And the growth goes on...

Despite the climate of financial doom and gloom, unified threat management (UTM) provider, Fortinet, has plenty to celebrate. After a spectacular 100%+ growth in New Zealand over the last quarter, thanks to Country Manager Clive Levido’s growth strategy, the company is set for further expansion. To enable this, Jack Chan, previously based in Fortinet’s Hong Kong office, has relocated to Auckland to take up the role of Senior Systems Engineer. Charlie Cote, Fortinet’s Regional Director, ANZ, said, “We are very excited about having Jack Chan join our team in New Zealand and feel he is going to contribute directly to help Clive continue his excessive growth factor.”  Chan will provide support from a technical perspective, bringing the highest degree of certification for Fortinet and his expertise as a certified trainer to the region. Chan will be responsible for providing pre-sales support to channel partners and ongoing sales training programs to New Zealand based FortiPartner members.  Pre-sales support will include helping channel partners to design and sell UTM solutions through a better understanding of the capability of the solutions. The free training programs will combine monthly webinars on a specific topic or product designed to keep channel partners up to date on the latest features, and invitation-only quarterly Extreme Partner Training courses (separate from the global certified training program). The Extreme Partner Training programs, the first of which is due to take place in September, will focus on high level troubleshooting and design work and be conducted over two or three days. Only partners who are certified in the FCNFA and FCNFP will be invited to attend. Cote said that the extreme training program had proved very effective across the globe and that channel partners had spoken very highly of similar training conducted by Fortinet’s counterparts.In another growth area, Fortinet is also looking to engage another 30 partners to the now 70-strong New Zealand FortiParter Program.