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Fortinet's partner program was awarded a Five-Star certification among mid-sized companies in Everything Channel's 15th annual 2009 Partner Program Guide (PPG), acknowledging its commitment and strength of its programs for reseller partners. A list of PPG winners appears in the March 30 issue of CRN, the channel industry's leading publication, and online at www.Channelweb.com, the world's largest channel industry portal.

"Our channel partners play an integral role in the success of Fortinet, and partners -- now more than ever -- need vendors they can rely on and trust," said Kendra Krause, vice president of channel sales for Fortinet. "It is truly an honor to be recognized with an Everything Channel 5-Star Partner designation, which further validates the efforts we have put into our FortiPartner Program year after year. Even in a tough economy, we are focused on investing in our channel program to provide partners with opportunities beyond just products, but also innovative technology and services for our mutual customers."

"Now more than ever, the quality of a vendor's partner program determines how profitable its partners will be. So for their commitment to their partners, and their efforts to build quality programs, we congratulate this year's Five-Star Partner Program Guide winners for helping to drive greater revenue in the channel," said Robert C. DeMarzo, senior vice president and editorial director, Everything Channel.

Fortinet is a 100-percent channel focused company. In 2008, the strength of Fortinet's FortiPartner Program enabled the company to create additional and more tailored initiatives for all partner levels and segments. Fortinet's 2008 results speak for themselves: a 36 percent year-over-year growth in revenue and more than 900 new channel partners signed up. Fortinet has also recently added popular new deal terms to help partners in a down economy, including channel pricing optimization, a credit extension initiative, and new enhancements for deal registration designed to protect partners' investments.

Research for the 2009 Everything Channel Partner Programs Guide and the Everything Channel Five-Star Program was conducted by Everything Channel's Institute for Partner Education & Development (IPED). IPED analyzed 130 vendor programs rating vendors' responses to nearly 60 in-depth questions about their partner programs in the six elements of sales support, marketing support, partner profitability, channel operations, communications and partner recruitment. To ensure fair comparisons, companies were placed in one of four categories based on company size. IPED weighted the responses to each question about such program elements as sales support and partner recruitment so that the total weight given to a vendor's answers in any of the six elements can potentially be scored as high as 100. The weighting scheme varies depending on the company size and product type and is based on IPED proprietary analysis methodology and intellectual property. In each of the four company categories, the companies with the highest overall weighted scores received the Everything Channel Five-Star Program designation.