"Do dedicated security vendors have a future?"

Here is a fun question: "Do dedicated security vendors have a future?"

This paper with the same name discusses just that and has some good points. Check out these quotes:

"McAfee proudly proclaims itself “the largest dedicated [IT] security company in the world”. Based on revenues this is a fair claim—it is some way ahead of closest rivals Check Point and Trend Micro for that crown. But is a dedicated security company really the best thing to be in 2006 and beyond?"

"If a crown was being awarded for “security revenues” then it might well go to Symantec, but it would be a close run thing with Cisco, currently the world largest networking equipment vendor (it will be demoted to number two if the Lucent/Alcatel merger gets approved)."

"With giants like Cisco and Microsoft building security into their infrastructure and Symantec diversifying into storage and building security into its new offerings, will there be any place left for dedicated security vendors in the long term? ... There probably will be, providing they stay ahead of the game, i.e. keeping on top of emerging threats and coming up with innovative new products to counter them. "

"The revenue share of the IT security market going to dedicated vendors will decrease more and more with time."

This reminds me this old blog post.