Vista will cause security confusion

ANALYSTS AT the Yankee Group reckon Microsoft Vista will deliver a bewildering blow to the market for Windows security software.

End users may find the security measures that will be shoe-horned into the 'operating system' "disruptive", while independent software vendors will suffer short-term pain, the analysts' latest report warns.

Vista, they say, will have little to no effect on the size of the corporate anti-virus segment, but competitors will have their market shares dented following the introduction of Microsoft's own anti-virus offerings.

In the report, entitled "Microsoft's Vista Won't Stop the Windows Security Aftermarket," the Yankees say the aftermarkets for anti-spyware and desktop firewalls will experience the most dramatic decline.

Deployment of Vista will also slightly decrease the need for third-party products for disk encryption, device control and certain host intrusion prevention software (HIPS), they reckon.

Vista will only bring spectacular improvements to the overall level of security for users, if Microsoft succeeds in making customers and ISVs comfortable with the new security system, Andrew Jaquith, Yankee Group's Security programme manager warned.

"Windows security issues will continue to be a permanent fact of life for Microsoft, which means that third parties will always have a rich and robust aftermarket available to them to serve," he reckons.

The analysts expect many customers to defer major upgrades to Vista because of the expense of upgrading and because Microsoft will market security as a "feature" that users must pay for to obtain. The take-up is therefore likley to be slower than Microsoft is predicting, they reckon. µ

L'INQ
Yankee Group