"We are aiming at tier 2 and tier 3 cities", says Jitendra Ghughal of Fortinet India

How have the partners reciprocated the partner program that Fortinet had launched sometime ago?

As far partner program is concerned, it was always there, we just made some modification in the program sometime in Q3 2013, where we rolled out the program with additional partner levels and this includes Bronze plus. This was well received by the partners and we still feel there is a lot of work we need to do. This will be a major initiative for us this year, where we will be identifying partners whom we can groom to the next level. We will identify partners who have already invested in Fortinet technology by the way of getting their engineers certified. We will also look at partners who are keen on investing in our certification program.

The drive will be towards the existing partner base who have been associated with the company for couple of years and who are actively engaged in delivering Fortinet solutions.

Another component of our partner program was the specialization program for wireless, web application firewall, and database. This year we will be focusing on getting wireless specialist partners to a large extent. We are going to look at a lot of our existing partners who can scale up, who can look at new products, and promote these partners through specialization programs.

With regards to wireless and web based applications, is there already significant demand or you are expecting these segments to pick up?

There is an existing demand for wireless and there is also demand for security but what is felt today by most partners is that customers are looking at both in one device. They want wireless without sacrificing anything on the security aspect. Secondly, today wireless is becoming a substitute for a wired network and this also calls for security features, which has to go along with that. We have got a strong solution in wireless along with security. We had been able to leverage the Fortigate security platform to deliver wireless technologies.

Are you planning to introduce any form of changes in the partner program in this fiscal?

As told earlier, we had recently incorporated key changes to the program. So going ahead, we are working towards identifying and enabling those set of partners. We aspire to build a dedicated partner community through our partner program who are specialized as well as have the capacity to deliver and fulfill customer requirements.

What is your current partner base?

If you look at our overall India partner base, we have close to 500 partners signed up with us. In this about 250 partners are active channel partners who are doing business with us every quarter.

In the entire SAARC region except Pakistan, we have about 560 partners, wherein in India we have close to about 500 partners as mentioned earlier. Sri Lanka close to 40, Maldives we have about 10 partners, Bangladesh about 8 partners and a few partners in Nepal and Bhutan.

We have a lot of national level players in India wherein about 28 partners will qualify as national level partners. We have divided our business into different regions, which includes West (Maharashtra and Goa), Central region (Gujarat, MP, Rajasthan, and Chattisgarh), North, East and South 1 (Karnataka, Sri Lanka and Maldives) and South 2 (AP, Kerala and TamilNadu). We have a got a fair spread of partners across all these regions.

Could you please elaborate upon your plans to enable partners in the specialization categories?

As far as specialization is considered, from the existing partner base we will be identifying partners for wireless category. We will be looking at atleast about 30 partners to begin with. We will be starting to focus in the top 10 markets and then we will look at other markets. With regards to standard Fortinet Partner program, we will look at expanding the partners primarily into markets we donot have any presence or have a limited presence. We will be going to Tier 3 markets and Tier 4 markets. Our products is ideally suited for any kind of SMB till enterprise and we have an extensive offering is catering to any size of customer base.

When it comes to competition prevalent in the Indian market, how do you plan to address it?

We had globally finished last year at 3rd position and in India market it is almost at par with this ranking. We have done pretty well although if you look at last year numbers we are yet to make that strong mark.

If you take UTM as a category, we have competition across different segments in the market. Now if you look at enterprise market, we have competitors like Checkpoint, Paulo Alto and Juniper. In SMB segment, we face competition from SonicWall, WatchGuard, Cyberoam and few others.

We work closely with our local teams and also have expanded most of our teams. We are addressing these markets by building strong partnerships. In Tier 3 and Tier 4 markets, there is not much significant competition. I feel most of the large vendors have limited reach in such small markets, and in comparison we have partner program and quality reach into these smaller markets.

What is your go-to-market strategy?

Fortinet has a comprehensive product range catering SMB to large enterprise segments. We have got product starting from 20 to 5000 series. With different partners, our focus varies and our business plans also varies. With large national partners, we largely focus on the enterprise business but whereas with the partners who are in the Tier 2 market, there we talk about the SMB opportunities.

We work with partners closely to ensure their margins are secured in any business deal. Also, our business plans and strategies are aligned in such a way that partners enjoy good profitability. We do not commit margins as such but we provide a range of tools, which will ensure they are profitable.

When it comes to internal expansion plans, what is on the cards?

We have already appointed channel account managers who will focus on various channel development activities. These managers will support our channel partners in SMB sales processes particularly in the metros as well as the tier 3-4 cities. They will be responsible to identify the partners in these market, they will help them and train them and more. Through this, we want to ensure one-to-one connect with our channel partners. There will be a lot of hand holding in terms of pre-sales activities and training activities.

Over the period of one year, we have hired 5 channel account managers and we will be hiring 4-5 more managers. All these managers will be managing all partners in their respective regions. So now we have major account managers, we have regional managers and we also have vertical specialists at the local level. While, we do all our business through partners and distributors, these channel account managers will help in developing partners from a point of view of making them aware of what Fortinet is, our technologies, USP of Fortinet, available partner tools, resources available, and above all how they can do business with Fortinet easily. As far as sales are concerned, they will get involved only for the SMB part of the business. If the business deals are large account, then they will be moved accordingly to the right people or vertical specialists.

What are your channel engagement activities in the pipeline for this year?

We are planning to conduct sales update session starting this year. This activity will be executed every quarter. In top 8 markets, we plan to conduct these sales update sessions. The metros as well as certain non-metros will be covered in this. Through this program, we will be updating partners about new technologies, products, and tools.