Fortinet shakes up Gold regime

Security vendor asks top partners to skill up on wider range of products as it launches Gold Club

Paul Judd: If you are a one-product company and someone builds a better mouse trap, you are in trouble

Fortinet is raising the bar of accreditation for its EMEA Gold partners to ensure they are up to speed on in its full range of core technologies.

Partner accreditation had previously centred on Fortinet’s flagship FortiGate offering but from next quarter top resellers will also be obliged to skill up on its FortiMail and FortiWeb offerings.

Paul Judd, UK and Ireland director at Fortinet, said Fortinet was working hard to diversify its revenue base away from the UTM brand that made its name.

“Fortigate is still the lion's share of our business and is still growing, but we are growing the others to share the load. If you are a one-product company and someone builds a better mouse trap, you are in trouble,” he said.

Judd said the network security vendor is also considering raising the annual revenue threshold for Gold partners above its current £500,000.

At the same time, Gold partners are to enjoy closer contact with Fortinet following the launch of its EMEA Gold Club. This will see partners meeting up twice a year for one-day events and will be backed by an exclusive website featuring sales, technical and support information.

Judd said this would ensure Fortinet’s relationship with its top partners is a two-way street.

“With our portfolio expanding so quickly, we needed a mechanism to share information and get feedback from Gold partners on a constant basis. And twice a year they will be able to give us face-to-face feedback,” he said.

Judd stressed partners would have a quarter to adjust to the new accreditation regime, which will be supported by a new virtual training resource. Partners will be required to have four accredited FortiGate engineers as before, plus one employee accredited on both FortiMail and FortiWeb. The vendor is still weighing up how its two remaining products, FortiScan and FortiDB, will fit into the new programme.

Judd said he expected the majority of Fortinet’s 12 UK Gold partners, which include Integralis, Didata, Calyx and Lan2Lan, to easily make the leap.