SAN FRANCISCO -- Security vendor Fortinet Inc. is gearing up to file for an IPO later in 2005, one of the company’s top execs revealed to NDCF at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

”We’re on track to file for IPO later this year,” says Richard Hanke, the company’s VP of product management. This is likely to happen sometime in the second half of the year, he adds.

Although not exactly on a par with Brad and Jen’s marital status, there has been plenty of speculation about Fortinet’s future plans. Over the last few years the company has earned a reputation as one of the hottest vendors in the security space (see Top Ten Private Companies).

Even as the technology sector emerges from a period of economic slowdown, cash has hardly been a problem for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor. Fortinet raised $30 million in August 2003 and came right back for another $50 million in March 2004, bringing the firm’s total funding to $93 million (see Fortinet Score $30M Funding Round and Fortinet's Money Machine Rolls On).

Fortinet's flagship product is FortiGate, a sort of security "god box" which combines hardware-based firewalls with VPN support, intrusion detection, and purpose-built ASICs.

Paul Saunders, an investment banker W.R. Hambrecht & Co. was not exactly surprised by the news. "They have more revenue than any other privately held information-security startup and incredible traction in a number of different markets," he says.

Read the whole story at Next-Gen Data Center Forum.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum