Item: Fortinet FortiGate
Rating: 10
Author: Donny McIver

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use FortiGate internally and as our go-to solution for our clients looking to replace/upgrade their current firewall solution. With the recent work from home scramble and COVID-19 - quickly deploying VPN setups to users we never imagined would need to work remotely was a snap -- thankfully we had FortiGate in place for those clients!

We appreciate the next-gen firewall feature set and ease of building policies to tailor to our client's needs for their infrastructure. While we're a pretty small shop, supporting businesses with < 100 users it's nice to have a very scalable solution that we can lead with for clients of any size. We know there's plenty more to learn and grow into the Fortinet universe - but their partner support team is amazing.

Pros and Cons

NextGen Firewall.
SSL traffic inspection.
VPN / Remote Access.
Device telemetry.

Sometimes it's too smart for the beginner engineer.

Return on Investment

Great return on investment for our client network infrastructure spend.
Fortinet partnership provides discounts on hardware - maintaining profitability objectives.
Consolidating learning objectives to keep support engineers up to speed providing the best support for our clients.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Meraki MR Series, Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services, Juniper NetScreen IDP (discontinued) and SonicWall TZ

Ongoing costs and licensing options - the FortiGate product line comes out a winner every time. We especially like the granularity and licensing options compared to something like Meraki that is mostly "all or nothing" or the SonicWall which is less granular and just not as superior as a product.

We haven't compared against Palo Alto networks and if Fortinet didn't work for us, they would have been our next go to solution to explore. We know the products like Cisco ASA and SonicWall are mostly in the rear-view mirror - and we just hate the licensing model for Meraki and can't get behind that approach. Everything we do, we put ourselves in our client's position to evaluate what serves them best (more than what serves our current need). As a result, Fortinet is a product that best aligns enterprise capability to a typical SMB and doesn't require such a specialized skillset the client is left hanging if they kick us to the curb.

Support Rating

Whenever we've had an issue (which isn't often) we've been able to great support through the Partner channel or KB area. We love how well documented various aspects of the platform are taken care of - and how well manicured the KB area / Cookbooks are.

Having quick access to support resources without always having to call to speak to some engineer helps us self-resolve a great number of issues on our own and learn more along the way. Candidly though, we just haven't had to call in or open a ticket hardly ever - usually it's more for our channel support to determine license needs or quoting assistance.

Key Insights

Do you think Fortinet FortiGate delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Fortinet FortiGate's feature set?

Yes

Did Fortinet FortiGate live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Fortinet FortiGate go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Fortinet FortiGate again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Veeam Backup & Replication, Hyper-V, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Likelihood to Recommend

FortiGate is a great fit and no brainer expense when replacing a firewall for our average target client (< 100 users) - much better return on investment compared to Meraki solutions. With the ability to license up or down to best fit a client's requirements - the product line is flexible and scalable. Much different experience than some other product lines we used to lead with - that we'll still support, it's just not the top of our list when a client asks for our recommendation.

We like that FortiGate simplifies the deployment of SSL VPN without added hardware or licensing costs - but if you want to include sandboxing and device endpoint telemetry, you can easily bolt on licenses and leverage cloud management without deploying additional hardware. A huge benefit for smaller clients where it's just not feasible.

Fantastically happy with FortiGate

Overall Satisfaction with Fortinet FortiGate