Jon McGettingan, Senior Director A/NZ & South Pacific Islands at Fortinet
What will be the key channel plays for 2015?
Network security is moving fast. Everyone, that includes resellers, end-users and vendors, has to keep up. Fortinet releases new solutions every month ranging from the FortiAP-S series of self-contained firewall-enabled access points to proprietary and open APIs (application programming interfaces) to tap into the exploding Software-Defined Network (SDN) security market.
Resellers need to stay informed themselves, pass on this knowledge to clients and ensure that they can provide the requisite support and services as appropriate.
What will be the key technology for 2015?
It has to be the Cloud and managed services. Enterprises are seeing that they can streamline their businesses by moving more operations to application and managed service providers. So more of their IT budgets will go towards operational expenses and less to CAPEX expenditures.
As a result, resellers have to adjust their solution set to reflect this reality. And to support the burgeoning MSP market, virtualisation is dominating the data centre.
What is your key message to the Channel?
Network security provides a strong, on-going relationship between the channel and its customers. A reseller sells a server, a switch, an application and the deal is done. But with network security, their client’s requirements are always evolving as the threat landscape morphs into yet another vector for malware and advanced threats.
Resellers that make it their business to specialise in the security field will always have plenty of work. When they call up a client to talk network security, they want to hear what the reseller has to say.
What is your key warning to the channel?
Complacency is always the number one red flag for resellers. What a reseller did last year doesn’t cut it, at least in the security arena. They have to be out in front of the issues, the solutions and the client’s concerns. That’s why we are building momentum with SDN. As more and more application services run on the network, internal or external, virtual or physical, the risks increase apace.
Just one hole in the client’s network security profile can cause havoc. Fortinet’s SDN Security Framework allows customers to cleanly integrate our security services across all principal layers of the network architecture: the Data Plane, the Control Plane and the Management Plane.
This engagement focuses on specific network components including SDN controllers, orchestration frameworks, hypervisors, Cloud management, security management and analytics. We are currently working with more than two dozen technology providers - including HP, Cisco and Ixia - to ensure protection from cyber threats through Fortinet’s advanced SDN Security Framework.
Key to your company in 2015?
We are building our visibility in the marketplace. We have a 200+ strong team backing us at the FortiGuard Labs, and we have been adding more and more sales and support staff across the A/NZ region. No longer are we Forti-Who. But a higher profile means that we have to deliver winning results for the channel and customers.
We have made a commitment to upskilling our staff and resellers, getting the brand in front of prospects and keeping a steady stream of new security solutions into the market.
These are exciting times for Fortinet. We take security seriously and are cutting no corners to ensure that when resellers sell Fortinet solutions, they will have the 100 per cent backing of all of our resources, not just in A/NZ but globally as well.
