Fortinet Awarded 2009 Everything Channel Five-Star Partner Program Guide Certification for Fourth Consecutive Year
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Apr. 3, 2009 - Fortinet®- a market-leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced it has been recognized by Everything Channel as one of North America's top information-technology (IT) vendors for its FortiPartner™ program.
Fortinet's partner program was awarded a Five-Star certification among mid-sized companies in Everything Channel's 15th annual 2009 Partner Program Guide (PPG), acknowledging its commitment and strength of its programs for reseller partners. A list of PPG winners appears in the March 30 issue of CRN, the channel industry's leading publication, and online at www.Channelweb.com, the world's largest channel industry portal.
"Our channel partners play an integral role in the success of Fortinet, and partners -- now more than ever -- need vendors they can rely on and trust," said Kendra Krause, vice president of channel sales for Fortinet. "It is truly an honor to be recognized with an Everything Channel 5-Star Partner designation, which further validates the efforts we have put into our FortiPartner Program year after year. Even in a tough economy, we are focused on investing in our channel program to provide partners with opportunities beyond just products, but also innovative technology and services for our mutual customers."
"Now more than ever, the quality of a vendor's partner program determines how profitable its partners will be. So for their commitment to their partners, and their efforts to build quality programs, we congratulate this year's Five-Star Partner Program Guide winners for helping to drive greater revenue in the channel," said Robert C. DeMarzo, senior vice president and editorial director, Everything Channel.
Fortinet is a 100-percent channel focused company. In 2008, the strength of Fortinet's FortiPartner Program enabled the company to create additional and more tailored initiatives for all partner levels and segments. Fortinet's 2008 results speak for themselves: a 36 percent year-over-year growth in revenue and more than 900 new channel partners signed up. Fortinet has also recently added popular new deal terms to help partners in a down economy, including channel pricing optimization, a credit extension initiative, and new enhancements for deal registration designed to protect partners' investments.
Research for the 2009 Everything Channel Partner Programs Guide and the Everything Channel Five-Star Program was conducted by Everything Channel's Institute for Partner Education & Development (IPED). IPED analyzed 130 vendor programs rating vendors' responses to nearly 60 in-depth questions about their partner programs in the six elements of sales support, marketing support, partner profitability, channel operations, communications and partner recruitment. To ensure fair comparisons, companies were placed in one of four categories based on company size. IPED weighted the responses to each question about such program elements as sales support and partner recruitment so that the total weight given to a vendor's answers in any of the six elements can potentially be scored as high as 100. The weighting scheme varies depending on the company size and product type and is based on IPED proprietary analysis methodology and intellectual property. In each of the four company categories, the companies with the highest overall weighted scores received the Everything Channel Five-Star Program designation.
For more information on the FortiPartner program, go to http://www.fortinet.com/partners/.
Everything Channel (www.everythingchannel.com, www.channelweb.com)
Everything Channel is the one-stop shop for accessing, enabling, managing and accelerating technology sales channels. From branding and recruiting to marketing and sales, Everything Channel offers technology marketers the unmatched breadth and depth of global brands and market intelligence combined with unparalleled audience loyalty and credibility serving all technology sales channels through an extensive database. Everything Channel provides innovative sales and marketing solutions to arm the sellers of technology with the resources they need to achieve measurable and significant results.
About United Business Media Limited (www.unitedbusinessmedia.com)
United Business Media Limited (UBM) is a global media and marketing services company that informs markets and brings the world's buyers and sellers together at events, online, in print, and with the information they need to do business successfully. UBM serves professional and commercial communities, from IT professionals to doctors, from journalists to jewelry dealers, from farmers to pharmacists around the world. UBM employs more than 6,500 people in more than 30 countries. UBM's businesses operating in the US include CMPMedica, Commonwealth Business Media, Everything Channel, PR Newswire, RISI, TechInsights, TechWeb and Think Services. UBM is listed on the London Stock Exchange (UBM.L) and has a market capitalization of $1.6 billion.
About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, 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 -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level 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 in six programs by ICSA Labs: Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN, Network IPS, and Antispam. Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.
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