Fortinet Inc. has acquired the intellectual property for the virtualized firewall/VPN platform of beleaguered vendor CoSine Communications for an undisclosed sum, according to sources familiar with the deal.

CoSine's technology, widely described as ahead of its time, was supposed to give carriers and service providers a way to offer managed security services and VPNs within the WAN cloud. But analysts said demand for such capabilities only began to emerge in the last few quarters, well after CoSine's 1998 debut, its 2001 IPO, and its abortive attempts to find a suitor in the interim.

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— Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Dark Reading