IDC chooses Fortinet as overall UTM market leader

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Fortinet, a provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, today announced that it has been named the overall UTM market leader for 2006, according to leading market research firm IDC.

New data within the November 2007 IDC report, “Worldwide Threat Management Security Appliances 2006-2011 Forecast and 2006 Vendor Shares: Still Stacking the Racks,” shows that Fortinet owns 14.4 percent of the worldwide market over all other vendors, including Check Point, Cisco, Crossbeam, Juniper and SonicWall.

Enterprise demand driving UTM adoption
According to the IDC report, the UTM segment of the threat management security appliance category reached $967 million for 2006 with a 42 percent annual growth rate – the fastest growth rate of any of the threat management security appliance submarkets. IDC forecasts that by 2011, UTM will account for nearly 50 percent of the overall network security market, and will demonstrate an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.2 percent.

“Past UTM market growth was primarily driven by small- to mid-enterprises adoption, however for 2006 market growth saw an increasing demand by large enterprises for comprehensive security solutions ” said Charles Kolodgy, research director for security products at IDC.

“Fortinet’s leadership in the UTM market is fueled by its ability to provide enterprise-class appliances that deliver true integration of multiple security applications and services, as well as integration of routing and switching, all managed from a single GUI.  In the future, enterprises will demand strong security that includes networking, rather than having two separate devices, or a networking device that only incorporates adequate security.”

According to IDC, UTM security appliance products include multiple security features integrated into one device. To be included in this category, as opposed to other threat management appliance segments, UTM appliances must contain the ability to perform network firewalling, network intrusion detection and prevention, and gateway antivirus. All of the capabilities need not be utilized, but the functions must exist inherently in the appliance. In addition to the mandatory applications, UTM appliances may also host other security or networking features.

Fortinet spearheads advances in UTM
Fortinet’s leadership in the UTM market is fueled by demands from large enterprise, MSSP and carriers for a comprehensive, integrated network security solution that can help to meet a variety of security requirements with reduced cost and management complexity. 

Fortinet's FortiGate systems are ASIC-accelerated security appliances that integrate essential security applications such as antivirus, firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, anti-spam and traffic shaping. All FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard Network, which helps provide protection against the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, other unwanted network traffic and more - around the clock and around the world.

As the fundamental requirements for security gateways change, FortiGate systems have been designed to go beyond traditional UTM to also offer traditional networking capabilities, performing switching and routing at both layers two and three. Fortinet is also the only vendor to offer virtualized UTM security for large enterprises, MSSPs and carriers on a high-performance platform for manageability of multiple domains from a single device.

Other vendors who claim similar solutions are limited to virtualizing no more than three security functions, while Fortinet can virtualize up to eight, plus routing and switching.

“The realization of the benefits of a comprehensive and fully integrated network security appliance has moved beyond traditional small and medium business and branch office deployments and into the largest enterprises and service providers,” said Ken Xie, founder, president and CEO of Fortinet.

“Our ASIC-accelerated FortiGate appliances were built to meet the networking, performance and security demands of enterprises and service providers, who are increasingly adopting Fortinet solutions. We are very pleased with our continued UTM market leadership position and committed to continuing to innovate in this arena.”