Security vendors face pricing time bomb

Security vendors have been warned that a failure to adjust their prices in the wake of the coalition's Comprehensive Spending Review could prompt end users to move to a shareware or freeware alternative.

Price has become a hot-button issue in the security channel following price hikes from both Websense and Barracuda and counter-moves from Clearswift and Bloxx.

Meanwhile, a huge number of end users – many of whom are cash-strapped public sector organisations – are approaching the annual renewal date for their web or email filtering subscriptions.

Nigel Hawthorn, vice president of EMEA marketing at Blue Coat, said, “The market is more difficult than it was. It is renewal season. End users are looking for savings and are not necessarily going to renew what they had last year."

Phil Dick, sales director at Websense and Bloxx partner NTS, said price had become by far the most important issue for end users.

Dick advised vendors to accept that public sector clients can no longer afford to pay as much for their security and argued that their current prices are not sustainable.

“We are talking to people that have literally had their budgets slashed by 40 per cent, so vendors have to accept there is less money out there to play with,” he said.

“Organisations need to protect their networks and need web and email filtering, but they will find more creative and cost-effective ways of doing it. There are cheaper alternatives. One is to do nothing. Beyond that, there are freeware or shareware solutions, which some organisations are looking at deploying,” he added.

The article originally appeared on Computing's sister site, CRN.