Fortinet makes VoIP acquisition

UTM vendor buys TalkSwitch and announces 34 per cent jump in Q1 sales

Fortinet continues to diversify from its roots in the firewall market with its acquisition of voice-over IP (VoIP) vendor TalkSwitch.

TalkSwitch boasts more than 1,500 channel partners and has sold 100,000 products. Fortinet said the deal would expand its reach into the multi-service business gateway market.

Its VoIP phone systems cater for firms with up to 64 phones per location.

The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, came as the UTM specialist Fortinet posted a 34 per cent year-on-year spike in sales to $93.3m for the first quarter of 2011.

Fortinet chief executive Ken Xie said: "We believe that TalkSwitch's unique offering, combined with our existing end-to-end security innovation, will provide us with new opportunities as well as a greater ability to support the security and VoIP needs of both small-to-medium business and enterprise branch customers."