"Fortinet will focus on new technology innovations in 2015"

In a candid interaction with the DQ Channels, Navin Mehra, Regional Business Head of Fortinet, talks about the company’s advanced and innovative security solutions that offer endpoint security to the enterprises.

How Fortinet expanded and grown in terms of revenue and market share during last fiscal?

Navin Mehra: Fortinet has taken a big leap as a leading security vendor with the innovations it has brought in. In next generation firewall we have done fantastically well. We had close to 30 percent growth during last fiscal in India. We witnessed growth in the Government, BSFI and the Telecom segment. These key three verticals really did well for Fortinet last fiscal. We witnessed tremendous growth and we also increased our manpower and customer base. Expanding our operations, we have opened new offices in Kolkata, Chandigarh and Cochin. We are increasing our foot prints in tier 2 cities as well.

As a leading security vendor, what are the key trends do you identify in the network security domain?

Navin Mehra: Considering the current market scenario, there is a lot of inclination towards the next generation firewall. Today the enterprises need intelligent security products which basically can give the next level of performance. The next generation firewall rightly hit on this requirement of the enterprises. Now a day, threats have become more sophisticated. This is not a generation of only hacking and viruses, but a generation of advance persistent threats (ATP). There are constant attempts by cyber criminals to penetrate in the networks of customers and then stay in and launch an attack or steal the information for monetary purposes. Therefore, clients are looking for sophisticated network security solutions to address the security issues.

 How Fortinet’s security offerings address the incidents of security breach and tackle the advanced and high tech security attacks?

Navin Mehra: Clients at the enterprise level have adopted Fortinet in a big way where they are looking for more sophisticated  but comprehensive security solutions which are easy to configure and manage and at the same time it takes care of zero day attacks. In the SMB, SME and enterprise segment, Fortinet has a very fantastic story in the next generation firewall space. We have different models for different segments at different price starting from Rs 20000 for SMB for SOHO upto Rs 20 crore for enterprise or Telco. Our security products like the FortiGate, which is our flagship product, offers the client endpoint security. The beauty of FortiGate is that it has the same operating system and feature across the platforms. FortiGate is very ideal for SMB and SME kind of customers, which offers security for their network. At the same time it gives perimeter functionality and infrastructural functionality like Wi-Fi and two factor authentication. Today it has the highest numbers of certifications and features in a single product. FortiClient is another excellent product which extends the power of FortiGate's Unified threat management to endpoints to network.

The Indian IT market is currently buzzing with the term Internet of Things (IoT)? How Fortinet would address the security concerns arising with the floods of data?

Navin Mehra: IoT in many ways is still budding, though some of the OVMs are making lots of noise around the IoT. Fortinet has already taken steps in terms of addressing the IoT. We have developed products around IoT which can take care of all the security concerns. We have already taken steps to ensure that our products are reaching at the SOHO and SMB segment. In an enterprise, we have got products like web application firewall or D Docs, which can also handle other kind of attacks.

When we talk about IoT in the home segment, we have got products where modems and routers of the customers can be replaced by FortiGate box and a set up can be made where communication through all the devices can be via FortiGate. Fortinent understands that android is a widely used platform and FortiClient can be installed on android platform also.  On the Big Data front, Fortinet can provide a threat analysis report of the data being generated. We have got analytics products to give big data analytics from the threat perspective.

Are you basically a channel driven company? How do you facilitate the nourishment of channel ecosystem?

Navin Mehra: We are a 100 percent channel driven company. Our reputation in terms of a channel company is excellent. We don’t sell direct and we align our partners with the implementation and service and ensure that our partners better margins. Whenever there is new launch or upgrade, we give regular trainings to the partners. We also do a certification program for them. We have set up experience zones in every city where partners can come and get practical knowledge of our offerings. In short, we work closely with partners and groom them.

What is your go to market strategy in 2015?

Navin Mehra: Year 2015-16 is very crucial year for us. There is political stability in the country and the ruling government has rolled out several crucial projects where Fortinet has got very important role to perform. Fortinet is engaged with the government in some of the premium projects. On the other side, by extending our arms, we are trying to rope into the Analytics and Consultancy. We are trying to highlight our technology to the next platform by bringing in performance and demonstrating our technical expertise. In the year 2015, we are targeting to reach to big companies in finance and other sectors. We expect huge business from Telco. Apart from typical UTMs and firewalls, Fortinet will also highlight its products spread in 15 categories. On the channel front, we are expanding our operations and increasing our channel base across the regions. We will continue our channel initiatives and focus more on awareness of our new technology innovations.