>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's theCUBE... covering Accelerate '19. (electronic music) Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are at Fortinet Accelerate 2019 in Orlando, Florida. I'm Lisa Martin with Peter Burris. We've been here all day talking with Fortinet executives, with partners, really understanding the evolution of cybersecurity and how they are helping customers to combat those challenges to be successful. We're pleased to welcome back to theCUBE alumni John Bove, the VP of North America's channel for Fortinet. John welcome back to the program. >> Thanks for having me, great to see you both again. >> Likewise, so, so much going on today, some news coming out. The keynote this morning started with a lot of electricity around Fortinet's industry leadership, product leadership, there was a lot of growth numbers shared >> John: Yup >> There's also a lot of people here about close to four thousand. >> John: Close to four thousand people, yup. >> And you saying that a good percentage of that is partners, forty countries represented. What are some of the things from your perspective, that you've observed today, in terms of the reaction from the channel to all of this news coming out. >> Yeah so first off, the heritage of this event really was a partner conference going back to its infancy and you know as Fortinet continues to grow and our customer profile continues to you know, move up market, we've now invited customers. So it's really great the synergy that we have. We've got a number of partners with their customers coming to meetings and meeting with executives, and so it's just really fantastic. You know relative to the announcements about the partner program, we've seen really positive feedback. I think the program was introduced about a decade ago and it really was time for a refresh, and so, what we've done is, we want to bring a program to our partner community that, allows them to engage with us in how they see fit, and then we want to build the go to market that's a little bit more in tune with the market that exists here, as we're moving into the year 2020 and beyond. So we're really assimilating a reseller, MMSP and Cloud as types of partner go to markets, and organizing that all underneath the Fortinet partner program umbrella. We'll also be introducing a consultancy track because we want to insure that the assets within the network security expert program are available to those consultants that are working with customers on their journey to the Cloud, for instance, or through this digital transformation. And then finally we're introducing what we're calling a competency focus. So as Fortinet continues to grow as a company there's a number of competencies that we feel if we enable partners appropriately they're going to be able to benefit from. They're going to build a stronger business around the Fortinet Security Fabric. So, we're going to focus on SD-WAN, we're going to focus on Fabric, we're going to focus on Data Center, operational technologies and then S.A.C., because we do think, you know, S.A.C. operations, is an area, that cybersecurity and the number of tool sets are introduced, it's an area that we need to grow into as a company as well. >> Lots going on. >> Lot's going on, yes. >> So as you consider some of the challenges that your partners face, we talked a little bit about this with Patrice, partners, throughout the industry are hurting as they try to transition from a more traditional hardware to whatever's going to be the steady state, >> John: That's right >> with the Cloud and the Edge having such an impact. Education is crucial. You not just get your customers educated about how cybersecurity works, but your partners need to be increasingly educated so they can find those opportunities, niches, stay in business, help you engage, how's that playing out? >> My number one initiative as the channel leader is to drive partner competency and preference. And so, going back to competency, if we can build partner competencies, they're going to build a healthier, more margin rich business around the Security Fabric, which then, selfishly, is going to lead them to delivering more preference around Fortinet. But there's no doubt, it's a changing dynamics. Business models are changing on the fly. We're seeing evolution of VAR to MSP, and MSP to MSSP, and we are laser focused on capitalizing that. Our FortiSIEM technology for instance is, I really view as a Beachhead technology for us to go capitalize that MSP market in the mid-market. I think that the evolution of consumption to more of a consumption model away from a transactional acquisition, also lends itself to new and innovative programs that need to be delivered. In fact with our North American distributors, in the past six months, we've introduced hardware as a service, to reduce, you know, to position things as an operational expense, which may be more in tune with how customers are purchasing today, and we've introduced FortiSIEM for MSSP. The evolution of VAR to a service provider can be very capital intensive, and so one of the things that we've done with our hardware as a service and FortiSIEM for MSSP, we've really tried to reduce the cost of the entry point, and drive more day one margin opportunity for those partners. >> Let me build on that if I may Lisa, so Ken and Mike have done a pretty phenomenal job of steering Fortinet into the future and anticipating some of the big changes that have occurred. You guys have therefore pretty decent visibility into how things are going to play out, and are now large enough that your actually participating in making the future that >> Right >> Everybody else is thinking about. When you introduce a product, I mean, it takes a period of time for your partners to get educated, to up-skill, to really set themselves up to succeed in this dynamic world. Are you introducing educational regimens, competency tests, providing advice and council about the new competencies they're going to need, in anticipation to some of these, some of the roadmap of the, to the future that you see? >> Yeah, so two things I'll touch on there is you know, the NSC program has been wildly successful program for ... >> Peter: No what does NSE stand for? >> Network Security Expert so it's a training course where for a partner and you've got new team members coming on board, the NSE113 really enables them of how to position, you know, Fortinet, and what the challenges are in a network in a cybersecurity environment today. With the elements four through eight being more technical. We've seen over 200,000 certifications being adopted globally, so, I think, part of the visionary capabilities that Michael and Ken have, is they've incorporated the education piece of it, and so carrying that along, and so as we do introduce new products, it's built into the NSE modules. I'll point to one of the most successful things we did in 2018 was called Fast Tracks, and so we've basically taken the NSE content and put it into consumable two hour, hands on, technical labs for our partners and customers. We had a goal in 2018 to hit about a thousand people going through the Fast Track program, we hit over eight thousand people. So, we know that there is a thirst for knowledge out there and the company's done a really good job, through the NSE program, the Network Security Expert Program, through out Network Security Academy Program, and through our Fast Tracks to drive that necessary enablement. >> Peter: That's very exciting. >> Yeah I know absolutely, I mean, it's a fantastic time to be at Fortinet, its a fantastic time to be a Fortinet partner, and I think with the announcements that we made today, we're really trying to set our partners up for success, and help them build a all encompassing business around the Security Fabric. It's a very noisy industry out there. There's a lot of point based solutions that, that lack the integration and really you need an integrated set of solutions in this, you know, expanding digital footprint that customers are faced with. >> So when we talk about education and I'm glad that you guys brought that up, that was a big topic, it was a pillar that Ken talked about, that Patrice talked about as well, it was one of the core pillars that was talked about at the World Economic Forum that was just a couple of months ago. So as we talk about education and educating your partners, I'd like to kind of flip that and ask how are your partners educating you on, these are the trends and concerns and the issues that we're seeing in the market today, to help influence the direction of Fortinet's technology? >> Yup, you know it's funny that you say that, I've been in partner meetings all day today, and it's great I get to spend, I don't think I've ever been this popular and definitely not in high school or college, but in spending time with partners and understanding their challenges it's good to see that our focus on the competency and preference and providing consumption modeling, fits to exactly the challenges that they're faced with, because VARS will tell you that the transition from being a reseller to an MSP can be very, very expensive. And so, with FortiSIEM for MSSP and the as of service offerings, we're reducing that. And so, there are , they're resonating to that. But the other thing is, for the mid-market customer, the Security Fabric alleviates the need for the Cyber skills gap, right? We can't hire fast enough, and so, by depending upon the broad integrated and automated posture that this Fortinet Security Fabric allows, it really allows partners and customers to overcome some of the challenges, just from a head count standpoint. And I think that the NSE program also does a very good job of filling that gap as well. >> So the partner used to mean, these are the, for that group of customers, who our direct sales organization can't make money on, we will give them to partners, or the very, very large, for a very, very large company that's owned by Accenture or owned by Dimension Data, or something like that, >> Yup >> We'll work with them and deliver it. And that kind of middle was kind of lost. But even today, that Loewen, that idea of segmenting purely on the basis of how big they are, is problematic because there's a lot of small companies happening because of this digital transformation they're going to very rapidly grow into some very, very big footprints. >> Absolutely >> So how is that line between what Fortinet does, what the partner does, what the customer does, to achieve these outcomes, starting to shift? >> We're going to be introducing an ecosystem based approach. It's called Partner to Partner Connect, and it is to actually do that very thing. For those partners that may be in the mid-market, that need those expertise, we're going to allow partners to create almost a marketplace of service offerings so they can fill their gaps and they can build meaningful practices, leveraging what Fortinet is doing, but also leveraging somewhat some of our other partners are doing. We're seeing this immediately done with our distribution partners, in North America, and we're going to be introducing the Partner to Partner Connect later this year, and accessible through our Partner Portal. >> And those competencies that are associated with the NSE and the education, then become part of those Partner to Partner brands >> John: Absolutely >> Which makes it easy for those partners to be more trustworthy of whatever accommodations they put together to serve customers. >> Yup, I'll give you an example. So, we're also going to be announcing tomorrow afternoon in our North America breakout session, a Cloud Channel Initiative, and so our goal with this Cloud Channel Initiative, is to allow partners to build meaningful security and networking businesses in the public Cloud. We're going to utilize blueprints for reference architectures, we're going to align with education and certification, and then we're going to guide them through enablement to go to market. That's one of the things also we released this week was the NSE7 for public and private Cloud. So again, as we introduce new technologies and we introduce new opportunities, we're also aligning that to education as well, so the partners can be self service, because the better job a partner does is developing that competency , then the more services rich they're going to be able to deliver to the end customer themselves. >> What are some of your expectations in terms of FY19, I know this is a 20% year on your growth that Fortinet as a company achieved last year, I imagine a good amount of that was driven and influenced by the channel, but as this momentum continues to grow, as we saw this morning, and we've heard throughout this show today, what are some of your expectations about growing the number of partners in the programs that you talked about, like by the end of this year? >> Yes, we recognize, you know, first of all we appreciate our partners so much, and we want to ensure that we are enabling their business we're absolute in active recruitment mode. You know, we're currently going through recruitment and reactivation campaigns with partners that we want or maybe have done business with us before. We see we're coming off of a quarter in which we set a record for the most deal registrations and so that's really the metric in which we look for partner impact. They bring us an opportunity, we give them additional margin and we protect them. So, Q1, fiscal Q1 for us, was our largest deal registration quarter we've ever had. And in 2018 we saw a 52% increase in closed opportunities through our deal registration program. So the impact of the North American Channel is absolutely being felt and we're really excited about the new partner program and what it's going to allow us to do as we expand more into the MSP market, more into the Cloud market, and then hopefully go enable that whole consultancy layer that's out there as well, to help customers on their journey. >> So in terms of your session tomorrow, 'Transforming Your Profitability with Fortinet's Tailor Made Programs,' you mentioned some of the new announcements, what are like the top three take aways that attendees from that session are going to walk away with? >> Well it's going to be, we want to drive partner initiated revenue, we want to do that through competency development, through Widespace account penetration, and through meaningful investments that allow our partners to scale their business. >> Lisa: Lot of momentum, John thank you so much for visiting with Peter and me on theCUBE this afternoon, we can't wait to hear what great news you have next year. >> I look forward to it, thank you both. >> Excellent, our pleasure. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Fortinet Accelerate 18. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBEs continuing coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. I'm Lisa Martin here in Las Vegas with my co-host Peter Burris and we're excited to welcome a Cuba alumni back to theCUBE, please welcome Eric Kohl, the VP of Advanced Solutions from Ingram Micro. Welcome back! >> Thank you, thanks for having me back. Excited to be here. >> Yes, we're very excited. So tell us, what's new? We talked to you last year at this event, what's new and Ingram? Tell us about your role there and the things that are all exciting Ingram Micro. >> Yeah, brand-new for me. I'm in my 20th year at Ingram Micro. I lead our security practice for Ingram Micro U.S. and I have responsibility for sales, vendor management, strategy and execution on behalf of our manufacturer partners. It's a ever evolving space. It's such a great space to be in, I love watching the news every day. You know there's going to be some big logo but just as much fun as I have watching those, that's some of these small breaches that you don't hear about and it's just fascinating. So much more exciting than virtualization. (laughs) >> Some might argue with that. So tell us about the partnership that you guys have with Fortinet. How has that evolved over your time there? >> Yeah so been at Ingram for 10 and I've been working with Fortinet for, I'm sorry I've been at Ingram for 20 and been with Fortinet for over 10, back to when we signed the contract together. Just a very great partnership. They're our security partner of the year, last year. Good friends, excited to see John Bove back leading channels back to Fortinet and you know, we both invest in each other's success and so I think that's pretty unique. Huge investment for them here, having an event like this. Not every company does it but to bring everybody together where you can have security conversations get on the same page, it's extremely valuable, huge investment, and we're proud to be a sponsor. >> I'd love to chat about a little bit of the evolution that you've seen at Fortinet in the last 10 years as we look at, you mentioned breaches. I mean, there were some very notable things that happened in 2017. How have you seen the evolution from them on a security transformation standpoint as it relates to your customers and digital transformation. >> Yeah, so I mean it's something that we see every day from you know, as you know we sell to and through partners but you know, one thing obviously is their breath of solutions has expanded. But you know, also things that partners are asking us today is how is this technology being consumed? And in the face of digital transformation, that's a huge value point because ultimately we want to help our partners to architect, recommend the right technology to solve that business problem and then how do you want to consume it? How does your want to your client want to consume that? So I think that's one of the biggest kind of trends that we're seeing right now. >> So as you think about where you've come from to where you are and we'll talk a little bit about where you think might go, what were the stories you told about security 10 years ago? And how are they different from the stories you're telling about security today? >> I would say it's changed from my perspective because at Ingram, we have never ever been a services company like we are today. And so what I mean by that is, we wrap our services, partner services around the Fortinet solution to make it stronger. 10 years ago I would say we are living more in the traditional distribution role of hey, how do we get a box from here to there? Certainly channel enablement, we've been doing that for a long time but our offering of services to help drive demand is incredibly strong. You know, we work with Fortinet for example, on their threat assessment program and we have an engineer that can go and help. Our partners understand to do that, it's a huge partner ecosystem and so we've got to help them with all those channel enablement efforts. >> What are some of the biggest security challenges that you're hearing, say in the last year or so through the channel, that your partnership with Fortinet can help address? >> You know, it's all around complexity and that as you have likely heard that the shortage of folks that can get out and do some of these services have limitations. There's incredibly high demand for services, you know we're serving a channel ecosystem of roughly 12,000 companies that are buying security technology from us, all with varying degrees of capability and so we've really got to help them understand, hey, how can we help you deploy these services, etc. >> So as you imagine then the steps associated with helping the customer, the roles and relationships between Fortinet, Ingram, and your partners also must be evolving. So how is, as a person responsible for ensuring that that stays bound together in a coherent way for customers, how are you seeing that changing? >> Well you know, look it's a three-legged stool. (laughs) It's us, it's Fortinet and that's our partner community and we're reliant on each other to go and be successful in the market. Look, we couldn't be as great as we are working with our Fortinet channel ecosystem if we didn't have the support of Fortinet, the investments they make, the team that they have wrapped around our business, the team we've put in place wrapped around their business so that's kind of what I'm seeing there. >> They shared a lot of momentum not only in the keynotes this morning but also a number of the guests that we've had on the show today in terms of what Fortinet achieved last year. 1.8 billion in billing, nearly 18 thousand new customers acquired, a lot of momentum, a lot of numbers, I love that theme of the event today. So if we look at some of the things that were shared by Kenzie this morning for example, like I mentioned that the customer numbers and even talking about what they're doing to protect 90% of customers in the global S&P 100 and showed some some big brands there. Tell us a little bit about the partnership and how you're leveraging the momentum of what Fortinet is able to do in terms of capturing customers. How does that momentum translate and really kind of maybe fuel Ingram and what you're able to do? >> Well look, I mean there's incredible demand in security today. There was a slide that they showed this morning and I think it was the perfect storm. I like to call the security space a beautiful disaster. It's a mess, it's complicated, it's scary, the threat attacks are you know new and different and they're never going to stop but it again comes back to hey, how do we work together to kind of harness this? How do we go and there's a great partner community here, lots of our friends are here but they can't all be here. So we want to be able to help take that message out to our channel partners that were not here. Things like that. >> What are some of, oh sorry, go ahead Peter. >> I was going to say so Ingram, Ingram itself has changed. You said you've now, are now introducing security or you're introducing more services. So how is that.. How is security leading that charge to move from a more of a product and a distributor to now services? Is security one of the reasons why Ingram is going in that direction? >> It's one of them. I joked on virtualization but there's a lot of services that we can wrap around and I think, obviously there's a high demand of services and we will lead with Fortinet services and solutions where we can. We want our partners to lead with theirs but really we've hired people to go out do assessments. We have a partner ecosystem where, hey I can't get down to New Mexico to do an install. We have a partner network where they can tap into that and make sure that everything is installed correctly, all the features are turned on. You think about all these breaches that happen in the news, it's not that they didn't have the technology, they missed an alert or they didn't have it all deployed. We want to be able to help our partners solve for that. >> Along the partnership front, what are some of the things that excite you about the Fabric-Ready Partner Program and the announcements they've made today? >> Yeah, love it. Look Fortinet has built comprehensive end-to-end solutions within their Fortinet, I'm sorry, for their Fabric ecosystem but they've also recognized that they can't do it all alone and so they've introduced a lot of partners into that. And so what's exciting for me, leading our security category is, hey how do we bring new partners into our ecosystem too? Because it is a differentiator for Ingram to be able to provide multi-vendor solutions. To have somebody you can go to to say, how does SentinelOne work with for Fortinet Fabric? Those types of things, those conversations are happening all the time. >> Another thing that was announced today was what they're doing with with AI. Tell us a little bit about that and how are you seeing what they're going to be able to do with AI as an advantage for your partners and customers. >> Again the artificial intelligence, machine learning, it all goes back to making the technology easier to use. I still think, you think intelligence and I think back to the human factor. Some of these big breaches, look the threat actors are going to get in but how you recover from a breach, I think if we could inject some artificial intelligence into some of these companies that haven't figured out how to successfully pivot. You know paying your hacker a hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet is not the answer but I think that some of these machine learning things are going to make it easier. It's going to be easier to manage the alerts that are happening every day. So anything that helps eliminate, as they said today, the enemy of security is complexity. Things that help to discover these threats and remediate against them, all good stuff for our partners. >> On the enablement side, when we were talking with the channel chief, John Bove, earlier today and talking about sort of this long history of partner focused culture at Fortinet. Tell us about that in terms of the enablement that you're able to glean from them and then pass on to your channels in terms of selling strategies, marketing to, marketing through. What are some of the things that-- >> Look, we have an amazing team. John Bove, Curt Stratton, the folks that really spent so much time working with Ingram and then we've built an amazing team. I think we have 12 people from our company here at this event to make sure we're making the most out of it but you know. If you heard, we're at The Cosmo. They have Secret Pizza, have you been there? Have you heard about it? >> Lisa: No, Secret Pizza? >> Yeah, it's amazing, it's pretty good, okay. (laughs) >> You didn't bring any, I noticed that but continue. >> I didn't but it's secret not-so-secret pizza but we have some secret not so secret weapons. Jenna Tombolesi an NSE 7. She's one of the highest certified engineers on the planet and she works for Ingram Micro helping to technically enable some of our partners. We've got a guy by the name of Will The Thrill Sharland and The Thrill is out talking to partners every single day, helping them to be more profitable, trusted security advisors helping them through anything you can imagine from a channel enablement perspective. And then just huge teams of people that we go to serve this big market together. >> Are you seeing any vertical specificities? When Ken was sharing some slides this morning, they were talking about, they showed some verticals from a kind of market share perspective but I'm curious some of the verticals that kind of come to mind where security is concerned that maybe are a little bit more elevated than some of the others in terms of risk or health care education and financial services. Maybe Fed, SLED, are you seeing any verticals in particular, maybe those that are really going to be kind of having to be leading-edge, where security transformation is concerned? >> They have to be. Think about health care and when they're big ransomware attack hit last year. There's guys on CNN saying, they had to postpone my surgery because ransomware head. I mean that's life-and-death stuff there but I don't think there's any vertical that's immune to what's going on today. So I think you know regardless of your vertical, you have to be prepared, you have to choose the right technology, and choose the right partner to help you implement it. >> If you imagine where Ingram's going to go with this relationship, what kinds of things are you looking to be able to do as a consequence of great strong partnership with Fortinet. >> Look, the way that companies want to consume technology is changing in the space of digital transformation. Once we work with Fortinet and the partner to recommend the right technology and I mentioned this, like how do you want to consume it? Is it public cloud, is it AWS, or Azure? We have an answer for that today is that hey, it's on premise but I need some creative financing to help close this deal to solve a budget constraint. We have an answer for that. There's several variations of that but however that technology wants to be consumed, we have an answer together. So I think that's a testament to the strength of our relationship. >> And I think one of the words that I saw in, at least one of the press releases, was adaptability. Adaptability of some of the technologies and even John Madison was kind of talking about how customers can go, I've got 20-plus security products, how do I start this Fabric? And that word adaptability kind of jumped out at me as how do you enable adaptability when your customers, through the channel, have so many technologies in place and how does Fortinet help that adaptation? >> I would say they're placing bets like we are on top partners that are going to lead with that technology. They've got to go be the experts in that field and really start driving that. Events like this help get everybody on the same page, understand the new offerings. I mentioned Jenna, she was locked in a room all day yesterday all excited about all these things. She's been running around all day but look we've just got to help the channel understand what the new technologies are, what are the new offerings, and hey, how do we go solve that customer problem together. >> So are there any particular new approaches or tactics or techniques that you're using to get the channels to understand better? >> I don't think that there's anything necessarily new. We're all driving towards the same common goal. Having a security conversation today is easier than ever before so you know, I think we're we're going to continue doing what we've been doing. It's been very successful for us but that's, you know. >> What are some of the things, kind of wrapping up here, that you're looking forward to throughout the rest of 2018? We're kind of still in the first quarter calendar, some big announcements from your partner here today. What are some of the things that excite you at Ingram about the year of 2018? >> Look, it's a market that's that's really ripe right now and I think that when you talk about their new technologies, when you talk about the machine learning, there's a lot of these things happening out there. It's just look, we've got a huge market. The potential is unlimited and I think one area where we're really going to drill down this year is down market, down SMB in mid market because they need enterprise grade technology and Fortinet delivers that and has a history of delivering that. So I think we're going to double click down there together this year and John and his team have been great around putting some programs together for us to go and tackle that together. >> Excellent, well we thank you so much Eric for stopping by theCUBE again. >> Yes and I'll bring pizza next time. >> Please do. >> All right. >> Yes and maybe some beverages so we don't have dry throats. >> Of course, yes. >> So we wish you and Ingram the best of luck in this next year and we look forward to talking to you next year, if not sooner. >> Sounds good. Great, thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE's continuing coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin, after the short break we'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering Fortinet Accelerate 2018. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Hi. Welcome back to Fortinet Accelerate 2018. I am Lisa Martin with the Cube. We're excited to be here for our second year. I'm joined by Peter Burris from the Cube as well. And we're very excited to be joined by our next guest, John Bove, the Vice President of America's channels at Fortinet. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. Thank you for having us. >> So, it's exciting for us to be here. I, as a marketer, geek out on tag lines. >> Yup. >> So, I'd love for you to kind of tell our viewers, strength and numbers. >> Yup. >> As the title of event. What does that mean? >> Well, it's really about the depth and breadth of what Fortinet's doing in the marketplace. You know, bringing the security fabric, not only to our customers, but to enable our partner community, right. So, Accelerate is a collection and we have about, almost 3,000 attendees here, about 2,300 of those are our carrier partners, resell partners, manage security service providers, and also our fabric ready alliance partners, right. So, the security fabric has allowed us to incorporate, you know, some additional third party technologies, right. And it's really, we're creating a really strong culture around, you know, integration and openness. >> Before we get into the technology, let's talk about pivot on that culture for a second. >> Sure. >> 'Cause one of the things that, that was evident from the keynotes this morning that Kenzie talked about, which really, this long standing partner driven culture that Fortinet has. You've recently come back to Fortinet. >> I have. >> Tell us about being a boomerang. What excites you about coming back? But also, how has that culture of really being partner-focus and maybe partner-first evolve? >> Well, the channel first culture at Fortinet makes my job really easy, right. And the reason that I came back was here with the company for six years, we experienced a tremendous, you know, run of revenue. And to have the opportunity to lead the America's Channel Organization is a great privilege. But, it really comes from the culture within the company of being a channel leverage and a channel first company. I think, you know, in Patrice's keynote this morning, and in Ken's keynote as well, they really talked about the channel program, and the channel partners. You know, the partners are the fabric of what we do as an organization. You know, and we're doing the security fabric. Something that they can build a business around. >> Joe, as you think about what the type or the nature of the changes that are taking place in all business. Security business, and as we've heard today, the repitity with which changes happening in security world. That, I got to believe is putting a fair amount of stress on your partners because they have to come up to speed very, very rapidly on new things, even as they demonstrate that they can sustain operational excellence for all things. What is the role that education's playing? Culturating your partner's to a new network. Or a new approach doing these, how is that leading to a better set of capabilities for your customers? >> Sure. Well, I think the one change in this digital transformation era is change, right. We're seeing customers consume technologies much differently than they ever have before. And so our partners have to be in a situation to be able to deliver those technologies. We're seeing the threat landscape continue to widen and be very broad in nature. And so, existing postures and existing deployments are not necessarily going to be able to protect those customers and quite frankly, from a partner standpoint, the way that they look at their business, and build their business needs to be different today than it was due to the change that digital transformation is driving. >> So in terms of your, sort of, symbiosis with the channel, we talked with Phil Quade just a minute ago, we talked about, you know, how our seat is looking to him, to say how are you guys doing this at Fortinet in terms of security? Tell me about the symbiotic relationship with your partners. What information are they bringing to you from the front lines from the customers? Whether it's education, fedsled, healthcare, that is helping to evolve Fortinet's technologies >> I mean, at the end of the day, security is a very noisy space right now, right. And we depend upon our partners, not only to ensure our programs and how we go deliver, you know, value to them, but also, I mean what the customers are telling them, and what they're seeing in the marketplace today. We're really focused on service enablement and the service delivery because the transactional type of business that we've seen in the past is no longer the route to market for success for, you know, the broad base, you know channel organizations, right. So, you know, we have a responsibility as a company to ensure that our partners have the capabilities to deliver services in ways that customers want it, you know, consume. You know, IOT is a marketplace that's been created, right. OT is opportunistic for the bad actors, right. The move to, of workloads, to public clouds and data based applications, and the fabric is really resonating with those partners in terms of being able to meet those customers changing needs. >> And you guys have had a, do a partner advisory council. >> We do. >> How long has that been going on? And what are some of the things that excite you about it? >> Yeah, so. Over 10 years we've had a partner advisory council. And it's, you know, it's industry leaders that are business owners and business drivers that, you know, really kind of keep us honest about what we're doing internally. They have access to our executive staff. They have access to, you know, product roadmaps as well. And you know, with the creation of the fabric, and what we're doing with our alliance partnerships, you know, they're kind of helping fill some of those holes as to, you know, what we're seeing in the marketplace today. You know, I think today we announced 11 additional fabric alliance partners. You know, today, organizations like Fanta for orchestration and automation, right. Integration is truly the new best breed. But the ability to react when things occur, and to orchestrate and to automate those controls are really important. And the company's done a great job, and we attribute a lot of that guidance to our partner advisory council. >> As Fortinet grows and expands its footprint, which in place new types of arrangements, like the CTA and other types of things, it's ecosystem continues to expand, in a way that Fortinet is moving towards the center. More of a focus, at least a low side >> Right. >> within the ecosystem. What does that mean from your ability to get partners, to influence partner behavior and customers, and get more pull through out of the entire ecosystem? How is that going to shape the way Fortinet competes in a way Fortinet serves its customers over the next few years? >> I think, simply put, you know, the tailwinds we have behind us. You know, we're on the precipice of two billion dollars in revenue. You know, we've got now line of sight to three and four here pretty quickly. We definitely think that the fabric is going to allow us to continue to scale and grow. You know, through that partner community. But quite frankly, I am amazed just in my time here, you know, how partners have embraced and really wrapped a business practice, in a service is first business practice, you know around that fabric. So, we're really excited about the opportunity that we have at hand. I think the fabric is going to continue to, you know, change the game, right. It's not about, you know, products. It's about delivering an integrated solution. >> Speaking of the fabric. I was kind of thinking of pivoting on what you were saying Peter, about differentiation. When partners have choices of companies to work with, you guys have been in this place for a really long time. >> We have, yup. >> But, besides the fabric, what are some of, maybe the other top two differentiators where a partner may be coming into the program that's, I get it, for with this partnership with Fortinet, we can go and really revolutionize customers in any industry >> You know, we're really unique in the market because we serve from the S&B to the mid-market, to the enterprise and some of the largest service provider brands. And that affords our partner community to be extremely diverse, and we want to be very easy to work with. So I think more than anything, my goal is to be simple and predictable in nature, and ensure that we're driving a very margin rich solution. You know, a lot of companies in the market will be enterprise focused or mid-market focused, and so, you know, we're really keen on establishing clear routes to market with our partner community. Aligning and investing where they fit. And then taking advantage of some of, even the vertical opportunities that the partners present based on those capabilities. >> I was, we were chatting a little bit earlier about education and that was one of the things I was reading, that, in some articles, that some of your guys did. And it's been awhile since I've been in college, and it just, it's so remarkable how, you know, smart classrooms, and it's BYOD, and how vulnerable school districts are for, obvious reasons we won't go into, for political reasons. But, even from a security perspective, I'm curious if there's any kind of, maybe, favorite example that you have of a partner, customer, through the channel in education that has really been able to facilitate a digital business transformation with the under pending of security, security transformation. >> I actually was just in a partner meeting, and we were talking about that very topic. And they had established with a, one of the top five largest school districts in the United States. A, you know, a fully deployed wireless mesh network. That they, once that was deployed, then they really were able to underpin it with, you know, the fortigate, fortios, and really be able to deliver the security posture back through that wireless infrastructure. You know, you make a really good point. We're seeing more and more internet connected devices. A lot of those internet connected devices are very low end in terms of their overall price point. And so these organizations, they're not necessarily pushing out vulnerabilities to it. And in patches in remediation. And that's why IOT security is so important in that kind of K through 12 example, right. Leveraging fortios, connecting to both land and wireless land capabilities, and it really, that's a great use case of how the fabric can impact a customer. >> So as you imagine the world of partnership in a play in the future, will they be more purveyors of hardware, purveyors of software, purveyors of services? How do you think the ecosystem's going to evolve as Fortinet expands it's footprint? >> Sure. That's a really good question. And quite frankly, I spend a lot of my time thinking about that. I feel, I truly feel like we have an obligation and a responsibility to help our partners through this digital transformation into where we think things are going to go. Things are moving towards security as a service. Things are moving towards, you know, on demand, you know, pay as you go, consumption modeling, right. And we have to put our partners in a situation to be able to deliver some goods and services to our customer based the way they want to buy, and make sure that they're driving value after the transaction. Because, you know, selling to the transaction is probably going to be a dying, you know, breed. It's really important that partners have the capabilities to install, deploy and support on the ongoing basis, in which is really becoming a best practice in the security space. >> And one of the other things about digital business is that historically businesses have been aligned by the arrangement of their assets so you can look at a transportation company and say, oh, that company is transportation assets, or financial services company and say, oh, that company is financial services assets. But digital business starts changing that. Because when you bring programmability and digital orientation to a lot of these assets, you reduce the specificity of those assets which increases mobility across businesses. >> That's right. >> How do you think the opportunity of helping partners transform in this business way is going to increase the noise or complexity or the interconnectedness and the potential conflicts within partners, as they go after? As their expertise, and their relationships becomes more fungible. >> That's a, I mean, that's really good point. We deal and we want to ensure that we've got a programmatic way to handle, you know, channel conflicts. Right, I mean at the end of the day. Partner brings us >> But also channel opportunity >> And channel opportunity, that's right. You know, so it's really about being consistent in how you treat, you know, the partner community and having really set rules. But, you know, digital transformation, if anything else, the thing that makes Fortinet so unique, is we are an engineering company. Security is very complicated. And the good news is that the heart of what we do is technology. The feedback we continue to get from our partners is that our technology is second to none. So we win on the technology side. And now with the momentum that we're seeing with the, you know, the fabric or the alliance programs, the momentum that we're seeing in the marketplace, and really kind of being prepared for this shift of technology by introducing the fabric concept. You know, we're really excited about the opportunity for our partners and the role they're going to play in the coming years. >> So as we kind of, you know, wrap things up here. I'll go back to where we started off with John and talking about the strength and numbers. And some things that I wrote down that I think Patrice shared this morning. Nearly 18,000 new customers acquired in 2017. >> That's right. >> What are your, as the channel chief. What are your hopes and dreams for what that number will look like at the end, by the end of 2018? >> You know, at the end of the day, I want to be able to drive and enable to channel organization to go take advantage of the tailwinds in the market, right. We want to go, continue to drive market share in the S&B, that's going to be partner-led. We want to go expand in the fabric, you know, within the mid-market. And we want to be very opportunistic in the enterprise, to go knock down some of the largest logos. You know, I'm mostly, the opportunity we have in the U.S. alone is really quite significant. And we're really excited to see, you know, as, you know, we just exceed the half a billion dollar mark in Q4 for the first time as a company, and so as we start, you know, planning in future quarters. It's really exciting to be a part of the momentum we have here at Fortinet. >> And I think the momentum is tangible. You can feel it here. You can hear it behind us in the expo. So >> It's quite exciting. >> We thank you so much John for stopping by to keep sharing >> Thank you. Thanks for having us. >> Absolutely. Sharing your insights and how the, I'm feeling another tagline with the fabric of our lives, but I think somebody else beat you guys to it. Cotton maybe? Anyway, thanks so much John for sharing what's going on in the channel and we wish you a great show. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> And for my co-host, Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching the Cube live from Fortinet Accelerate 2018. Stick around, we'll be right back. (light techno music)