does antispam and content filtering at the SMTP or Exchange gateway.
Demand for antispam products will continue as long as the spam problem persists. Since much of it originates outside the reach of US laws like the CAN-SPAM act, the issue rests with governments where those spammers do reside.
Considering what happened with antispam firm Blue Frog last month, private companies are not going to be able to stop the problem. But they will profit from it while spam continues to be churned out around the world.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer with WebProNews. |
