Fortinet Offers Partners Deal Registration

Fortinet on Monday beefed up its channel partner program by adding deal registration, improved training and certification, and online renewal and registration tools.

Solution providers in all three of Fortinet’s partner designations--Silver, Gold and Platinum--will benefit from the ability to register deals in the revamped program, said Chris Roeckl, vice president of marketing for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company. That option previously wasn't available.

"Deal registration is a big differentiating factor for us," Roeckl said.

The amount of discount solution providers get from registering a deal depends on their partner level. Silver partners will get additional margin of 5 percent, Gold partners will get 10 percent and Platinum partners will get 15 percent, according to Roeckl.

Fortinet also added an online renewal feature that lets partners designate the serial numbers of devices they have under management and allows Fortinet to manage the renewal process on their behalf, according to Roeckl.

"By associating serial numbers to specific customers, we then take that order, place it through our system and provide back-end rebates," he said.

New certification requirements have been added around Fortinet's chassis-based FortiGate-5000 products, which are designed for carriers, MSSPs and large enterprises. Training also will be provided to help partners develop the level of expertise needed to handle these high-end deals, Roeckl said.

"These environments take a lot of professional services capability for network design and implementation," he added.