"As network security risks continue to mount and compliance mandates become more stringent, organisations are forced to implement an ever-increasing number of security technologies," said Cathy Huang, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. She expects growing adoption of MSS by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

"The managed model is a compelling option for SMEs who can ill-afford large capital expenditures on security solutions, nor cope with the complexity of an endless onslaught of newer and increasingly targeted threats," she said.

Research by Frost & Sullivan shows the Asia-Pacific MSS market, covering 14 countries including Japan, grew by an estimated 15% in 2009, clocking revenues of just over US$1.31 billion.

By the end of 2010, Ms Huang expects revenues to be close to $1.55 billion, rising 18.2% over the last year.

"The past two years saw many companies trim their IT budgets and look for more cost-effective ways of meeting their IT needs, network security included," Ms Huang explained. "This has fuelled keen interest in shared infrastructure delivery models such as MSS, which allow companies to shift to a more predictable operating expense model."

Large enterprises have historically been the biggest consumers of IT solutions and services, and will likely remain so for a long time. This sector made up the bulk of MSS users in 2009 and approximately 75% of the region's revenues.

But she believes, "as SMEs realise the economic sense in the shared infrastructure model, the attraction quotient will ramp up significantly, particularly for hosted security services where the equipment is owned and housed at the service providers' premises, and users need only pay for on-demand services.

"Hosted security services will appeal to the SME sector even more when the service is bundled with other internet or communications services," she continued. Virtualisation and products such as unified threat management have made hosted services all the more affordable for SMEs, she added.

Larger businesses are not in favour of hosted services due to the unpopularity of the cloud model for security, which is perceived as a loss of control. "[Large enterprises] prefer instead to outsource the remote monitoring and management element of their security needs while hosting the infrastructure in-house," she said.

As a result, monitoring/management services, which include round-the-clock monitoring and log analysis, are the most outsourced functions, accounting for about half of the total MSS revenues in 2009.