The increased demand for telecommunications companies to provide managed security services and the trend of companies deploying cloud services will be strategic for the growth of Fortinet in the region, said a company executive.
The security technology provider of network and business model position very well to get to their telecommunications customers such a transformation, “said George Chang, Fortinet’s regional director for Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, in an interview Wednesday.
Appointed as the regional lead in May, Chang also serves as the regional director of market support and service provider in the Asia-Pacific, a portfolio he has held since December 2009. Prior to joining Fortinet, was head of corporate development at OpenNet, the company appointed or NETCO network of the next generation of Singapore’s National Broadband Network.
According to Chang, cloud computing is well adapted to Fortinet to focus on the segment of large projects or high-end 2010. The size of NTT DoCoMo, SingTel and BT have launched “some kind of cloud computing services, making it even more crucial to deploy products and high-performance bound to capture, manage and control different types of threats security, drew out.
Fortinet, he added, expects growth across the region this year, but is looking in particular to an “explosive growth” in Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.
Q: About your point of service provider customers looking for managed security services – Fortinet What opportunities for this growing trend in the region? How does the company intend to take advantage of them?
Chang: There are three key areas where we believe they provide an advantage as a provider of solutions for managed service providers (managed security service providers). Any provider – can be a telecommunications operator or service provider data centers very strong – can come to us and say they want to offer security solutions for our customers and be able to manage the supply, performance and classification forensic capacity to allow the network or user name and data files for compliance.
Your customers do not want to manage security for themselves due to lack of manpower or [because] the focus is not only network security. They want to pay a monthly subscription. To enable that, obviously can not continue to accumulate in the security apparatus and network boxes. If Fortinet has an advantage [that] is capable of virtualizing a large box or small for several clients.
For example, we build a partition for client A and do not just virtualize the firewall to the client, we can virtualize a full range of security offerings, including IPS (intrusion prevention system), antivirus and Web filtering . I can make use of virtualization to serve 10 customers at a box – each of these customers may have different types of services offered to them. The ability to allocate services on a virtualization platform to give customers as hosting server – that is something that not only fine, but with high performance.
The second point is our licensing model. The way in which the license is quite different from friendly competition. Many of them leave on the basis of per user. When the supplier begins the deployment of the solution in [his] the network, for example, 100 users, but when the business gets really big [has] to start paying more. As a provider, it is very difficult for you to make your ROI (return on investment) and rapid growth. Fortinet licenses per box and the customer can choose to activate all or some of the features. Providers can make your own mix and match in terms of bundling services and grow accordingly. They have better visibility into their ROI – they know how much they have invested in the box and what returns are.
We also have a direct premium gold service program where we support our partners managed service providers and tier-3. We respond to them with quality telecommunications service quality. We have three support centers in the Asia-Pacific, China, Japan and Malaysia. In these centers we have our own specialists in the management of malicious software threats to respond much faster.
What challenges are companies in the region face today in protecting their networks and how these concerns can be expected to evolve over time?
The perimeters of the network of a company have been extended. Previously, everyone worked in the office for the contents of your security within that environment. Journey has come into play, so that the extensions of the perimeters of the network have changed. One of the challenges faced by enterprises that have security in place are unable to cope with these extended network perimeters.
Another key challenge is the growing number of threats. People sometimes say security is not as crucial for SMEs (small and medium enterprises), but safety is important for any organization large or small. target long botnet operators of SMEs to build a substantial mass to attack other networks.
One of the things we’ve seen in the market is that when a company grows, its security will not grow up with it. If a company implements a safe and then grows to twice its size, is likely to find the product does not correspond to their needs. Fortinet technology is the same whether in a smaller box or picture quality telecommunications – skills, migration and performance grow with the company. So if you invest today, you can recharge or group with big boxes as you go.
Another concern is around cloud computing. With data and applications that are put in a third-party infrastructure, how secure are they? In all these key areas, Fortinet has a very strong proposal to help them.
Is it easier to sell the UTM (unified threat management) to emerging markets in the region compared to more mature markets, where they accumulate in the boxes may be the norm?
Overall, security in the Asia-Pacific market is a bit weak in comparison [with] the U.S. markets or Europe, so is the opportunity for security vendors, including Fortinet to better ensure the region.
More mature markets like Singapore, obviously, have some sort of security platform launched earlier. They need to update – we see a lot of customers and improving our products, “our competitors.
In growth markets such as Vietnam, may not have products in place, so go directly to the advanced solutions immediately. That is more advantageous in a way, as adopted by the new technology. The update is always more tedious in comparison [with] the implementation of a new network.
How do you convince them that UTM is the way forward, rather than just implement the best solutions about your class?
Despite offering all in one security devices, individually, our solutions are very competitive. For example, the FortiGate-3950B has a performance of 120 Gbps of firewall and more than 10 Gbps IPS. With a single picture, we are very comparable to standalone devices. Today, threats can not tell where they come from antivirus, IPS and firewall. They come from different areas. This is our picture, we know where it comes from, and we know how to control it.
The advantage we have here is that there is no finger pointing. As the traffic passes through our box, we have a single point of control as to how the threat was administered compared with the deployment of several boxes.