For Fortinet, being in lockstep with the channel ecosystem is crucial for success

As a channel-focused company, Fortinet success comes from its partners success, said Rashish Pandey, VP for Marketing and Communications in Asia and ANZ for Fortinet.

As one of the biggest cybersecurity vendors in the world, Fortinet continues to innovate its solutions to provide customers with the best security capabilities. With a portfolio of over 50 enterprise-grade products, Fortinet's solutions are among the most deployed, most patented, and most validated in the industry.

The Sunnyvale, California headquartered company has been named a leader in 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN for the fifth year in a row. Fortinet is also the only vendor recognized across five separate Magic Quadrant reports for SD-WAN, SSE, Single-Vendor SASE, Network Firewalls, and Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN.

So how does the cybersecurity vendor grow its success? CRN Asia caught up with Rashish Pandey, VP for Marketing and Communications in Asia and ANZ for Fortinet at the company’s partner event in Kuala Lumpur recently.

According to Pandey, as a channel-focused company, Fortinet success comes from its partners success as well. He mentioned that almost every aspect of Fortinet’s business goes through the channel.

“We are the world's largest cybersecurity company in terms of units shipped, largely because of our channel ecosystem. Even in countries where we are not physically present, we've got a channel ecosystem. We see the channel playing a very critical role, not just in our success, but helping our customers be more safe and secure,” said Pandey.

Be it in Asia Pacific or globally, Pandey pointed out that the channel partners take Fortinet’s products and provide services on top of it to customers. In most cases, the added value has been on narrowing down the cyber skills gap.

“Partners play a critical role in navigating and in covering the skills gap. They provide solutions such as software as a service, which customers like in the SMB space cannot afford to invest in. So, partners are super critical for us,” added Pandey.

At the same time, Pandey also mentioned that Fortinet is training its partners, who in turn, train the customers. He pointed out that Fortinet has got training partners in every country who continue to run courses on their behalf.

Interestingly, it’s not just training that is provided. Partners are also providing paid services that are built on top of Fortinet’s platform to help customers. For example, in Malaysia, Time.com is a Fortinet partner that provides managed services to Malaysian customers. In Singapore, Fortinet partners include major telcos like Singtel and Starhub to provide services.

“We also work with the smaller partners in the tier two and tier three cities where we may not have a physical presence. For example, in cities like Penang and Bali, these smaller partners help extend our reach and we enable them to carry and act on our behalf to our customers,” he added.

Fortinet’s channel ecosystem

In Southeast Asia, Pandey pointed out that Fortinet is number one in terms of market share, both in units as well as revenue market share. As such, Pandey believes that it is crucial to be in lockstep with the channel ecosystem. He believes it's not possible for the cybersecurity vendor to move further ahead from the channel when the channel is lagging.

“Internally, we always have a mindset that whatever message we need to carry to the market, we need to first make sure our channel ecosystem is fully versed with it. Because if we say something and the channel says something else, it becomes confusing. This is where we do a reasonably good job of bringing our partners together with us. Whether it's the big partners or specialized partners like MSSPs, we bring them along with us,” he added.

When it comes to dealing with challenges the partner ecosystem faces, Pandey explained that one of the main challenges is the transition for partners. Partners want to know if they should focus on AI, the cloud or SASE as they will have to recalibrate their business models to deal with this.

“If you were a reseller 10 years ago, you would work off commissions and margins. But now, you've got to think in terms of recurring revenue streams and retention rates. So, channel partners are also transforming to cater to some of these trends that we are seeing. They come back to us and say, how can you help us technically? How can you help us commercially? How can you help us with go to market so that we can transform while we build these new categories of businesses? And that's how we work with them,” said Pandey.

From a customer perspective, Pandey pointed out that customers are rightly demanding when they are facing budget pressures or if they are facing with increased cost of doing business with tariffs and such. He believes it's natural for them to expect that how can Fortinet help.

“One of the best ways we are dealing with this is we're having very constructive dialogues with our customers. We get them to look at their estate and see how much they spend on multiple point products. Does it really bring value to them? More often than not, the customer says, forget the cost. They’re just bogged down by the complexity of managing these 20 different boxes,” he said.

This leads to a conversation about how they can platform better on fewer, larger vendors as that has a very good side effect of cost savings. It's not the primary driver, but Pandey believes it drives a lot of direct TCO benefits to customers as they own it.

Moreover, as a market leader with a sense of responsibility, Pandey stated that they’ve got to be the first responders to customers when something goes wrong.

“Our focus on customers won't change. Our focus on partners won't change. What will change is how we react to some of these new technologies. In some cases, we might have to go to our customers and say we need to change the way you operate and allow us to work with you on that. Sometimes we'll have to work with the channel partners to educate the market on transitions,” explained Pandey.

Responsible disclosure

An interesting point highlighted by Pandey is also on Fortinet’s responsible disclosure as the cybersecurity vendor wants to work with a partner who’s not hiding things.

“Every piece of software will have a vulnerability. That's just by design. But how you react to when you find a vulnerability separates between a responsible partner and an irresponsible player,” said Pandey.

Interestingly, of all the vulnerabilities that have been discovered for Fortinet, almost 80% were self-discovered and self-disclosed. For Pandey, when Fortinet finds a vulnerability, they proactively come out and state they found something in comparison to some other players where 80% is found out by somebody else and reported by somebody else.

“We want to have that responsibility partnership when it comes to disclosures. Customers also appreciate this as they see the commitment and responsibility. We were one of the first to sign the pledge of Secure by Design when CISA came out with it in the US,” added Pandey.

Pandey also acknowledged that it’s a difficult conversation because customers have to come in and patch up the systems. However, they appreciate the fact that Fortinet is a responsible partner.

With that said, Pandey also highlighted that Fortinet refreshes their engaged partner program yearly to give a whole host of benefits to partners on incentives, training, enablement, content and such.

When asked about other vendors revamping their partner ecosystem, Pandey answered, “The important thing is, did you become a channel-friendly company yesterday? Or have you always been a channel-focused organization? We have always been a channel-first organization.”