He said an estimated 8.72 percent of total revenue is spent on R&D.

Michael Warrilow, director of analyst firm Hydrasight, agreed local companies were consolidating and the trend first began as far back as 2003/04.

"Many are now moving strategic focus from network security toward people [identity] and information security," Warrilow said.

"Irrespective, managability has been an area of differentiation for Check Point, they've been concentrating their internal R&D efforts on products like SmartCenter.

"This is because their traditional perimeter firewall market has matured and saturated."