>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas,
it's the Cube,
covering Fortinet Accelerate 2018.
Brought to you by Fortinet.
>> Hi. Welcome back to Fortinet Accelerate 2018.
I am Lisa Martin with the Cube.
We're excited to be here for our second year.
I'm joined by Peter Burris from the Cube as well.
And we're very excited to be joined by our next guest,
John Bove, the Vice President
of America's channels at Fortinet.
Welcome to the Cube.
>> Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
>> So, it's exciting for us to be here.
I, as a marketer, geek out on tag lines.
>> Yup.
>> So, I'd love for you to kind of tell our viewers,
strength and numbers.
>> Yup.
>> As the title of event.
What does that mean?
>> Well, it's really about the depth and breadth
of what Fortinet's doing in the marketplace.
You know, bringing the security fabric,
not only to our customers,
but to enable our partner community, right.
So, Accelerate is a collection and we have about,
almost 3,000 attendees here,
about 2,300 of those are our carrier partners,
resell partners, manage security service providers,
and also our fabric ID alliance partners, right.
So, the security fabric has allowed us to incorporate,
you know, some additional third party technologies, right.
And it's really,
we're creating a really strong culture around,
you know, integration and openness.
>> Before we get into the technology,
let's talk about pivot on that culture for
a second. >> Sure.
>> 'Cause one of the things that, that was evident from
the keynotes this morning that Kenzie talked about,
which really, this long standing partner driven culture
that Fortinet has.
You've recently come back to
Fortinet. >> I have.
>> Tell us about being a boomerang.
What excites you about coming back?
But also, how has that culture of really being partner-focus
and maybe partner-first evolve?
>> Well, the channel first culture at Fortinet
makes my job really easy, right.
And the reason that I came back was
here with the company for six years,
we experienced a tremendous, you know, run of revenue.
And to have the opportunity to lead
the America's Channel Organization is a great privilege.
But, it really comes from the culture within the company
of being a channel leverage and a channel first company.
I think, you know, in Patrice's keynote this morning,
and in Ken's keynote as well,
they really talked about the channel program,
and the channel partners.
You know, the partners are the fabric of
what we do as an organization.
You know, and we're doing the security fabric.
Something that they can build a business around.
>> Joe, as you think about what the type or the nature
of the changes that are taking place in all business.
Security business, and as we've heard today,
the repitity with which changes happening in security world.
That, I got to believe is putting a fair amount
of stress on your partners
because they have to come up to speed very, very rapidly
on new things, even as they demonstrate
that they can sustain operational excellence for all things.
What is the role that education's playing?
Culturating your partner's to a new network.
Or a new approach doing these,
how is that leading to a better set
of capabilities for your customers?
>> Sure.
Well, I think the one change in this
digital transformation era is change, right.
We're seeing customers consume technologies
much differently than they ever have before.
And so our partners have to be in a situation
to be able to deliver those technologies.
We're seeing the threat landscape continue
to widen and be very broad in nature.
And so, existing postures and existing deployments
are not necessarily going to be able to protect those customers
and quite frankly, from a partner standpoint,
the way that they look at their business,
and build their business needs to
be different today than it was due to the change
that digital transformation is driving.
>> So in terms of your, sort of, symbiosis with the channel,
we talked with Phil Quade just a minute ago,
we talked about, you know, how our seat is looking to him,
to say how are you guys doing this
at Fortinet in terms of security?
Tell me about the symbiotic relationship with your partners.
What information are they bringing to you
from the front lines from the customers?
Whether it's education, fedsled, healthcare,
that is helping to evolve Fortinet's technologies
>> I mean, at the end of the day,
security is a very noisy space right now, right.
And we depend upon our partners,
not only to ensure our programs and how we go deliver,
you know, value to them, but also,
I mean what the customers are telling them,
and what they're seeing in the marketplace today.
We're really focused on service enablement
and the service delivery
because the transactional type of business
that we've seen in the past is no longer
the route to market for success
for, you know, the broad base,
you know channel organizations, right.
So, you know, we have a responsibility as a company
to ensure that our partners have the capabilities
to deliver services in ways that customers want it,
you know, consume.
You know, IOT is a marketplace that's been created, right.
OT is opportunistic for the bad actors, right.
The move to, of workloads, to public clouds
and data based applications, and the fabric
is really resonating with those partners
in terms of being able to meet
those customers changing needs.
>> And you guys have had a, do a partner advisory
council. >> We do.
>> How long has that been going on?
And what are some of the things that excite you about it?
>> Yeah, so. Over 10 years we've
had a partner advisory council.
And it's, you know, it's industry leaders that
are business owners and business drivers
that, you know, really kind of keep us honest
about what we're doing internally.
They have access to our executive staff.
They have access to, you know, product roadmaps as well.
And you know, with the creation of the fabric,
and what we're doing with our alliance partnerships,
you know, they're kind of helping fill some of those holes
as to, you know, what we're seeing in the marketplace today.
You know, I think today we announced
11 additional fabric alliance partners.
You know, today, organizations like Fanta
for orchestration and automation, right.
Integration is truly the new best breed.
But the ability to react when things occur,
and to orchestrate and to automate those controls
are really important.
And the company's done a great job,
and we attribute a lot of that guidance
to our partner advisory council.
>> As Fortinet grows and expands its footprint,
which in place new types of arrangements,
like the CTA and other types of things,
it's ecosystem continues to expand,
in a way that Fortinet is moving towards the center.
More of a focus, at least a low side
>> Right. >> within the ecosystem.
What does that mean from your ability to get partners,
to influence partner behavior and customers,
and get more pull through out of the entire ecosystem?
How is that going to shape the way Fortinet competes in
a way Fortinet serves its customers over the next few years?
>> I think, simply put, you know,
the tailwinds we have behind us.
You know, we're on the precipice
of two billion dollars in revenue.
You know, we've got now line of sight
to three and four here pretty quickly.
We definitely think that the fabric is going to allow
us to continue to scale and grow.
You know, through that partner community.
But quite frankly, I am amazed just in my time here,
you know, how partners have embraced
and really wrapped a business practice,
in a service is first business practice,
you know around that fabric.
So, we're really excited about
the opportunity that we have at hand.
I think the fabric is going to continue
to, you know, change the game, right.
It's not about, you know, products.
It's about delivering an integrated solution.
>> Speaking of the fabric.
I was kind of thinking of pivoting
on what you were saying Peter, about differentiation.
When partners have choices of companies to work with,
you guys have been in this place for a really
long time. >> We have, yup.
>> But, besides the fabric, what are some of,
maybe the other top two differentiators where a partner
may be coming into the program that's, I get it,
for with this partnership with Fortinet,
we can go and really revolutionize customers in any industry
>> You know, we're really unique in the market
because we serve from the S&B to the mid-market,
to the enterprise and some of
the largest service provider brands.
And that affords our partner community
to be extremely diverse,
and we want to be very easy to work with.
So I think more than anything,
my goal is to be simple and predictable in nature,
and ensure that we're driving a very margin rich solution.
You know, a lot of companies in the market
will be enterprise focused or mid-market focused,
and so, you know, we're really keen
on establishing clear routes to market
with our partner community.
Aligning and investing where they fit.
And then taking advantage of some of,
even the vertical opportunities that
the partners present based on those capabilities.
>> I was, we were chatting a little bit earlier about
education and that was one of the things I was reading,
that, in some articles, that some of your guys did.
And it's been awhile since I've been in college,
and it just, it's so remarkable how, you know,
smart classrooms, and it's BYOD,
and how vulnerable school districts are for,
obvious reasons we won't go into, for political reasons.
But, even from a security perspective,
I'm curious if there's any kind of, maybe, favorite example
that you have of a partner, customer, through the channel
in education that has really been able to facilitate
a digital business transformation with the under pending
of security, security transformation.
>> I actually was just in a partner meeting,
and we were talking about that very topic.
And they had established with a,
one of the top five largest school districts
in the United States.
A, you know, a fully deployed wireless mesh network.
That they, once that was deployed,
then they really were able to underpin it with,
you know, the fortigate, fortios,
and really be able to deliver the security posture back
through that wireless infrastructure.
You know, you make a really good point.
We're seeing more and more internet connected devices.
A lot of those internet connected devices are very low end
in terms of their overall price point.
And so these organizations,
they're not necessarily pushing out vulnerabilities to it.
And in patches in remediation.
And that's why IOT security is so important in
that kind of K through 12 example, right.
Leveraging fortios, connecting to both land
and wireless land capabilities, and it really,
that's a great use case of how
the fabric can impact a customer.
>> So as you imagine the world of partnership
in a play in the future,
will they be more purveyors of hardware,
purveyors of software,
purveyors of services?
How do you think the ecosystem's going to evolve
as Fortinet expands it's
footprint? >> Sure.
That's a really good question.
And quite frankly, I spend a lot
of my time thinking about that.
I feel, I truly feel like we have an obligation
and a responsibility to help our partners through
this digital transformation into where
we think things are going to go.
Things are moving towards security as a service.
Things are moving towards, you know, on demand,
you know, pay as you go, consumption modeling, right.
And we have to put our partners in a situation
to be able to deliver some goods and services
to our customer based the way they want to buy,
and make sure that they're driving value
after the transaction.
Because, you know, selling to the transaction
is probably going to be a dying, you know, breed.
It's really important that partners have the capabilities
to install, deploy and support on the ongoing basis,
in which is really becoming a best practice
in the security space.
>> And one of the other things about digital business
is that historically businesses have been aligned
by the arrangement of their assets
so you can look at a transportation company and say,
oh, that company is transportation assets,
or financial services company and say,
oh, that company is financial services assets.
But digital business starts changing that.
Because when you bring pregruntibility
and digital orientation to a lot of these assets,
you reduce the specificity of those assets
which increases mobility across businesses.
>> That's right.
>> How do you think the opportunity
of helping partners transform in
this business way is going to increase the noise
or complexity or the interconnectedness
and the potential conflicts within partners,
as they go after?
As their expertise, and their relationships
becomes more fungible.
>> That's a, I mean, that's really good point.
We deal and we want to ensure that we've got
a programmatic way to handle, you know, channel conflicts.
Right, I mean at the end of the day.
Partner brings us
>> But also channel opportunity
>> And channel opportunity, that's right.
You know, so it's really about being consistent
in how you treat, you know, the partner community
and having really set rules.
But, you know, digital transformation,
if anything else, the thing that makes Fortinet so unique,
is we are an engineering company.
Security is very complicated.
And the good news is that
the heart of what we do is technology.
The feedback we continue to get from our partners
is that our technology is second to none.
So we win on the technology side.
And now with the momentum that we're seeing with the,
you know, the fabric or the alliance programs,
the momentum that we're seeing in the marketplace,
and really kind of being prepared for this shift
of technology by introducing the fabric concept.
You know, we're really excited about the opportunity
for our partners and the role
they're going to play in the coming years.
>> So as we kind of, you know, wrap things up here.
I'll go back to where we started off with John
and talking about the strength and numbers.
And some things that I wrote down that
I think Patrice shared this morning.
Nearly 18,000 new customers acquired in 2017.
>> That's right.
>> What are your, as the channel chief.
What are your hopes and dreams for what that number
will look like at the end, by the end of 2018?
>> You know, at the end of the day,
I want to be able to drive and enable
to channel organization to go take advantage
of the tailwinds in the market, right.
We want to go, continue to drive market share in the S&B,
that's going to be partner-led.
We want to go expand in the fabric,
you know, within the mid-market.
And we want to be very opportunistic in the enterprise,
to go knock down some of the largest logos.
You know, I'm mostly, the opportunity we have
in the U.S. alone is really quite significant.
And we're really excited to see, you know,
as, you know, we just exceed the half a billion dollar mark
in Q4 for the first time as a company,
and so as we start, you know, planning in future quarters.
It's really exciting to be a part of the momentum
we have here at Fortinet.
>> And I think the momentum is tangible.
You can feel it here.
You can hear it behind us in the expo.
So >> It's quite exciting.
>> We thank you so much John for stopping by to
keep sharing >> Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
>> Absolutely. Sharing your insights and how the,
I'm feeling another tagline with the fabric of our lives,
but I think somebody else beat you guys to it.
Cotton maybe?
Anyway, thanks so much John for sharing
what's going on in the channel
and we wish you a great show.
>> Thank you. Thank you very much.
>> And for my co-host, Peter Burris,
I'm Lisa Martin.
You've been watching the Cube live
from Fortinet Accelerate 2018.
Stick around, we'll be right back.
(light techno music)