Top Research Firm Recognizes Fortinet with Global UTM Market Leadership Award

Frost & Sullivan’s World UTM Report also Recommends UTM as a Preferred Enterprise and Data Center Security Solution

MALAYSIA, 23 December 2008 – Fortinet – the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions – today announced that Frost & Sullivan has bestowed on the company the “2008 Global Market Leadership Award for UTM” for its growth, innovation and market strategy. The award is based on extensive research conducted by the global market research and consulting firm, which evaluated Fortinet against several UTM vendors, including Check Point, Cisco and Juniper.

This award supports data from other research firms that confirm Fortinet’s UTM market leadership, and further validates the company’s integrated network security approach as a preferred solution for enterprises and data centers worldwide.

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Market Leadership was given to Fortinet for exhibiting market share leadership through the implementation of its market strategy. As stated in the corresponding award report, “Fortinet has displayed excellence in all areas of the market leadership process, including the identification of market challenges, drivers and restraints, as well as strategy development and methods of addressing these market dynamics.”

In recognizing Fortinet’s leadership, Frost & Sullivan highlighted the following specific contributors:
· Presently, Fortinet sales account for more than 15 percent of the USD1.6 billion UTM market
· Fortinet was one of the only companies to recognize that businesses need agility through scalability to counter present-day and future network security threats
· Fortinet’s overall solution provides businesses of all sizes with superior protection at a low total cost of ownership, or TCO
· Fortinet is also one of the few companies to develop its own suite of network security products, such as anti-malware and IPS signatures

“Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2008 Award for Market Leadership in Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions market to Fortinet for their continued leadership through innovative technology,” said Terrence Brewton, research analyst for Frost & Sullivan. “Fortinet’s UTM appliances were built from the ground up, incorporate proprietary ASICs, and use a common operating system to meet the growing threat of blended based attacks head-on, while also addressing the performance and scalability needs of enterprises of all sizes. For these reasons and more, Fortinet is our top pick for this prestigious and competitive award category.”

Leadership in a Booming Market
In addition to this prestigious award, Fortinet was called out as the market leader in Frost & Sullivan’s “World Unified Threat Management” report, published last month, which provides an overview of key findings and market drivers for UTM. In the report the firm forecasted that the current USD1.6 billion UTM market would increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 percent to USD6.9 billion in 2014.

In the report, Frost & Sullivan recommends UTM as a viable solution for enterprises and large-scale data centers, as the technology incorporates the same high-speed processing and throughput found in stand-alone enterprise-class appliances, yet also provides the ability to protect networks against blended threats – something that standalone solutions cannot do. The firm’s survey of business managers and administrators showed that these users believe UTM appliances are especially viable for the enterprise due to their low latency and ability to meet high throughput requirements needed to support large businesses with 500 or more users and for large-scale data centers.

The FortiGate line of new generation secure gateways is a consolidated approach that integrates eight core security functions, including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention (IPS), VPN, spyware prevention, antispam, Web content filtering and traffic shaping. Customers can choose to purchase FortiGate appliances for some or all of these functionalities.

“Frost & Sullivan’s perspective on the UTM market mirrors what Fortinet’s vision and growing customer adoption have confirmed – that enterprises of all sizes can benefit from consolidated, centrally managed network security solutions,” said Ken Xie, founder, president and CEO of Fortinet. “Enterprises are no longer staking their data – and the security of their businesses – on firewall solutions alone. They are requiring the scalability and flexibility found only within a more comprehensive security solution.”