Sophos exceeds Symante and McAfee percentage of growth

Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, today announced significant growth for its final quarter, ending March 31, 2007. Sophos’s worldwide bookings increased 40 percent compared to the same quarter last year, with strong growth seen in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

The percentage of growth at Sophos substantially exceeded that of Symantec and McAfee.

“We’re seeing a considerable rise in competitive displacements, which are primarily customers switching from legacy security vendors Symantec or McAfee to Sophos. Over 2,000 enterprises switched to Sophos during the quarter from our competitors,” said Steve Munford, CEO of Sophos. “Companies are finding that they don’t have to live with the pain of their existing solutions, and that there is an alternative that can deliver considerable benefits. Sophos is uniquely positioned to deliver a single client and integrated policies at desktops and gateways, fighting the threat and lowering management complexity and cost.”

These results exclude the effect of the purchase of leading Network Access Control (NAC) vendor, Endforce, in January 2007, which is expected to contribute more flagship account wins in the current quarter. One example of Sophos’s success at displacing other security vendors was the announcement last quarter that Miami-Dade Public County Schools, the fourth largest schools district in the US, had seamlessly accomplished the switch from McAfee for its 90,000 strong highly distributed network.

“NAC is a great driver of interest in our complete security and control platform of web, email and endpoint solutions,” continued Munford. “We anticipate further major corporate defections from Symantec and McAfee as the market recognises that there is a serious challenger to the legacy security vendors.”