Under the terms of the agreement, which remain undisclosed, Honeywell will provide a security management and intrusion detection service using Tier-3's artificial intelligence product, Huntsman -- collating and managing security data at its data network management centre in Sydney's North Ryde.
-The service will allow small and medium-sized companies who can't afford these tools or don't have in-house expertise to target network security," Tier-3 products director Mike Cullen told ZDNet Australia.
Whilst some industry analysts have been predicting a move away from outsourcing in the security arena, Tier-3 sees this as being a very high growth area with the security management and intrusion detection market in Australia - currently worth AU$27 million -- set to grow to AU$130 million by 2005. And outsourcing, which currently has a 4 percent share of the market, to grow 40 percent per annum, according to Cullen.
"There's a very high focus on security at the moment...we're making it affordable at the big end of the scale as well as for smaller players," he said.
The Honeywell/Tier-3 move comes at a time when a tightening market on the back of the current economic climate is causing many providers to market their security offerings as services rather than just products. However, Tier-3 says this was always on the agenda for them. -We always realised this was the only way to penetrate the lower end of the market," Cullen said.
And whilst some claim that the current climate of uncertainty has forced companies to the bunkers trimming budgets - including security spending -- as they go, Tier-3 claims there's a lot of interest in security at this present time.
Companies are consolidating during this period of recession and making in-roads into e-commerce, a move that is next to impossible without sufficient security, according to Cullen. -SMEs are unlikely to have the resources available [for security] therefore need to have experts available to do that for them," he said.
Honeywell was approached by Tier-3 on the business proposal, and the company's Rod Morgan says of Tier-3's Huntsman: -I don't believe there's a solution in the marketplace that offers that high level of intelligence."
Whilst Morgan sees the business opportunity as a local one at present, its success could see it marketed overseas, he said, and Tier-3 sees the team-up with Honeywell as the first step in taking its security solution to the US, a move it sees as -the key to our future success," according to Cullen.
The Tier-3/Honeywell team has proposals in front of interested parties at the moment and expects to be making sales soon, Cullen said.
