Service Provider of Tomorrow, Part 10: as MSSP and SIEM wither, will SaaS vendors define a new category for Cloud Security solutions?

At Secure Cloud Review we have made the case that the IaaS model, and cloud services in particular, have changed the game so much that traditional MSSP businesses face a shrinking market opportunity and traditional SIEM vendors are less relevant as IT infrastructure continues migrating into service provider data centers.

What does this mean for the security market landscape? The enterprise looks to firms like Gartner and Forrester to define and analyze market segments. Gartner and Forrester dutifully track both the MSSP and SIEM segments, producing a Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave report for each. But in reading these reports there is a glaring hole … Neither Gartner nor Forrester give credence to cloud security issues or IaaS requirements in assessing the “completeness of vision” or “ability to execute” of competitors in either segment. This is one of many indicators that the cloud will catch both of these market segments napping.

The members of the MSSP and SIEM leader’s quadrants will lose market share to Security SaaS vendors who build their products from the ground up “for the cloud” (not to be confused with the simpler challenge of delivering solutions “from the cloud”). But does that mean we will see a new market segment emerge? Will MSSP and SIEM fade away as market segments? Or will these segments remain, but undergo a major change in leadership?

In five years, will we still speak of MSSP and SIEM vendors when discussing the fastest-growing segments of IT security? Or will we have a new category of security software vendor, with a new name, in the driver’s seat for IT security market growth?

Whatever name is applied to the hottest security market segment, we know the leader’s quadrant will consist of software companies who embrace the SaaS delivery model, and design their solutions for the cloud. Our upcoming series on Security SaaS will discuss the challenges and opportunities security software vendors will face in the cloud, and the impact these issues will have on the service providers of tomorrow.