LONDON, UK, April 9 - Fortinet® - a market-leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions today announced it has selected Bell Micro as its newest distributor. Following a successful financial year and sustained market growth, this latest appointment is set to further Fortinets penetration into the UK market, supporting the increased demand for its high-end integrated security technology and capitalising on the upward enterprise trends for virtualisation, consolidation and compliance.

Paul Judd, egional Director, UK and Ireland at Fortinet explains; ÏThe opportunity for truly integrated security is ripe in the UK. Demand for our product range is booming, which put us in the perfect position to bolster our distribution channel. With its strong technical expertise and extensive enterprise customer-base, Bell Micros value-added approach is wholly complementary to our wider channel strategy.

Bell Micro is coordinating a dedicated team that will offer the full range of Fortinet products, plus pre and post sales support, through its extensive network of resellers and system integrators. Steve Browell, General Manager, Security Division, Bell Micro, comments:

ÏFortinet is a strong brand for us to have on board. It has a greater share of the integrated security market than anyone else, and for good reason. As the recession further drives consolidation and virtualisation trends across every industry, Fortinets emphasis on centralised and granular security with high levels of network performance is extremely compelling for our reselllers.

In particular, Browell believes Fortinets FortiDB solution will become a highly relevant technology in 2009, ÏWith our heritage in servers and storage, Fortinets new suite of database security tools, FortiDB, is also an excellent fit within our existing portfolio. No longer a nice to have technology, the protection of consumer and corporate data is paramount to our customers today. As corporate databases become the target of choice for criminal activity and compliance regulations increase, we are certain the relevance of Fortinets database specific appliance will create strong demand amongst our customer-base.

This latest distribution partnership is set to increase the volume of Fortinets reseller base across new enterprise markets, whilst existing distributors VADition and VCW will continue to build on their successes targeting the market for high-end security and further expanding the quality of the reseller base.

For more information on Fortinets complete suite of security solutions, please visit: www.fortinet.com/products