An old friend of the SMB MSP community has recently raised its hand to say “hello” again. Thst friend is Fortinet. What I like about Fortinet is that it let’s its results do the talking. Kinda like the old Northwestern Mutual insurance company TV ads (remember the “quite company” – yeah – kids won’t get that).
Not as familiar with Fortinet as you’d like to be? Lemme bring you up to speed on this well-respected brand. This is the $1.2b security company you need to know. It’s got the scale to support the most demanding projects but also can respect the SMBer in all of us.
According to Wikipedia, Fortinet is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It develops and markets cybersecurity software, appliances and services, such as firewalls, anti-virus, intrusion prevention and endpoint security, among others. It is the fourth-largest network security company by revenue.
Fortinet was founded in 2000 by brothers Ken and Michael Xie. It raised about $93 million in funding by 2004 and introduced ten FortiGate appliances. That same year was the beginning of a recurring patent dispute between Fortinet and Trend Micro. The company went public in 2009, raising $156 million through an initial public offering. Throughout the 2000s, Fortinet diversified its product lines, adding products for wireless access points, sandboxing, and messaging security, among others.
In late 2008, Fortinet acquired the database security and auditing intellectual property of IPLocks, and extended job offers to the company's 28 employees. It acquired the intellectual property and other assets of Woven Systems, an ethernet switching company, in August 2009. According to IDC, by this time it was the largest unified threat management vendor, with a 15.4 percent market-share. The company had been growing steadily and became profitable after losing money from 2004 - 2007. Fortinet was also rising in CRN Magazine's survey-based annual report card (ARC), reaching first place in 2009.
In November 2009, Fortinet had an initial public offering. It was planning to raise $52.4 million through the sale of 5.8 million shares. Many stockholders also sold their shares simultaneously. Just before the first day of trading, Fortinet increased the share price from $9 to $12.50 and the price increased in the market to $16.62 by the end of the first day of trading, raising $156 million in financing.
Bottom line: Visit Fortinet's Partner site and tell ‘em SMB Nation sent ya!