Businesses are increasingly demanding security technology
that enables innovation and growth, says content security firmClearswift.
"Security must move away from stopping people from doing things
to being a business enabler," said Richard Turner, chief executive
at Clearswift.
Clearswift's revenue from e-mail and web filtering appliances
was
up 50% in the first quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, compared
with the same period a year ago.
In addition to a
new channel strategy, Turner ascribes much of this success to
helping businesses to
open up web and e-mail communications with partners and
customers.
"Security needs to be about helping the business to take
advantage of web-based opportunities in a secure way," he said.
Saving money and the environment
Clearswift is also tapping into other business aspirations, such
as more environmentally-friendly and cost-effective
technologies.
Virtualisation is a good example of this because it not only
saves money, but also enables business to go green by saving power
consumption, said Turner.
Clearswift has taken the strategic move of making its core
software products available for the
VMware virtualisation platform.
"Some 80% of our products ship on VMware, with demand for
physical network appliances declining rapidly," said Turner.
Businesses are increasingly seeing virtualisation as a key
enabler and Clearswift plans to grow its market by releasing
products compatible with
Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualisation technology.
"Although we have focused on VMware as the leader in
virtualisation,
Microsoft is growing in importance for some types of business,"
said Turner.
Business needs take priority
Business needs are increasingly driving technology spending as
the economic climate has worsened and more CIOs are drawn from the
business and not IT, he said.
Clearswift has benefited from this trend as these new-style CIOs
seek to use technology to grow the business.
"They also see the value in giving business people tools such as
Clearswift to control who can access the content they create," said
Turner.
As a growing proportion of business communications are e-mail
and web-based, it makes more sense to enable the people who create
content to set the rules about how that content is accessed,
instead of relying on the IT department, he said.