VPN Services Revenue To Hit $278 Million By 2007: Report

Revenues from virtual private network (VPN) and integrated security services will grow significantly, representing a major revenue opportunity for service providers over the next two years, according to Infonetics Research.

In its study "Service Provider Plans for VPNs and Security: North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific 2006," the firm notes that VPN and security service revenues will increase 32%, from $210 million in 2005 to $278 million in 2007. Service providers can also look forward to substantial revenues growth in intrusion prevention, network AV, and spam and content filtering services.

Although expecting overall growth globally, Infonetics principal analyst Jeff Wilson said that there are some regional variances in the forecast. "Europe seems to be behind the curve in some places, with much lower expected revenue growth than North America and Asia Pacific in some key emerging services like spam, content filtering, and network AV," he said in a statement. "European and Asia Pacific providers currently get the bulk of their revenue from standalone services, while North American providers get the bulk of revenue from integrated services."

The venerable IPSec VPN standard remains providers' favored choice for remote access VPN services. However, Infonetics expects secure sockets layer (SSL) VPNS to account for 20% of remote access VPN revenue.