Palo Alto Networks benefited heavily from the rapid shift to remote work brought on by COVID-19, posting robust third-quarter fiscal 2020 earnings.

The company’s Q3 revenues hit $869.4 million, up 20% year over year.

“The last month of this quarter saw the majority of the world under lockdown. To be able to deliver these results in this time is a testament to the strength of our team and our partner ecosystem,” said Palo Alto Networks Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora, on Thursday’s earnings call.

He said the onset of the pandemic forced many companies to reassess how they manage data and applications that are no longer centrally protected in the data center. As a result, Palo Alto saw a surge in customer billings during the quarter. In the past six weeks, Arora said the company had added 1,500 new customers. Its next-generation security services, which include the Cortex and Prisma portfolios, continued to be a bright spot for the cybersecurity vendor.

Touching on the $420 million acquisition of SD-WAN vendor CloudGenix, Arora shed some light on the role the new company would play under Palo Alto’s leadership.

“After listening to our combined customer install base, we believe that bringing the two platforms together is the right approach to deliver the best possible end-to-end [secure access service edge] solution,” he said.

However, Arora added that the company would also give customers the option to choose between CloudGenix's SD-WAN technology and Palo Alto’s own firewall-based SD-WAN product. “Our two-pronged strategy for SD-WAN will provide our customers with the flexibility to implement SD-WAN on premise or in the cloud,” he said.

Building on the acquisition, Arora was confident that the combined billings for Prisma Access and CloudGenix would reach approximately $300 million within the next 12 months.

Turning to the company’s Q3 fiscal performance, CFO Kathy Bonanno said the company saw double-digit growth across all geographic markets.

“We had a great third quarter, even in the wake of COVID-19,” she said. “In the third quarter we continued to add new customers at a healthy clip and we saw improvements in our product revenue.”

In particular the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) application revenues grew by 37% during the quarter and support revenues were up 24%. According to Bonanno, subscription and support revenues now account for 68% of total revenues from quarter to quarter.

With the pandemic yet to peak, Arora touched on what he sees as Palo Alto’s path forward.

“We expect this pandemic shock to last 12-18 months before our customers return to normal, and we expect the enterprise and the cybersecurity industry will have a bumpy ride over the next few months as strategies for reopening the economy start to emerge,” he said.

Assuming a similar economic environment to Q3 and no further supply chain interruptions, Bonanno predicted revenues of between $915 million and $925 million in the fourth quarter.

Palo Alto also raised its full-year 2020 guidance in light of the company's strong Q3 performance and Q4 outlook. The company anticipates full-fiscal year revenues between $3.37 billion and $3.38 billion, an increase of 16% to 17% year over year.

"Our goal is to leverage our advantage and come through this unprecedented event even stronger and more resilient than before," said Arora, in closing.