Fortified solutions

Helen Frost

Shortlisted in the 2008 CRN Awards for Security Vendor of the Year, Fortinet has emerged on the local scene as a strong security force and dominates in the field of Unified Threat Management (UTM).

Touted as the reason IDC coined the phrase UTM, Fortinet has increased its local presence and took time out to thank the partners who are making the company’s success possible.

Held over three days at the Crowne Plaza in the Hunter Valley, the event was an opportunity for partners to get a glimpse of what lies ahead and for the vendor to acknowledge key players.

Charlie Cote, country manager for Fortinet Australia and New Zealand explained that it is a 100 percent channel-focused organisation.

Messaging from the global partner conference, held prior to the local event, is given to partners as well as an update on planned initiatives and product releases for the Australian and New Zealand market.

“Some of the new products and features that are coming out this year are going to differentiate us yet again. The ability for Fortinet to provide succinct solutions where other vendors have to have multiple point products is very significant,” said Cote.

The number of attendees at the 2008 event doubled from 2007, with representatives from 50 Gold partner organisations attending.

Fortinet has around 200 Silver and Gold channel partners and the three-tiered channel structure has room for Platinum.

“Today we do not have any Platinum partners across Australia or New Zealand in the enterprise. We have all Gold partners. We are maintaining that there needs to be a significant amount of commitment from the channel partner to enable that capability. We are investing into our channel partners and we want to make sure that we minimise the exposure between the highest accreditation,” said Cote.

Fortinet does not want a large number of partners and is currently working very closely with Gold partners such as Fujitsu and Logica.

There is also a global relationship between the vendor and Dimension Data.

“We want to make sure that we do not create a lot of overlap. We really do not want to look at NSW and try and sign up four to five Platinum partners as it would saturate the market,” explained Cote.

“I think we have seen a lot of our competition in our industry, as well as other industries in the IT market where companies are authorising or signing up too many high-level accredited partners and it marginalises the capacity for earnings for the channel partner.”

FortiFocus
Fortinet has a northern region sales team, a southern region sales team and a channel and distribution manager.

There will soon be a new addition to the team, a high-end channel and marketing manager.

The appointment will allow Tim Strachan, channel and distribution manager, to focus more on the distribution line of the business as well as project management for the Silver partners.

“I’m coming into this conference really really excited, because we actually have headcount approved coming into the new year. I’m going to be hiring in the next 90 days. I’m actually looking for a high-end channel and marketing manager who can help focus on the tier-one partners and help develop the strategic business plans and drive end-user business with the Fujitsus, Di Datas, Logicas and other partners,” explained Cote.

While most vendors are shifting their focus to target the lucrative SMB market in Australia, Fortinet is squarely targeting both ends of town.

Two years ago, more than 75 percent of the business locally was SMB, with around 15 percent of the business in the mid-market range and around 10 percent high end.

Over the past three quarters, fiscal year 2008, the business has become a mixture, with 50 percent of revenue coming from the high-end enterprise, deals in excess of $50,000.

“This quarter alone we have two projects that are each worth $1.5 million so it’s interesting when you look at the value proposition for the channel partners. It gives them a portfolio of product they can sell every day, all day long, making your 25-35 percent margin with a run rate of $5000 to $10,000. They can do this as well as working on the multimillion dollar deals making a lot of money in one hit. The beautiful thing about it is it’s recurring revenue. Because we are an appliance vendor and we provide the subscription services the channel partners can embrace that and actually get annuity revenue from an annual basis.”

FortiPassion
Committed to helping his channel partners, Strachan is the main contact point for distribution and reseller partners.

He is very passionate about Fortinet appliances and equipping partners with the right products, training and support.

“The FortiGate-60B has been a number one SMB product in Australia, particularly for businesses with more than 20 staff. We’ve also introduced another new product – the Fortigate 110C – which is a 500 Megabit per second firewall for under $6000, which is incredible performance for the price. Both of these FortiGate appliances give small businesses enterprise-grade protection for their IT systems, in a small appliance, which is easy to install and maintain.

“We released the FortiGate-310B back in June, which is our mid-range UTM solution. It is perfect for providing firewall network segregation in the data centre. Where traditionally Fortinet appliances were used as an Internet gateway solution, we are now actually moving into the core of the data centre with our high-performance UTM appliances,” explained Strachan.

He also added that successful business plans are vital to ensuring the success of any business.

An incentive available to partners, business plan meetings provide an opportunity for partners to have one-on-one time with Strachan.

The structured format of the planning sessions includes discussing business goals, organising sales and technical training sessions, as well as the planning of joint marketing activities.

“Computelec in Victoria has a 100 percent focus on the education market, and in September every year it has its ELH SchoolTech event. So we plan several months in advance with Computelec to make sure we’ve allocated marketing funds for the event, and to ensure we have demo equipment available, and to decide how it is all going to work. The business plan is really about putting in place objectives and goals, and making sure we achieve them,” he said.

Training involves challenges for resellers because every vendor partners work with are asking them to undergo training and certification.

Fortinet introduced a reduced cost training program to entice partners to participate.

“We came out with a reduced cost training program specifically for our FortiPartners. That was really successful and was introduced halfway through 2008 and it included a free FortiGate-60B with the training course. Effectively it meant that if they sold that FortiGate-60B, it could cover the cost of the training course, which is a very strong incentive. We’ve had more than 100 people go through our training in the second half of 2008. We’d like to see more than 250-300 go through in 2009.”

2008 FortiPartner Awards
The 2008 awards acknowledged both companies and individuals who have shown their commitment to Fortinet.

Having only distributed the vendor’s products for five months, Ingram Micro New Zealand received an accolade for helping double 2007 sales in New Zealand.

Brendan Smith at Fujitsu received the Managed Fortinet Solutions Awards and Seccom Global won the FortiChampion Award for being proactive in taking managed Fortinet solutions to market.

“Seccom Networks has been supporting Fortinet literally from the day Fortinet Australia opened five years ago. Seccom Networks has sold more than 800 Fortinet appliances. You’ve got to recognise partners who have made that level of commitment, and invested in the engineering support capability. In addition to certified engineers, Seccom Networks has certified Fortinet training people, which is a major level of commitment,” said Strachan.

Forti2009
At the end of the channel conference, Cote reiterated his message that despite the ‘tumultuous’ financial climate it was a very good time to be working with Fortinet as the company is continuing to enjoy strong growth.

“We are going to continue to push on the consolidation. Consolidation has always been our value proposition and will continue to be a core strength along with total cost of ownership and return on investment. ROI is quick with Fortinet, which helps our selling process, the total cost of ownership is a lot less. We can actually help customers understand from a CAPEX and OPEX perspective rather than just buying a firewall. Interestingly enough the traditional firewall market is becoming non-existent, people don’t just buy firewalls anymore,” said Cote.