Fortinet Gets Mexican Partner

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Fortinet -- the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection -- today announced it is rapidly expanding its channel in the Americas through a strategic alliance with Grupo DICE, one of the largest distributors of networking and telecommunications equipment in Mexico.

The alliance with Grupo DICE will enable Fortinet to extend its product reach to Grupo DICE's extensive network of channel partners in Mexico which, with a population of over 100 million, is Latin America's second largest and fastest growing telecommunications market, according to Gartner/Dataquest. Grupo DICE will distribute to resellers, and provide support for, the full range of Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate(TM) Antivirus Firewall series of content security products.

"Grupo DICE is pleased to partner with Fortinet because its FortiGate antivirus gateways offer one of the most differentiated network security product lines in the market," said Guillermo Nava, sales manager, Grupo DICE. "We are enthusiastic about expanding Grupo DICE's proven capabilities and benefits to our network security partners and customers throughout the Mexican market via our partnership with Fortinet."

Grupo DICE will add the entire line of FortiGate Antivirus Firewall systems to its current networking product lines. Grupo DICE has strong relationships with the main vendors in connectivity including Cisco Systems, Panduit, Belden, AMP, APC, Optical Cable, Rittal and RAD in order to integrate a complete solution for networking-focused resellers in Mexico. Grupo DICE has been recognized by Cisco Systems the last two years as its top distributor in Mexico.

FortiGate antivirus firewalls are based on a groundbreaking architecture designed specifically to deliver application-layer security and content processing services in addition to network-layer services in real time. All models in the 10-member FortiGate product family employ Fortinet's unique FortiASIC(TM) content processing chip and the powerful, secure, FortiOS(TM) operating system to achieve breakthrough price/performance. The unique, ASIC- based architecture analyzes content and behavior in real time, and delivers a combination of services and performance that cannot be matched using conventional layer 3/layer 4 networking architectures or by deploying software applications on conventional computer systems.

"'Technology vanguard to the world' is an appropriate slogan to identify Grupo DICE's capabilities as one of the most important distributors in networking, communications and security IT solutions in the entire Mexican Republic," said Christophe Culine, Fortinet's vice president of sales for the Americas. "As one of Mexico's largest Cisco distributors, Grupo DICE is well-poised to take advantage of the exciting changes in the Mexico telecom and networking equipment market, which bodes well for Fortinet's highly differentiated security offerings."

Fortinet Inc.