Fortinet (TICKER: FTNT) Fortinet Inc Ftnt Bank Of America 2023 Global Technology Conference Transcript
Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) Bank of America 2023 Global Technology
Conference June 6, 2023 1:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Keith Jensen - Chief Financial Officer
John Maddison - Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President,
Products
Conference Call Participants
Tal Liani - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Tal Liani
[Starts Abruptly] Snowflakes that things are slowing down. We've seen
Sentinel, we've seen CrowdStrike that had some negative comments. Some
companies are reporting great numbers, some companies are reporting
some weaknesses. How do you think is the environment? What do you see
the environment? Number one. And then how -- what are the components of
your success, meaning you grew products 35%. You grew the services 30%.
What are the components of this success?
Question-and-Answer Session
A - Keith Jensen
Yes. I'll talk about just the numbers a little bit and John can give a
lot more color on it, I think. I think that we've shown the ability to
be a consolidator, both in terms of market share as well as product
offerings, and that's given us an advantage in the current environment.
As you look at Q1 specifically, I would add to that, as we've
communicated previously that we saw some drawdown in the backlog that
provided some tailwind to it as well. I think we saw a healthy degree
of competitive displacements and opportunities. I think in a bit of a
surprise, I think the SMB held up very, very well in the first quarter.
And Europe held up very, very well in the first quarter. And I think
when you look at those types of data points, what that really to me is
affirmation that cybersecurity is not a discretionary spending item.
It's a must-have. And it doesn't matter what's happening in terms of
the country next door being at war or what industry you're in or what
have you, you are a candidate for attacks like ransomware. And as such,
you are in a position that you need to continue to invest to secure
your own architecture and your own network. But maybe John can give a
little more on market dynamics.
John Maddison
Yes, and it's all about having the right products and services. I mean,
the marketplace we see by 2026, it's a $280 billion marketplace. And we
break that into what we call secure networking, cybersecurity and OT
security, operational technology security. And it's about having the
right portfolio inside there.
So secure networking, for example, where we've built things together
like SD-WAN and firewalling and now SASE as we go forward, having the
ability to combine those into a platform allows us to go and
consolidate into the marketplace. And so, it's definitely making sure
that you make the right bets in the right markets, but the market is
big enough. It's just a question of making sure you're going in the
right direction.
Tal Liani
The question is, there is no doubt that cybersecurity is important
period. I mean, no one questions it. But the question is whether the
behavior of the customers are changing? For example, do you see them
sweating more -- sweating out of the asset, the hardware assets and
maybe refreshing next year instead of this year or do you see them
signing on one-year deals instead of three-year deals and things like
do you see a change in their behavior because of the concern in the
market?
Keith Jensen
Yeah, I think you, if you look back over the last two years, for
example, we've talked about changing customer behaviors. During the
supply chain constraints, we've talked about how customers are buying
the units and not registering the units as quickly as they have. I
think, now if you look at the current dynamic I do think there are
changes in customer behavior again, but perhaps in a bit of a different
direction.
One metric, I would point to is that we are very open about our average
contract term and we disclosed how many months that is, and if you go
back and look at that, you've seen that contract term go 29 months 28,
27, 26 in the last four quarters. I think that's affirmation
particularly as you look at the larger enterprises that there's maybe
less of an appetite for doing a five-year deal and more of a three-year
deal. So, I do think you're seeing things in that regard. We've talked
on the earnings call about the close rates. The close rates in this
environment are different than what we experienced in 2021 and in the
first part of 2022.
Tal Liani
Got it. And I know we don't have much of experience, but if you go
back, I mean you've been doing it many years, and if you go back to
like previous cycles. What is driving, at the end of the day, they were
-- that the industry did go through ups and downs. It was not always
just a straight lineup, and I have been covering Fortinet for many
years and there were some bad quarters in the past. So what -- in what
conditions do you see more of a slowdown? And in what conditions do you
actually see what we are seeing today that's environment is good? So
what could drive -- The question is, what could drive a change in the
behavior of customers to the point where you just cannot grow that
fast.
Keith Jensen
Well. So I've been in cybersecurity about 20 years and these three
things drive our industry is the infrastructure evolution, it's the
threat landscape, and it's the regulatory compliance. And I think right
now compared to the past few years all three of those are changing a
lot. So the infrastructure why is the big one right now is people are
connecting all their OT devices and factories et cetera.
They moving applications around. So that infrastructure evolution
changes the way you need to deploy security with the geopolitics today
going on, the attacks certainly not going to stop with the AI-enabled
cyber criminals as well that's making it harder to detect thus making
it easy for them and then each region and country is applying more
regulatory and compliance. So all three of those things drive our
industry and I don't see those things changing in the short term.
Now people, I think customers the cost of building out digital
infrastructure they want to make a good decision. So they may be taking
a bit longer to decide whom I'm going to have for my networking to
connect all my devices or where am I going to be from a cloud
perspective. So they're making -- taking a bit longer to make those
decisions, but they're going to make them.
Tal Liani
Right. Got it. John, so I'm when I speak about Fortinet I speak about
two things, number one it's a great value, meaning your prices for the
technology you're providing, your prices are much lower than
competition. And number two, it's a great technology. So you're not
getting -- you're not compromising on technology. So let's put prices
aside, because that's a fact. Let's just focus on technology. And I
want to start maybe product-by-product, to speak about your technology.
Because, I think that's what's going to drive growth for the next few
years.
And the first question is always legacy right it's Firewalls and
Firewall platform and FortiGate platform. How do you see this market
evolving? How do you see growth evolving? Are there any competitive
dynamics left in the market, market share gain, et cetera? Or is it
just about adding more technology to the platform so you can upsell?
John Maddison
Right. So let's just talk about the Firewall marketplace, Network
Firewall, it's about a $15 billion to $16 billion marketplace. And I
think people predicted wrongly that is going to slow down a lot because
that the big use cases five or six years ago where Perimeter Firewall
and Core Firewall for segmentation.
And so, obviously, if you are moving applications out of the data
center some of that perimeter traffic is going to decrease and so
people oh the Firewall market is going slow down, or they didn't
predict is that just the opposite happened and that Firewall started to
be spread across all the infrastructure. So one of the use cases,
people didn't predict is distributed Firewall, but sort of the campus,
the branch, the factory going forward. In fact, today [Gartner] (ph)
actually refers to the Network Firewall as the hybrid mesh firewall
marketplace is now 12, at least 12 different use cases.
I was speaking to a customer a few months ago, and they said, well,
I've got two firewalls, I think. When I went through all the use cases
they had nine. All right. Okay, and so for us -- so the market, the
network security marketplace or hybrid mesh firewall marketplace,
there's lots of new opportunity for us. We introduced -- we talked
about new Security Processor 5 which is absolutely designed for the
distributed follow-up replace where you can add things like 5G and
SD-WAN, et cetera.
So yes, we got great price performance. But really the benefit is, we
can run more applications on there and run more use cases. And that's
just one marketplace. I can talk the same about SD-WAN, about SaaS,
about endpoints and all the different marketplaces. You've got to have
the right direction and your product that capture as many of the use
cases as possible.
Tal Liani
And do you think your growth in the FortiGate platform is reflective of
your add-on products and add-on features like SD-WAN, for example, or
is there still market share dynamics like meaning you still take share
from Cisco, from Checkpoint, et cetera?
John Maddison
Yes, both. But I also -- I know we talk about FortiGate, which people
sometimes refer to as our appliance. I always refer to our platform as
being FortiOS and the fabric. Because FortiOS to us can sit in an
appliance. It can sit in the cloud. It can sit in the container. It can
sit in our data centers as a SASE service offering. It can sit in an
organized device and OT factor. So ability for us to put that operating
system in all the different form factors and then apply consistent
security is the key strategy for us.
Tal Liani
Got it. SD-WAN as a driver, take us, first through the basics. Why are
you so successful with SD-WAN?
John Maddison
What we saw SD-WAN coming maybe 2015, 2016, a lot of the early vendors
got acquired. And back then it was saying, well, let's just replace
routing with SD-WAN. We looked at it and said, yeah, that's going to be
an important marketplace because back then they will have a router and
a firewall. So just wanted to replace the router with an SD-WAN device,
but what if we can put both together? It would be better for the
customer.
And so we took a bit longer to get there, but we actually integrated
full SD-WAN functionality right into our firewall. So the customer now
and we've got a -- we did some research recently by Forrester's called
Total Economic Impact, it took 10 of our customers and looked at the
ROI on putting the firewall, and SD-WAN together.
It was a 800% payback. The payback was in less than six months. I mean
the economics of just doing convergence between two things Firewall and
SD-WAN. Imagine you can do a wireless control, LAN control, or 5G, Zero
Trust. Imagine the economics of that. So the ability for us to put
SD-WAN, right in there was very important.
Yes, it took a bit longer. Now, we are the market-leader and we don't
really know, we have to be honest, how many SD-WAN customers have gone,
because they can switch it on. All our competitors charge for it and
that's why we've grown just enormously in SD-WAN and that's what we
wanted to do because in our minds SD-WAN is that foundation.
And once you've got SD-WAN in place you can start to cross-sell back
into the LAN, secure access point, secure switches, endpoint, NAC, et
cetera, and you can sell into that WAN which of course will be SaaS and
5G and cloud, but once you've got that platform there, it's right at
the center, because once SD-WAN in place, it doesn't really matter
where users devices are or what your applications because the
applications do, takes care of all that, but that's -- that we thought
that was the most important marketplace to win versus maybe some of the
other marketplaces, which. I think are easier to switch out.
Tal Liani
Got it. So before I continue, maybe a question to Keith is how much of
your revenue -- so we speak here a lot about upsell to customers,
right? They have a platform and you sell to the left, and you sell to
the right and backward and forward. How much of your revenues comes
from upsell to existing customers versus new customers? How much of a
new customer journey you still have ahead of you?
Keith Jensen
Yes. The new customer contribution in the first quarter is not large at
all provided metrics over the last several quarters that we had about
6,000 new logos in the quarter. And I've also followed that out by
saying the average revenue from that is about 8% to 9% of our total
revenue. So you can see there's very much an expansion journey.
Tal Liani
Got it. Okay. So going back to the strategy and I'm taking you back in
time because, I want to understand, you're doing some quote-unquote
basic stuff, such as secure routers or switches and secure WiFi and
wireless LAN. What is the strategy behind offering this basic stuff to
customers? And basically what's the value proposition there?
John Maddison
Yes. Well, it depends on the industry. One marketplace which for us has
just exploded is operational technology. And I was talking to some
guests earlier. The reason that's happened is because now all the OT
technology devices need to be connected to the cloud or the
application.
Also, all these environments now are accessed remotely by the supply
chain. I think I've spoken to 10 OT customers that have been infected
through their supply chain coming in. We did an OT survey a couple of
weeks ago, 75% of OT customers had a breach or some sort of ransomware
attack in the last 12 months.
And so for us, in that environment, it's very hard to put software and
things like that. Well, as we put one of our switches in there, our
switches are controlled by our firewalls. That switch port there, for
example, we can apply all the security that's on the firewall on that
switch port.
And so for our customers, and I think going forward, these OT
environments will be restricted just to oil and gas and energy. In
fact, again, our campus down in Sunnyvale south of here is a mini OT
environment because it's carbon emission-free. So all the campuses and
some branches will want that OT security inside there. And that's why
our secure switches, secure WiFi with totally integrated DAC and micro
segmentation is the perfect answer.
Tal Liani
Got it. So again, I'm taking you through the journey of the company,
starting with the platform, adding SD-WAN, adding more products that
are naturally synergistic to the sale. But then we have two new areas
that are completely different. One is to secure what's called SASE, to
secure the -- replace CASB, replace private lines. And second is to
secure the cloud, what's called CNF. Take us through your journey in
basically going into new markets in two ways. Number one is describe
your offering in these markets. And number two is how is it synergistic
to your existing customers?
John Maddison
Yes. So again we wanted to secure SD-WAN and the firewall marketplace
first. Now we're going after what I call security from the cloud versus
security for the cloud. Security from the cloud is our SASE capability
provided to customers. And the ability to add that, what we call secure
services edge, eventually it's going to be called SASE.
I know even Gartner is getting annoyed with all the acronyms, which
people are misusing. They're even coming out with a new Magic Quadrant
that just says, this is what SASE means, single vendor SASE, okay?
That's how annoyed they are. And to us, that's really important because
now we can expand into that. We think it's mainly focused on that
marketplace as it is today on remote access. But the trouble is if you
just do cloud for everything, then it's inefficient.
If I got to go into the cloud and then boomerang back onto my network
into my data center, it's inefficient. Our view in the future is that
you'll have a network and you'll have a cloud network, a SASE network.
And the traffic will go in between those and backwards and forwards
depending on where the application is and where the user or device is
coming from. And then you will apply the security wherever the edge is.
So to us, the ability to hop on one of our SASE networks then spin off
a leg right into an SD-WAN network into the data center, it becomes
really efficient and very secure and is much better than just a pure
cloud-only solution. So again, their definition will be an SD-WAN
solution and an SSE solution that works together under a single
console. And that's where we see the SASE marketplace, and that's where
we're investing heavily.
The other marketplace, security for the cloud, we think is a bit of a
different marketplace. So that SASE marketplace I think will end up
like the firewall marketplace. There's probably 10 vendors there today.
It's not like endpoint where there's 80. There's probably 10 vendors.
It will end up being three, four vendors long term because the ability
to do appliances and cloud and management and security is tough. It's
hard. Security for the cloud is a different environment. We absolutely
believe that the hyperscalers themselves want to own all the security
in the cloud, and they're going to punish you for being in that
marketplace too large.
Our view is that we want to play in the cloud where we can win. That
will be firewalling, maybe web application and API protection and maybe
some of the smaller pieces, and that's where we're going to focus. We
totally believe if you want to try and be the platform inside the
cloud, there's another vendor called the platform that wants to be the
platform, and they're going to crush you long term.
Tal Liani
Got it. So let's focus first on SASE and what you offer for SASE. Can
you take us through -- so we know Palo Alto, Prisma Access. We know
Zscaler. We know maybe Netskope. Palo Alto call it 2.5 in the market.
Where are you? Where are you located in this market? What do you offer?
And what are you missing?
John Maddison
Well, I think that referring to the secure services edge marketplace.
Okay, that is remote access. They move the proxy from the data center
in there, that provided CASB and remote ZTNA only not on-premise ZTNA,
it's partial ZTNA. That's what the marketplace referring to today. We
believe that marketplace will turn into what we call the SASE
marketplace with SD-WAN being very, very important insight there. So
unless you have SD-WAN and a good secure services edge, you don't have
a SASE solution.
We believe that the journey though continues to universal SASE that
includes what we call Secure SD Branch. It includes Digital Experience
Monitoring. It includes security as a proxy in the cloud and so
universal SASE is one-step beyond single-vendor SASE that includes
probably four, eight, nine different applications in one. That will be
the difference for us. The ability to provide all that capability with
a single console, and some vendors will just stay at SASE. There'll be
some vendors who are single-vendor SASE. There won't be many vendors
who are Universal SASE. Where are you in the journey? Where are you in
the process? What do you have? And what do you still need to have? I
think we have all the components. The hardest thing, always with these
things is making them work together well. And so right now we just, a
couple of months ago, we released our ability for our SASE solution or
FortiSASE one click, it spins up spoken the SD-WAN network of the
customer with one click, that usually would take a week's worth of
professional services from anybody else. That is the key going forward.
That was just one example, but there's other examples you need to do as
well.
Tal Liani
Got it. Keith, in order to enable this, you need to invest in cloud
capacity or data center capacity. What are the plans in terms of
spending, in terms of CapEx? And how does it impact your cash flow for
the next few years?
Keith Jensen
Yes. I think you look at our recent history on CapEx. Ken has been very
committed to the long-term strategy, which includes owning real estate
investments wherever we can or where it makes sense. And I think the
build-out of the PoPs for SASE is consistent with our strategy. The
PoPs themselves are not hugely expensive.
It's really a matter of the quantity that you're looking for. And I
think our strategy there, as Ken has talked about, is one, leveraging
the strong relationship we have with carriers and the service providers
with their networks and at the same time, supplementing that with
standing up opportunities in [indiscernible] or cloud providers as
needed.
I think a pretty good proxy, when you look at the pure-play players in
the market, and you see what their margins are, call it, 80%, if you
will, for gross margin. I don't see a reason that it will be
significantly different for us.
I would back up and say if you look at the earnings call information
over the last several quarters, we've talked about making investments
in data centers and supporting cloud offerings in more general terms
and as a component of our gross margin in services. So I think that was
a bit of a message to The Street, to others that you should see and
expect to hear more from us about making investments for cloud
offerings. Overall, I don't see that changing our commitment to free
cash flow forecast in the midterm.
Tal Liani
Does it create any volatility with margins in the meantime, or it's not
significant enough to change the market?
Keith Jensen
No, I don't think the SASE and PoPs in this revenue recognition as cost
structure really creates volatility in the gross margin, if you will,
maybe trends, but it can create fluctuations in the CapEx number.
Tal Liani
Got it. We have less than 10 minutes left, and I want to be conscious
of your questions. So we have a microphone in the room, before I
continue with my question is anyone has any questions for management?
Don't be shy. No, good. I'll continue. And if you have a question,
please raise your hand. Okay, I'll. Competition and I want to talk
about Microsoft. Microsoft is turning into a big competitor for some
vendors. How do you view Microsoft or what's your position on Microsoft
competitive threat?
John Maddison
Definitely a competitor and a partner, and I sometimes look at the
Magic Quadrant. So we are in eight Gartner Magic Quadrants, Microsoft
are in six. I think. But when you look at it, the different Magic
Quadrant from us, because. I think, 11 in total for cybersecurity. And
so we don't relap a bit, maybe in endpoint, which is a huge market for
us and Sim -- again is in a huge market for us.
And so I see it as a good opportunity to partner with them. I don't
think they're going to go into the secure networking business anytime
soon. And so they are a competitor. I mean, as I said if I can just
talked about the cloud vendors, if it's their platform they want to own
it. Like, don't want to own the endpoint. I now want to own everything
inside. Right. So we got to understand where we are going to compete
and where we are going to work together. So Microsoft will be a partner
and a competitor together.
Tal Liani
How about the --
John Maddison
I don't think we overlap as much as other vendors.
Tal Liani
Got it. And how do you think about the other vendors, meaning do you
see more price competition than before, especially now that some
companies are struggling?
John Maddison
Yes. I mean, I think you will see price competition in markets which
are crowded endpoint, absolutely. You're going to go platform vendors
who will try and drive the price down and you've got 80 vendors running
around. At some point something's got to give. But I see in things like
universal SASE not that money vendors can do all of that functionality.
And so the bundling of the pricing component, despite there will give
us a key advantage.
Tal Liani
Got it.
John Maddison
So, again, certain markets and certain use cases, there are much less
competitors than there are in certain markets.
Tal Liani
And maybe just jumping off a little color on that. I think we've talked
before, that where we see customer interest right now is more about
capital preservation and payment terms and it is on discounting. And
then the second part of that is on the consolidation strategy. There's
a lot of us equate -- meaning taking cost out and certainly it can,
but, I think the primary focus for the CIOs, CISOs right now is
eliminating complexity that exists with a point solution vendors.
Tal Liani
Got it. And another question, that is always important is go-to-market.
How -- so rewinding many years you started selling an appliance. It's a
certain type of go-to-market strategy, certain type of resellers and
distributors and partners. Now, it's more about services and more about
SaaS solution. How did you change or how do you plan on changing your
go-to-market strategy as a result?
John Maddison
There was a change in the type of partners you need first of all. We
talked about some of the service providers there in MSSPs, especially,
selling some of our new capabilities like SD-WAN and SASE. So that --
there was a channel change a bit as well, but also then you have to
train the sales force themselves to be able to sell. Given our
portfolio, we have 50 plus product in our portfolio we can train them
across everything. So we'll focus on different groups like SASE, or
cloud and then we'll set up what we call business development
specialists. You can help the individual sales teams to that expertise,
I think it's impossible to ask a sales person to go in and sell against
CrowdStrike one minute, against Cisco this minute, against some cloud
vendor in the second.
So you need that -- enablement needs to be strong. You need to make
sure you are on the right tools, the right channel and then, you still
need some resources in the field to help them.
Keith Jensen
I don't see us changing though from our commitment to the channel,
regardless of where the form factor that we deliver. I think that
commitment will remain.
Tal Liani
It's the same channel by the way, that sells SASE, and sells FortiGate
or FortiGate platform.
John Maddison
Yes, the same channel, but you also get specialist channels as well.
Like for example our SD-WAN, the biggest channel is service provider.
Because they're replacing MPLS. Now for endpoint is going be one
traditional two-tier channel motion. So it does change depending on
which product.
Tal Liani
Got it.
Keith Jensen
And on John's comment, I think a moment ago, it's important that we
also have a direct sales force, it's bringing those opportunities to
our channel and that they have the expertise that he's talking about
and the training in the software and the SaaS solutions.
Tal Liani
In the last quarter, we have seen bigger proportion of smaller
customers or smaller platforms. And I think there was entry-level
platforms had a greater proportion of revenues versus before. Should we
read much into it?
John Maddison
Well, that as a reflection of our gaining traction in Distributed
Firewall and SD-WAN that's where that market is. So you're seeing those
numbers go out means that we are winning in that edge marketplace.
Tal Liani
Got it. Okay. You started many years ago as an SMB company and you grew
into the enterprise. Can you tell us about first of all your position
in enterprise? What's the difference in your value proposition for
large customers like a bank -- big bank and your value proposition for
smaller companies?
John Maddison
I'll kind of modify the history slightly. We kind of started in service
provider and SMB. Two distinct marketplaces and we've kind of come and
meet in the middle for enterprise. I think for the larger enterprises,
they definitely still struggling with this platform approach. They
still got best-of-breed mentality. In fact, best of use case mentality.
So inside that, we'll go through specific use cases on different
vendors.
And so for large enterprises, you really got to know, you've already
got a use cases and you go use case by use case across the different
marketplaces. Soon as you come down the marketplace commercial
enterprise, they totally one platform. They just kind of afford 40
vendors running around. They kind of want five to six platforms and
that's where we do it particularly well. But for the larger ones, it's
very specific use cases we focus on.
Tal Liani
How do you grow your position with enterprise? What do you have to do
in order to better cater for their needs?
John Maddison
Yeah. I mean Keith had talk about, this is the coverage is the most
important thing. As we've gone from maybe that commercial smaller
enterprise into enterprise we can't have an account manager with 10
accounts, even 10 accounts. They had 20 accounts. You need actually
there was around, you need 10 account managers on the one account.
That's the journey of going through. It takes time to get the right
people in all of these accounts, that's the journey we are going on
right now.
Keith Jensen
Yes. I think the value proposition, if you will, to get this in eight
Gartner Magic Quadrant ranking. But to John's point about having the
right resources, if you will, that are sitting down with a CIO and a
CISO, i it's really about the -- you can see it when we meet with
customers, their ability to engage with them about their business
problem and the solution that you're bringing. At that level, pricing
becomes something they almost set aside on that their purchasing group
deal with. They're much more interested in outcomes than they are the
value proposition at that point.
Tal Liani
Got it. Before I have set of questions for margins and cash flow, but
before I get there I want to talk about still strategic level. And
John, what -- if you -- you sit today, your plan if you plan your
product, your roadmap for the next five years, what do you need to
focus on? What are the things that you want to be or where are the
places you want to be three years from now, five years from now? Where
do you have to put the focus?
John Maddison
Yes. To keep converging. And as I said, we have all the pieces. We just
got to make sure they're converged and managed and simplified. Endpoint
is a good example for us where we actually have a very large installed
base of VPN, EPP and now ZTNA and SASE. And we can add EDR to that
going forward. So if I'm a customer and I go, if I can get all five of
those things in a single agent, that's great for the customer and great
for us. We don't have to use all of them, but they're all there. So
convergence at the endpoint, converging in the network, converging in
the cloud is where we're focused on and making it all work together
end-to-end.
Tal Liani
So, today the technology that you have is still not converged, meaning
that's what you need to work on?
John Maddison
No pieces are converged. But we still need to keep working on the
convergence. Like I say, we have four pieces on our endpoint, we'll add
EDR at some point and the other capabilities. We have a SASE
capability, but do we have a simple one-button that presses and adds
capabilities like CASB to every --. So you just got to make it easier
for customers as you go forward.
Tal Liani
Okay. Another word for it is automation [Multiple Speakers]
John Maddison
You got to automate as much as you can.
Tal Liani
And that's actually that leads me to my next question, which I'm going
to ask everyone today and I think that by the end of it will be sick of
this question, but how AI changes your life?
John Maddison
My personal life?
Tal Liani
No. Company life. Personal life I'll ask later. Now we going to talk
about company life.
John Maddison
I think it's going to change every part of our business. And we've
already been using machine-learning and AI and our threat research, et
cetera. It makes it as I said before, the bad guys are also using that
technology against you. We'll be using it in network operations for
example our AIOps can look at why something is not working in the
Internet and pinpoint exactly where it is and fixes it.
We'll also be using our support services, et cetera, et cetera. So I
think AI will be used across the whole business, but in different ways
and you can't just say this how I'm going to apply to this is. You've
got to make sure it's adapted to each use case.
Tal Liani
So that's in automation, right, mostly or --
John Maddison
Yes. But I think we just had a report from ESG. And I think your
question about the budgets earlier, I see a lot of businesses, they
still got to drive that digital business. So they still want to build
secure networking. So I'll still invest in that.
I don't see many customers at all saying I'm going to stop investing in
cybersecurity. But what they do say is I've got to react faster. So we
just did a report saying that if you connected your SIMs or an EDR
together in an automated way, you can go from a 12-hour mediation to
three minutes. That's what they want to do. They want to be as fast as
possible in discovering something and then remediating something. So
automation means different things for networking versus cybersecurity.
Tal Liani
Got it.
John Maddison
That's what they want to do that. They want to be as fast as possible
in discovering something and then remediating something. So automation
means different things for networking versus cybersecurity.
Tal Liani
Got it. Got it. I got the note. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
John Maddison
Thank you.
Tal Liani
Excellent.
Keith Jensen
Thank you.
