Channel Best-Sellers: Winning Security Players

The survey also found that Trend Micro's channel-sales advantage over archrival Symantec is growing. According to the latest research from the NPD Group/Distributor Track, in the first six months of 2007, Trend Micro's share of the money spent on e-mail security suites rose to 48.9 percent, growing 4.8 percent, while Symantec's share slipped 4.9 percent, falling to 37 percent.

Customers are moving further along the adoption curve, expanding beyond firewall and spam solutions into network access control and data-loss-prevention products, security VARs say. Trend Micro proactively moved into that market in October by acquiring Provilla, whose flagship LeakProof software tracks activity around sensitive documents.

CA slowed down in the security market, suffering a 3.5 percent share loss according to the research data. Those survey results dovetail with CA's own financial reports, which show a 5 percent decline in CA's security management unit's billing for the first six months of this year, compared to the first half of 2006.

-- Stacy Cowley

E-Mail Security 1st half 2007 Market Share Market Share Change 1st half '07 vs. 1st half '06 Trend Micro 48.90% +4.8 Symantec 37% -4.9 CA, Inc. 7.70% --3.5 PGP Corporation 5.20% +5.2 IBM 0.70% +0.7 * Ranking based on 1st half 2007 share of sales dollar volume. Highlighted vendor gained greatest share from 1st half 2006 to 1st half 2007 Source: The NPD Group/Distribution Track (Incudes GTDC Data), www.npd.com/lps/distributortrack