SUNNYVALE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- May 22, 2007 --Fortinet® -- the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -- today announced Michael Valentine as the company's new vice president of Americas channel sales. With more than 20 years of sales and channel experience, Valentine will be responsible for driving the acceleration of Fortinet's channel strategy across all market segments and for the overall leadership of Fortinet's Americas channel teams in the Americas region.
Valentine joins Fortinet directly from SonicWall, where he served as both vice president of Americas sales and vice president of channel sales during his term. Prior to SonicWall, he was WatchGuard Technologies' vice president of Americas sales.
Valentine will spearhead the next evolution of the FortiPartner Program by enhancing momentum and mindshare with national security-focused solution providers, large enterprise resellers and MSSPs. He will also be tasked with targeting the small-to-medium business segment by growing Fortinet's partnerships with broadline distributors and national direct marketing resellers (DMR). The company will benefit from his knowledge of both solution-based and transaction-based channel models.
"Michael Valentine's strong channel experience will bring a tremendous contribution to Fortinet's Americas channel program," said Karl Soderlund, vice president of Americas sales and global alliances. "Our channel partners will also derive a great benefit from Michael's intricate understanding of the challenges solution providers face in the security market and his proven execution in helping them address these challenges."
"I am excited to come into Fortinet, which already has such a strong presence with so many top tier solution providers," Valentine said. "I look forward to working with our sales team and our partners to further build upon these successes and enhance our program overall."
The three-tier FortiPartner Program provides platinum, gold and silver partners with access to a deal registration element as well as easy access to a recurring revenue stream through automated delivery of Fortinet's FortiGuard™ family of real-time security subscription services. Additionally, solutions are selectively distributed and all purchases require a reseller agreement; product access is limited by partner tier and certification requirements.
FortiPartners not only benefit from the channel program enhancements, but from Fortinet's market-leading multi-threat security systems. FortiGate systems integrate eight essential security applications and services, enabling partners to flexibly recommend, sell and deploy tailored solutions for their customers. Unique to Fortinet is its FortiGuard subscription services -- antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, and anti-spam -- that provide automatic updates for customer systems to help protect them against security threats. This provides Fortinet partners the opportunity for a recurring revenue stream, and allows them to centrally manage all customer subscription renewals via one system and one vendor.
In March 2007, Fortinet was recognized by CMP Media's VARBusiness magazine as one of North America's top information technology vendors in terms of the partnership programs it offers to solution providers that sell its products and services to end users. Fortinet's certification as a Five-Star Partner, for the second consecutive year, is an acknowledgement of the company's commitment to and strength of its FortiPartner Program for IT integrators, solution providers, resellers and consultants.
Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated multi-threat security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection -- including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and antispam -- providing customers a way to help protect against multiple threats as well as blended threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified eight times over by ICSA Labs (firewall, antivirus, IPSec, SSL, IPS, client antivirus detection, cleaning and antispyware). Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.
Fortinet is a registered trademark of Fortinet, Inc. Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiOS, FortiAnalyzer, FortiASIC, FortiCare, FortiManager, FortiWiFi, FortiGuard, FortiClient, and FortiReporter are trademarks of the Fortinet, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.