The report - entitled Virtual Security Appliance Survey: What's Really Going On? - said that 72.4% of respondents are currently allocating funding for virtualised security appliances in their budgets, with the technology itself being deployed at more than half of respondent sites.
According to IDC, another 47% of respondents are currently testing the vendor offerings.
Commenting on the research, Jon Crotty, IDC's research analyst for security products and services, said that the shift toward virtualised security appliances will radically change the appliance market, fueling explosive growth over the next five years.
Crotty noted that, although the technology is still relatively new, there is still a significant amount of virtualised security appliance knowledge in the IT community.
"The results of this IDC survey provide strong evidence that despite economic uncertainty and tight IT budget constraints, virtual security appliance adoption is robust and adoption of this approach will continue into the foreseeable future", he explained.
Delving into the report revealed that a high percentage of virtualised security appliances are fully deployed among small to medium-sized companies, as compared to large and very large companies.
Nearly 60% of respondent companies have funded - or will fund - virtualised security appliance purchases from their general IT budgets, and almost three quarters of respondent companies anticipate the virtualised security appliance purchasing cycle to last between four and 15 months.