Fortinet Receives High Marks in Everything Channel's 2008 VARBusiness Annual Report Card

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Sept. 2, 2008 - Fortinet^® - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, today announced that it has received high marks in the 2008 Annual Report Card (ARC) from Everything Channel's VARBusiness. From the company's debut on the ARC survey in 2007, Fortinet improved significantly to land in second place overall in 2008, outperforming four other entrenched network security appliance vendors.

Now in its 23rd year, the VARBusiness ARC Awards recognize outstanding partner programs and superb vendor service in 18 major product categories. The ARC awards were held at an awards ceremony held on August 18 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Dallas.

In addition to receiving the top ranking in the richness of product features and functionality category, Fortinet received second place rankings for quality and reliability, compatibility and ease of integration, technical innovation, post-sales support, revenue and profit potential, and communication.

"Fortinet's remarkable ascent on the VARBusiness ARC Survey from 2007 to 2008 is attributable to the focus and investment we've placed on overhauling our channel support programs over the past year," said Michael Valentine, vice president of Americas channel sales, Fortinet. "It is very satisfying to see our efforts pay off through the resounding support and confidence of our partners, and this inspires us to continue raising the bar for superior support to the channel."

Valentine is part of Fortinet's decorated channel team, who is focused on supporting an indirect business model. Earlier this year, Valentine was named a CRN 2008 "Channel Chief." In addition, Kendra Krause, director of Americas channel sales for Fortinet, was just recognized as one of the "50 Most Powerful Women of the Channel" by VARBusiness.

"For 23 years we've asked Solution Providers to grade their vendor partners on criteria such as product quality and innovation, partner programs and support, and each year the results of these grades have created the VARBusiness Annual Report Card which reflects the level of commitment vendors have to the channel and to their Solution Provider partners. Congratulations to all of the winners,"said Robert C. DeMarzo, Senior Vice President and Editorial Director, Everything Channel editorial.

Winners were selected by VARBusiness editorial based on the survey results of more than 5,000 systems integrators, IT consulting organizations, value-added resellers (VARs), solution providers and software developers.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection--including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and antispam -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified in six programs by ICSA Labs: Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN, Network IPS, and Antispam. Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.

About VARBusiness (www.varbusiness.com)
For the past 20 years, VARBusiness' strategic resources have been the gateway to the commercial and public sector (or government) Solution Provider community. The VARBusiness integrated platform of media opportunities provides strategic insight for technology integrators through industry-defining research, in-depth editorial, channel events and innovative Web services, enabling these IT professionals to make educated decisions for their businesses, partnerships and customers. VARBusiness offerings lead vendors and distributors to unprecedented access to the most powerful strategic Solution Providers in the market. VARBusiness has been the recipient of numerous industry awards for both editorial content and design.

Everything Channel (www.everythingchannel.com, www.channelweb.com)
Everything Channel, formerly CMP Channel, is the one-stop-shop for accessing, enabling and accelerating technology sales channels. From branding and recruiting to marketing and sales, Everything Channel offers technology marketers the unmatched breadth and depth of global brands and market intelligence combined with an unparallel audience loyalty and credibility serving all technology sales channels. Through innovative sales and marketing solutions, Everything Channel arms the sellers of technology with the resources they need to achieve measurable and significant results. Everything Channel is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.

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