Computelec drops WatchGuard for Fortinet

Charles Cote, regional director South Pacific for Fortinet said the conference will take place at Daydream Island in the Whitsundays on 14^th October, sponsored by its Platinum partner FireWall Systems.

Talking about Fortinet's recent success, Cote said the company had maintained a second consecutive year of growth.

"We are kicking some goalposts and we will be making some exciting announcements over the coming months," he said.

"About a month ago we were coming into the end of the quarter and I didn't know it would be a record quarter. Within five weeks we won strategic deals to get over the hump.

"It is a scary time out there however the benefits of the solutions we can provide are in keeping with what people need right now. Resellers see a good ROI and customers know they are not being ripped off."

Partners at the lunch included Jules Rumsey, CEO Telarus, Nick Verykios marketing director Firewall Systems, David Lenz general manager Enterprise Technology Group, Ingram Micro;

Kaarena Chapman, business development manager WhiteGold Solutions, Luke Morrish enterprise account manager Dimension Data, and Darren Elsby manager hosted services and solutions Computelec.

Elsby said the company had recently dropped WatchGuard in favour of Fortinet.

He said Computelec is moving into a managed services environment taking the business away from product based sales on hardware.

"We are focusing on a managed helpdesk environment for schools. The Fortinet deal came through its partnership with HP ProCurve. It's easier for us to leverage something that is already there rather than embark on something new.

"Schools have to deal with the problem of spam, remote access for staff and students, firewalls and security. The trouble is, schools are buying different products to cover all these areas which in turm becomes quite costly.

"We can come in with a product like Fortinet and solve all these pain points to make their systems more efficient. We believe being a single source of contact is unique in the education space.

"As school expectations around IT increase and with more parents wanting to see what their child does we need to control all the information that is supplied in schools and that can be quite complex.

"We are going to deploy a product that looks after everything including, Windows7, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint etc, to remotely assist and support any problems that may arise before they happen.

"That is an important step for us to take as a business. We want to discover issues before the school does on a 24/7 basis."