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SUNNYVALE, Calif., January 13, 2005 - Fortinet - the confirmed market leader in Unified Threat Management (UTM) and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection -
today announced that Dr. Koichi (Ko) Nishimura has been appointed to its board of directors. Dr. Nishimura is a renowned manufacturing industry veteran with a successful track-record of managing profitable, high-growth companies and business units. He brings to Fortinet more than 40 years of industry, management, and board directorial experience with companies such as Solectron, IBM Corp., and AT&T Wireless Services.
From 1996 until his retirement in January 2003, Dr. Nishimura served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Solectron, a provider of global manufacturing and supply-chain management services to electronics companies. He joined Solectron in 1988 as chief operating officer, became president in 1990 and then chief executive officer in 1992. During his tenure, Dr. Nishimura grew Solectron from a regional entity into the world's largest and most profitable electronics manufacturing services company. Under his leadership, Solectron received two prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Awards.
Before Solectron, Dr. Nishimura worked at IBM Corporation for 23 years, where he held a number of senior management positions in the company's disk file design, technology and manufacturing divisions. Additionally, he has sat on the board of AT&T Wireless Services and was the 2001 recipient of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group's Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Nishimura holds a doctorate in material science and engineering from Stanford University, and master's and bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering from San Jose State University.
"I am pleased to welcome Ko to Fortinet's board of directors," said Ken Xie, Fortinet founder, president and CEO. "His deep and broad business, industry and manufacturing knowledge, combined with his experience managing profitable, high-growth companies will be a valuable resource for Fortinet as we continue to increase our position in the network security market."
Fortinet is a privately-held company funded by some of Silicon Valley's most respected venture capitalists.
About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the confirmed leader of Unified Threat Management market. The company's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2004 Security Product of the Year Award from Network Computing Magazine and the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, are the new generation of real-time network protection systems. They detect and eliminate the most damaging, content-based threats from e-mail and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time - without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems are the only security products that are quadruple-certified by the ICSA (antivirus, firewall, IPSec, NIDS), and deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named to the Red Herring Top 100 Private Companies, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.
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