Last week, Fortinet held its annual user event, Accelerate, in Las Vegas. This was the biggest Accelerate in the company’s history, drawing over 4,000 in-person attendees. The increased audience shouldn’t be a big surprise, as Fortinet has increased the breadth of its product lines. The company typically uses the event to update its product, and this year was no different. The news from the event centered around the release of FortiOS 7.6, which included updates to its secure SD-WAN,  secure access service edge (SASE), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), digital experience monitoring and more.

However, while the news was certainly signfiicant, there were several other themes from the show. Below are my top four thoughts from the event. 

1. Fortinet is moving into its third wave of growth

Fortinet came into the market in 2000 with a competitive, high-performance firewall. By the mid-2000s, it had rolled up many related features such as intrusion prevention system (IPS), antimalware and URL filtering into its next generation firewall (next-generation firewall (NGFX)). Since then, it has continued to roll more features and functions into the product, which has enabled it to take significant share in security and SD-WAN.

During his keynote, CEO Ken Xie highlighted Fortinet's next growth area: its SASE offering. The company is taking a similar approach to SASE as it did with firewalls, rolling up services that have become standardized. In SASE, this includes WAN optimization, cloud access security broker (cloud access security broker (CASB)), (secure web gateway (SWG), ZTNA and other features. Fortinet rarely jumps into a market early but tends to time its entry when it is poised to take off. 

2. Security buyers want consolidation – to a point

To consolidate or not consolidate – that is the question in security these days. For years, convergence and consolidation have been a hot topic with Fortinet as it’s built a broad and deep platform. At the event,several customers told me they want to reduce the number of security vendors they use. You could define the Fortinet audience as self-selective, as the vendor appeals to security pros wanting to consolidate. However, I have heard this loudly from security buyers over the past two years, as managing 50, 60 and 70 more vendors is untenable.

The other side of the consolidation coin is that businesses do not want to go to a single security vendor. The industry is constantly evolving, and there will always be a need to innovate, which means new point products. While the all-in-one platform concept sounds appealing, security pros will want to maintain multiple “best-of-breed” platforms.

To accommodate this, Fortinet has taken a platform suite approach. During his portion of the keynote, CMO John Maddison discussed this. Instead of building “one platform to rule them all, the company showed a suite of five platforms – hybrid mesh firewall, XDR, single-endor SASE, SD-branch and integrated cloud email Security (ICES). This gives customers a ”best of both worlds'' situation, one where they can leverage best-of-breed and migrate to a platform when ready.

3. Fortinet is a best-in-class network vendor 

Historically, Fortinet has been a security vendor that used its position in that market to pull through networking. Think of Fortinet historically being a big “S” and small “n.” Today, that’s no longer the case. The company has been quietly building a strong networking portfolio. Its initial entry was through SD-WAN by leveraging its install base of FortiGate’s.

Today, Fortinet is a market share leader in units shipped and is positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN. Equally notable, Fortinet moved into the Leader’s Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN this past quarter, meaning its products are on par with all the mainstream networking vendors. In fact, Fortinet is now recognized in eight Gartner Magic Quadrants and more than 100 industry research evaluations.

I asked Maddison about the achievement of being named a leader in networking, and he agreed it was notable as it validates the quality of the product. However, he said that Fortinet should be considered a secure networking vendor. That positioning works well in the mid-market but may not resonate in large enterprises where security and networking teams operate in silos. Fortinet can address both buying motions – secure networking for companies that have merged those teams. Its security and networking portfolios are now at a place where they can both compete when customers have the more traditional silos. 

4. AI in security? Lots of interest but also risks 

Accelerate 2024 was the first event I’ve attended in some time where I wasn’t constantly hit over the head with artificial intelligence (AI). It was a key theme at the show but wasn’t the focus. Of all the different buying centers in an organization, security tends to be the most resistant to using AI, with many companies kicking the tires on what’s possible, as the downside risk of getting AI wrong in cyber far outweighs the upside potential.

During the keynote, Fortinet demonstrated a generative AI (genAI) interface where a security operations center (SOC) administrator can converse with Fortinet’s security tools using natural language. The demos were more vision than reality, but they did show the company's direction. The Fortinet AI assistant can be a virtual SOC assistant capable of finding and prioritizing events that people can’t because there is too much data.

The reality for security pros is that the current operational model resembles treading water. Engineers are always in firefighting mode and constantly reacting. AI will enable a massive shift where threat protection gets more proactive and automated. Given the pace at which AI is evolving, we are only a couple of years from this vision becoming a reality. 

5. Software and silicon are Fortinet’s competitive edge

There are many ways to build a portfolio of products. Some tech vendors acquire to develop their breadth, which has an early-mover advantage. The downside of acquisitions is having to integrate the products. Fortinet does make some acquisitions, but they are typically smaller and technology purchases. Instead, the company relies heavily on its FortiOS operating system and silicon portfolio, including its NP7 network processor, CP9 content processor, and SP5 security processing unit. The thesis behind building silicon is like the value proposition of a GPU. CPUs can’t handle AI, graphics and other accelerated computing workloads, which is why Nvidia has had so much success with its GPU. Similarly, off-the-shelf CPUs aren’t great at security and networking, so Fortinet built its own chips.

This is a longer road to hoe than the acquisition route, but it provides a considerable price/performance advantage and consistency of features across all its products. Every Fortinet product runs FortiOS and most are powered by one of its processors. For security engineers, this simplifies setting policies, patching products and responding to common exposures and vulnerabilities (CVE) as it’s one OS, one interface and one set of features.

Fortinet remains a misunderstood company. It came to market serving the needs of the mid-market, and that, combined with its lower price points, creates the perception that it can’t meet the needs of large companies. However,  Fortinet has many large customers, and its price advantage comes from its silicon and FortiOS.