Fortinet losing it' s edge

[nvelocity]

We' ve been hardcore Fortinet guys for a few years. I think they are starting to lose their edge. Performance is great, but management is increasingly difficult. Modular does not have to mean a thousand moving pieces. I still like the product, I' m just seeing an increasing number of issues. Anyone else noticing some chinks in Fortinet' s armor?

[abelio]

hummm... I don' t know yet. All maior FortiOS releases became with some issues that were solved with sucessive releases; remember 3.0' s early days or 3.0MR4, you' ve been here; 2.80 to 3.0 was tricky for many; i guess that with 4.x is happening something similar; FortiOS 4.x is intended to cover a broad base of features, many argueable for seasoned firewall administrators; webcaching, wan optimization comes now into my mind for example. For instance, webcaching and its relationship with new models is curious for me at least: 32GB solid state hard disks for 51B, a 64GB one for 111C models or 64GBssd AMC for 311B, but 1 Tb HD for 82CM (' soho/smb' ) model??! I' d like a rock solid WCCP implementation, it would sounds more interesting and usable. Wan Optimization with no broad accepted standards is more a marketing response to Riverbed and other vendors than a ' must' IMHO. Integrating all the new, keeping the well known and great ' old' functions in 4.x seems to be perceived like a ' work in progress' . I guess that forthcoming releases will address the issues you' ve mentioned my 2 cents, regards,

[emnoc]

Care to explain in detail what edge they have lost? I find the management of the fortigate and for what level it performs great, nope let me write that as excellent. With the recent IPO, I expect that they would get more notice, better features and the respect that they deserve in the market place. They should be more noticeable than let' s say a Juniper. Far better than let' s say a ASA55X0. As a security outfit, they have a good solid base to work on and leads the way with new features and features in regards to security and appliances. I personally wish for them to improve in the SMB market but the in reality have all all areas covered from SMB , enterprise and carrier. Areas that they are weak at are with support and limited pre-sale capable bodies or partners.

[nvelocity]

Like I said, overall Fortinet still a nice product. We like them, but I think they need to step up their game. In the past the modularity was a selling point to those of us who hated wizards (cough, SonicWALL). Over time the modularity is now the source of a lot of the problems we run into or see on the forums. I think Fortinet' s tech side has outpaced their GUI, CLI and documentation. Admittedly, we' re smart but not full time Firewall guys. Some of that may be on us to learn and adapt to Fortinet' s rapid implementation of new features. I won' t throw stones without acknowledging our own possible issues. Still, there are competitors that are catching up in performance, striking a better mix of modularity vs wizards and provide a MUCH BETTER picture of network traffic. I post this here because I hope Fortinet reads the forums and can take these comments to heart in future development.

[abelio]

ORIGINAL: nvelocity I think Fortinet' s tech side has outpaced their GUI, CLI and documentation.

i was noticed about improvements in this topic; a ' diagnose' command guide for 4.2 version for instance; i don' t like yet the ' browseability' of new kb.fortinet.com and url construction; i think is comfortable for the admin side, but it' s bot from the user guide.

Still, there are competitors that are catching up in performance, striking a better mix of modularity vs wizards and provide a MUCH BETTER picture of network traffic.

please share your available examples.

I post this here because I hope Fortinet reads the forums and can take these comments to heart in future development.

I guess that a more close contact with your local SE could be more successful. regards

[nvelocity]

I like some of the featuers of Cymphonix. I don' t use them and I hate their pricing model, but the visibility into the network traffic is amazing. I' ve been harping on Fortinet to provide better built in monitoring and control of traffic. We have a FA100B and I don' t use it because I think it' s " clunky" . But that' s just my pet peeve. I' m not opening a thread to bash Fortinet because overall we really like them. I just want to see them keep their advantage in the market or we' ll start looking elsewhere.

[FortiRack_Eric]

It definitely don' t think Fortinet is losing it' s edge. On the contrary, the Fortigate is developing greatly. I do however think they need to improve on FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager, but we can expect improvements soon. my .2 cents Cheers, Eric

[mike_ronn331]

many users have faced this problem because the modular performance is getting down, you are not alone to face this issue.

[emnoc]

Will most of the other vendors have similar or worse problems.

I can't believe this thread is  still alive ;)

Ken Felix

[abelio]

Me neither  ;)