The 16 largest publicly listed cybersecurity vendors saw their Q3 2024 revenue grow by an average of 14.2%, due largely to monetary investments they made with partners, which are then helping them bring in more business.
And that significant partner-inspired growth in the global cybersecurity industry will become even more important in 2025 for vendors, their partners and MSPs, wrote Jay McBain, an analyst for Canalys, in his latest quarterly cybersecurity market report.
In a recent post on LinkedIn, McBain detailed several interesting developments in the global cybersecurity sector in Q3, including, “[T]he market opportunity is growing in solid double-digits and will reach $97 billion in hardware/software sales next year. Partners will continue to add $2 to every $1 in vendor sales, growing this overall industry to just shy of $300 billion in 2025.”
Those are impressive numbers and results that benefit the vendors and their partners as they serve their diverse and growing customer bases worldwide, wrote McBain.
“More importantly, 13 of the top 15 vendors (that held earnings calls) cited their investment in partners as a key success factor,” wrote McBain. “Ecosystem expansion and enablement, particularly services and co-selling, will define growth into the new year. [A full] 91.5% of this market flows through, to, or with partners, and we expect that to continue.”
For MSPs, this is proven consistently through their relationships with vendors as they serve as critical go-betweens to help customers solve their most pressing business and technology problems and challenges.
Cybersecurity Vendors in the Latest Canalys Segment Report
Included in Canalys’ latest quarterly cybersecurity industry report are the following vendors and their Q3 growth by percentage:
- Palo Alto Networks 14%
- Cisco 100%
- Fortinet 13%
- CrowdStrike 29%
- Okta 14%
- Check Point 7%
- Zscaler 26%
- Akamai 14%
- Trend Micro 6%
- Cloudflare 28%
- CyberArk 26%
- Tenable 13%
- Rapid7 8%
- SentinelOne 28%
- Qualys 8%
- Juniper Networks -14%
McBain noted that Cisco's outsized Q3 growth numbers reflect its earlier acquisition of Splunk, and stated that more such consolidations are on the way in 2025 through mergers and acquisitions or due to companies going private to accelerate platform transformation efforts.
In response to McBain’s post, Colin Knox, the founder and CEO of Gradient MSP, an MSP profitability and sales platform vendor, wrote that while the Canalys research covered the broader IT partner channel, Gradient’s data shows that MSPs “are seeing an average of $1.34 to every $1 of vendor sales in security. Depending on the specific product category within security, that gets as high as $2 per $1, but many are in the $1.9X range.”
McBain answered back on LinkedIn that he was impressed by those numbers.
“We are including 19 other partner types in our research, including GSI/RSI, VARs, agencies, industry consultants, etc.,” wrote McBain. “[It is] amazing that MSPs are grabbing more than their fair share.”
