That's the advice of Gartner Inc. analyst Neil MacDonald, who said last week that as antivirus, antispam and antispyware tools quickly become commodities, they may no longer justify the premium pricing associated with specialized technologies. MacDonald suggested at Gartner's IT Security Summit here that IT managers start looking for integrated products or services that combine multiple security functions without necessarily being best-in-class in each case.

In addition, MacDonald recommended that IT security groups evaluate the possibility of handing over some security tasks to the IT operations staffs within their companies. For example, antivirus tasks could be handled by desktop support teams and patch management by the software distribution group, he said. Converged products make sense, depending on how well products bundled in suites work together and how easily they can be managed, said Sven Doersam, desktop security lead at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The university is investigating products that combine personal firewalls and antivirus and antispyware capabilities in a bid to reduce the number of security products deployed on its desktops, he said.

"I think we would realize some cost benefits from such products, and it will give us a single point of contact" for support, Doersam said. However, the approach will mean "putting all our eggs in one basket and relying on one vendor" for crucial security defenses, he added.

Marty Wake, senior vice president of IT at Mercantile Safe Deposit & Trust Co. in Baltimore, said he expects vendors to increasingly offer integrated security suites as the individual tools become more commonplace and mature. In fact, he predicted that enterprise-class antivirus, anti-spam and antispyware capabilities will soon be built into broader suites as "giveaways."