Fortinet Joins Forces With HP ProCurve

Fortinet on Tuesday unveiled a partnership with Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve Networking division that highlights the growing integration of networking and security technologies.

Fortinet is the first vendor to join the ProCurve Alliance, HP's effort to push open-architecture solutions from other vendors that have been tested and certified for interoperability.

Although it's starting out as a marketing alliance, the partnership could grow into an OEM agreement in which Fortinet would weave its FortiGate unified threat management product into ProCurve's line of layer 3 switching products, said Karl Soderlund, vice president of Americas sales and global alliances at Fortinet.

"HP ProCurve's technology is complimentary to what we're selling in our security products. The lines are getting blurred between where networking ends and security begins," said Soderlund.

Shaq Khan, CEO of Fortifire, a Hayward, Calif.-based solution provider, expects the move to help Fortinet gain more traction in the market. "Fortinet's challenge has been in name recognition, so we're happy to see them associate themselves with a big name player," he said.

In addition to gaining more brand recognition by leveraging the HP ProCurve relationship, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Fortinet will also look to sign up system integrators to meet the needs of Fortune 100 companies, said Soderlund.

Fortinet has expanded its channel team by 100 percent over the past year, and now has over 800 channel partners in North America, and 35 percent year-on-year growth, according to Soderlund.