Fortinet (TICKER: FTNT) Fortinet Inc Ftnt 51st Annual Jpmorgan Global Technology Media And Communications Conference
Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) 51st Annual JPMorgan Global Technology,
Media and Communications Conference Call May 23, 2023 10:10 AM ET
Company Participants
Keith Jensen - CFO & CAO
Ken Xie - Founder, Chairman & CEO
Conference Call Participants
Brian Essex - JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Brian Essex
All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My
name is Brian Essex, I'm JPMorgan cybersecurity analyst. And with me
today, I have Ken Xie, he's Fortinet's Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder;
and to his right is Keith Jensen, the company's CFO.
Before I get started, I think Ken has a few words he'd like to share.
So why don't you go ahead and...
Keith Jensen
By popular demand, I'll do the safe harbor language.
Brian Essex
That's right. Here we go.
Keith Jensen
I'd like to remind everyone that we may make forward-looking statements
during today's fireside chat. These forward-looking statements are
subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to
differ materially from those projected in these statements. Please
refer to our SEC filings, in particular, the risk factors, in our most
recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and to other reports that we may file
from time to time with the SEC for additional information on factors
that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current
expectations. All forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only
as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to
specifically disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking
statements. Thank you, and you're welcome.
Brian Essex
That's exhausting. Well, thank you -- Ken, Keith, thank you again for
joining us. Maybe a good place to start would be, Ken. Maybe if you
could introduce the company within the context of how your approach is
different. It's kind of interesting because you're a bit more focused
on the value of the hardware than other vendors in the space, whether
it's others seem to be focused more on everything migrating to the
cloud over time and focused on software. So maybe a little background
on the company, what your focus is and what you think your core
differentiation is.
Ken Xie
Okay. Yes, the company, we started 23 years ago. So we do believe
[indiscernible] the convergence of network security will be gradually
overtaking the traditional networking. So we feel lucky now. Even
Gartner [indiscernible] believe that one. So by 2030, their forecast
also see the network security will be bigger than the networking side.
So I think in order to do the network security, you definitely need
more computing power to process the traffic because network security
need to look in more higher layer, more deeper into the package. You
need to look at how the content, how the application side, how the
user, the device, even some location to make -- to control to make the
decision there. So that's where we are.
From day 1, we decided to invest in the ASIC technology, which gave us
a much better computing power to process all the security function. So
the latest chip we announced actually about a few months ago, that we
call SP5, called security process 5, actually can -- each generation,
we kind of double the speed and has more application. We accelerate in
the ASIC level. So the latest one we can have a 14 application using
ASIC to accelerate, which gave us like -- you can look at the last like
10, 20 product we announced. Every product we announced, we also gave
the data compared to the same product, same function, same cost in the
space.
So what's the performance advantage we have for all the top 6, 7
functions in the network security space? We tend to be 5 to 10x better
performance for the same cost, same function in the competitor -- in
the industry average. So that's making the Fortinet, we can have a much
bigger total addressable market beyond the traditional enterprise
network security. So that gave us a much faster growing and at the same
time, kind of more broadly deployed network security beyond the
traditional enterprise network security, including SDN area, including
going forward the 5G and also including the Internal Segmentation,
which the traditional networking switch and deploy and secure within
the data center and also supporting work from home, the branch office
approach.
So today, we probably have about half the market share on the total
global unit shipment for the network securities device. So globally,
there's about 20 million network security devices being deployed, so we
count about 10 million of that. So it give us some good potential going
forward to get additional service out of this device. So that's where
the product revenue we're kind of at #1, and that's also what helping
drive the future service revenue, which a lot of service provider
working with us, whether in the SASE or some other security service,
which is also much high demand today in the environment.
Question-and-Answer Session
Q - Brian Essex
Great. Great. That's super helpful. And maybe if we can dig in a little
bit to kind of the core kind of firewall platform that you have. I
think John Maddison at Accelerate had a slide where he had about 11
different use cases for firewalls, which I think is pretty interesting.
And those included segmentation, hyperscale, OT, container
applications. How many of those are emerging? And which ones do you see
have the greatest untapped potential as we kind of look in the years
ahead?
Ken Xie
We see the traditional network security is still keeping -- growing,
maybe around 10% there. But on the other side, the new use case like
SD-WAN, the 5G, the OT area probably will grow faster, maybe like a
20%, 30%, even 40% and also will be a pretty huge market. So that's we
see even within the company. Internal Segmentation is also a good
market because a lot of ransomware attack more target company, internal
data, other things, also work from home is the other area. So that's
also drive us we believe -- so we kind of had the biggest product
revenue in the whole space. We also believe the product revenue growth
will continue to be double digit compared to some of our competitor
field is only a single-digit growth.
So it's not just kind of -- we have more use case. We also feel the
consolidation and also take some market share, also working well for us
because we have a well-integrated product solution. And at the same
time, we also want to keep up the innovation and follow the change in
new requirement in the space quickly and come up a new product quicker,
better than other competitors. So that's where we want to continue to
drive the innovation internally. At the same time, kind of keeping --
expanding -- the product can be deployed in the field and have keeping
open up the new addressable market.
Brian Essex
Excellent. One of the things that came up, and this was actually at
Accelerate, I talked to one of your partners, who used to work with an
unnamed network security or network equipment vendor in the OT market,
and they specialize in OT, IoT, ICS, who do you see in those segments
as competition? And one of the things that they noted to me at your
conference was that they moved over to Fortinet because the other
vendor couldn't supply them [indiscernible] actually works more
efficiently. So is that a trend that you're seeing on your platform?
Ken Xie
Yes. We do see the OT will be huge potential because you can see the
next phase of connection is more about connect all the device online.
And also most of the device also kind of have a different operating
system and also were different than the laptop, and the mobile phone
being connected is really pretty much the only way to secure most of
the device is really by network security because endpoint security,
which can be pretty efficient in the laptop, mobile phone, not quite
working in a lot of this OT device because they have different
operating systems, different computing power. And so that's where
leverage network security is very, very important to secure all these
device.
So thus we see a lot of potential, but also OT security, also kind of
more divided into different vertical space, like what do you have in
health care is different than the utility manufacturer, some other
area. I need to understand the special protocol the OT operate and also
the environment OT operate. So thus we also see kind of -- to keep up
all this innovation changing and because all the 5G also are starting
to connect OT device very, very quickly.
So thus we're compared to a lot of our traditional network security
company and also some other bigger company, the more acquisition to
grow their cybersecurity. We are more focused on internal innovation,
which also do better on the integration, on the automation side, which
is quite important in the OT area. So thus we see OT definitely is one
of the top growth driver for us in the next few years.
Brian Essex
Yes. And you actually -- and I don't know if this is -- maybe it's a
joint question for both of you, but you've recently noted that SD-WAN
and OT together accounted for over 25% of bookings, but that OT is
smaller. What needs to happen for OT to eclipse SD-WAN? And any idea
when that could actually happen?
Keith Jensen
Yes. When we look at our internal metrics, we do have a bit of a horse
race going on with our peers and the management team about whether OT
or SD-WAN is going to be the larger of the two. At the moment, SD-WAN
is larger, but OT is growing faster. And if you look at the market
opportunities, Ken's talked a lot just about the OT market opportunity.
SD-WAN, I think a lot of companies got into the SD-WAN solution because
of the MPLS savings, but we've seen that now mature to where they're
now using SD-WAN because of the -- it creates more capacity and the
ability to do a lot more things on networking with traffic because
you're avoiding those MPLS fees.
But I think also very importantly now that SD-WAN is a key component of
the SASE solution, right? So it's one of those 5. So I do think that
you're going to see, a lot of people have asked us early on, was SD-WAN
starting to run out of wind and far from it? We've seen some
information come out recently about the MPLS market and how the
read-through from that and the degradation there is still in the very
early innings, but I think also the SASE will now provide another like
to it. In terms of how we're wagering internally, I can't disclose the
bets on those two.
Brian Essex
All right. And kind of the -- you touched on SASE, so that's a kind of
a good segue into this next one, which is that segment of the market is
obviously getting a lot of attention both from public vendors as well
as privates that are investing a lot of money in that space. So can
your presentation at Accelerate framed out what you described as
universal SASE as opposed to single vendor SASE. So Universal with a
single OS. How do you define Universal SASE? And the way that -- and
what is your perspective on the way that Fortinet is kind of uniquely
positioned with a single OS?
Ken Xie
Yes. The SASE is pretty -- still in the early stage to ramp up. And
also, if you look at the Fortinet history, like 15 -- 10, 15 years ago,
the service provider, telecom count about 30% of Fortinet business. So
it's our biggest sector. Today, it's probably half of that, about 15%.
So we do believe long-term wise, security needs a lot of service
provider to working with the vendor and provide all the service because
security has a lot of new things keeping come up every year. So if you
look at the SASE, they not only offer the traditional firewall, VPN,
but also the additional like , the CASBs and WAF, some other function
there, which I feel the traditional service provider, even telecom
provider, cloud provider, they are a little bit behind.
On the other side, the technology, the product is not quite mature
enough. So we do believe in order to offer SASE, you need to offer like
the VPN in the same OS, in the same system and need to be deployed more
broadly instead of all to the cloud, [indiscernible] the process and
send it back. Some deployment situation, like when you work from home,
sends certain signals to cloud process makes sense. But when you're
working in the office, you better process the data locally, instead of
go out of the cloud and send it back all these things. Thus we do
believe the SASE needs to be more universal, new hybrid approach.
So that's where in the last few years, we already developed technology.
They can be in the same OS, can be running the same FortiGate system or
in the cloud. So we may have the customer to decide, like service
provider to decide what kind of deployment they need and what kind of
service they can offer. So that's where we have a little bit different
approach in SASE compared to the SASE vendor today. It's really more
integrated and also more widely deployed, both leverage software and
also the hardware and also more leveraged service provider
infrastructure, which can be the telecom service provider, the cloud
service provider, the traditional security service provider.
And also, there's a lot of company, also they are interested in like
the private SASE. They still want to manage SASE themselves. So that's
why we feel the same OS solution and can be leveraged both hardware and
software can solve that issue at the universal. That's how the
universal SASE we feel will be the trend going forward. That's also
both the service provider, the vendor side, the partner and the
customer, they kind of have flexibility to deploy the security service
based on their need, their environment.
Brian Essex
Great. And then I think we spoke at dinner about the visibility that
you have into SASE adoption, still kind of early stages, I think. And I
think you noted that some companies might not be quite ready for it
when they issue RFPs, but they want to see the road map is there. Maybe
can you expand on that a little bit in terms of how customers evolve
towards adopting a SASE framework? And what role does SD-WAN play into
that?
Ken Xie
Yes, definitely, SD-WAN is a very important part of SASE because SD-WAN
can kind of [indiscernible] based on different application. So when we
do the secure [indiscernible] also more based on certain content,
certain locations, certain user device behind. And so that was a -- I
mean, SD-WAN is a part of the whole SASE solution. On the other side,
you see SD-WAN market is also quite interesting. There's a -- so that's
our internal target. We want to be the #1 in SD-WAN, also like #1 OT
and the network security. So the SD-WAN, you can see the top 5, 6
players, most of them come from acquisition and still have a single
SD-WAN box. A few kind of some -- could have some issue going forward
long term. In the network security space, you can see in the last 20,
30 years, most single-function box vendor pretty much all disappears.
You can name quite a lot of them. I don't want to name any of them
right now.
So because all this integrated platform eventually when they have the
function, they have a huge advantage compared to the single function
box, which they have to deploy kind of -- if you deploy multiple box,
it can be very costly, it can be more difficult to manage. It's the
same thing for -- so that's also, we believe, leverage our integrated
OS, and the company platform ASIC has more function to integrate
together. So including all the SD-WAN function, SASE function will be
working.
But in the enterprise environment, nowadays, a lot of them can see the
benefit of SD-WAN because cost saving, because it gives them more
reliable based on different applications to different traffic. But on
SASE, it's still kind of a certain struggle, whether there's a SASE
vendor try to get a customer, there's a service provider trying to hold
on the customer, and there's a customer also want to keep the data or
some security measure themselves. So that's where we feel -- so keeping
growing in the SD-WAN market will be more easy for the enterprises to
see the benefit, especially in the current environment.
And then when they're ready to move additional security service, and
that's all the SASE function from the current FortiOS, FortiGate, we
can offer them both to the customer for the service provider. So we
feel -- so we give the customer their own kind of a pace, their own
selection, how they want to go forward is the way to do that. And for
us, actually, we offer SD-WAN as a part of the FortiOS, FortiGate
function for free, basically. They can see the benefit, both on the
cost side, on the additional functions they can offer together with
security. So we feel that's probably much better than the other single
function SD-WAN box, which could be cost higher and also at the same
time has very limited function and have a difficult time to offer the
additional service going forward.
Brian Essex
Actually, that brings up a good kind of follow-up point is maybe a
Keith question. But the concept of offering SD-WAN for free, how
substantial is demand? And what kind of levers do you think you have
from a pricing power perspective as you kind of look ahead?
Keith Jensen
It's a great question. And there's been moments where we've kind of
revisited the idea that we were putting it in the operating system and
not charging for it. And depending upon the day of the week, we may
have different conclusions about that strategy. But I think now with
the benefit of hindsight and I'll roll it back and build it on a bit of
Ken's comments, when I'm a consumer of technology solutions and I'm
evaluating different technologies, use SD-WAN, if somebody is coming to
me and they're offering me a single vendor solution, where I don't have
to cobble together 4 or 5 disparate technologies and it's on one
operating system. I'm going to give that a very, very hard look.
And then they're going to explain to me the journey of the firewall,
where you buy the firewall because it has the SD-WAN operating system
in it, it's a natural progression to see customers then turn on the
SD-WAN functionality, maybe move to secure SD branch after that or
something of that nature. But now that SASE's in the operating system
and so to come full circle. I think the fact that we made the decision
to include SD-WAN in the operating system and not charge for it, gives
us a very significant foothold now to go have conversations with
customers about SASE.
Brian Essex
Great. And I think maybe to kind of build on that a little bit. At
Accelerate, Patrice had a slide up, where you noted that you had an
installed base of over 635,000 customers. How much of an opportunity do
you think you have to cross-sell into that installed base with both
SD-WAN and SASE?
Keith Jensen
You answered it last night.
Ken Xie
Yes. I think a lot of our customer enterprise, they see the benefit of
leverage SD-WAN and also the additional security they can offer is --
even we have like over 600,000 customers. Each quarter, we do gain
quite a lot of customer, but it's sometimes -- because we also leverage
the channel, the service provider, it's a little bit difficult to -- I
think from the revenue side, probably a little bit more easy than the
measured the number of customers, maybe is better.
Keith Jensen
Yes. I think the SASE market, if you will, our expectations, and we'll
come back to you in a couple of years and tell you how we did with
that, certainly at the very high end of the market, the Fortune 100 and
maybe the Fortune 50, they certainly have the budget, if you will, to
evaluate the point solutions and build the integrations and they may go
that way and cobble together with it. But that's a relatively, for us,
a smaller segment of the market given the significant footprint we have
with service providers, the mid-enterprise, the geographic footprint,
if you will.
I do believe, and we have some conversations with some MSSPs recently,
that we'd be selling into the smaller market. And the kind of the
question we gave to them was, do you see the SMBs intrigued by the SASE
offering. And they said, absolutely. And they view that as an
opportunity for them to go there. And it's probably from a cash flow
viewpoint, using an MSP an easy way for those smaller enterprises to
get into the market.
And then I think as you move up from that, I think the mid-enterprise
is a no-brainer, absolutely, they're going to move into the SASE space.
And I do think a very large component of the enterprise as well. And
maybe the final comment on this is we don't view, and we don't think
others should be, the SASE and on-prem firewalls are mutually
exclusive. Rather, customers have a use case, they have a group of
appliance or devices and users. And you need as a customer to make a
decision on a case-by-case basis how to secure those.
If you have a remote worker that's going to the cloud for an
application, then SASE probably makes sense. If that same remote worker
is working in the office some days and he's going into the data center,
so to speak, to access applications, you're going to need a different
architecture. So we do think that they're going to move hand in hand,
if you will. We feel really good about where we're positioned with the
operating system in SASE.
Ken Xie
Great. Also SMB also is quite a greenfield, especially with network
security and also even like the consumer side, network security also
pretty much so far is a [indiscernible] open to be in that space. And
you can see the U.S. alone probably have a 20 million, 30 million SMB
is a very, very low percentage and in our security solution there.
Thus, we see leverage service provider, leverage the technology we have
also could be a huge market opportunity.
Brian Essex
Fantastic. And then, Keith, I think you guided for CapEx of $400
million to $450 million this year in part. Do the -- I guess, money
being allocated to build out your access network in PoPs and maybe
either for you or for Ken, what is that -- what was the decision
process around building a point of presence network as opposed to your
own data centers or leveraging hyperscalers? How should we expect that
to look? And how critical is that towards offering users more efficient
access at the edge?
Keith Jensen
Yes. I'll talk about it from a margin perspective, as you might expect.
I mean obviously, we looked at some of the other players in the market,
and there are different strategies, some building out PoPs and some
relying up on a cloud provider, if you will. And I think what Ken
talked about earlier was really a strategy where, yes, we will build
out some of our own PoPs. And PoPs are not a huge outlay of capital
compared to, say, a data center or something like that. We do think
there's opportunities to quickly move in there with our office
footprint that we have internationally, where we have power supply and
some of the requirements to set up PoPs.
But importantly, we'll supplement that with the service providers
infrastructure. I think the service providers, again, as Ken kind of
alluded to, have realized that other practitioners in the SASE market
are trying to move traffic off the service provider's network, and
that's not what they want to have happened. And so I think with that
and why they want to partner with us, will be another source of the
footprint, if you will. And then the third source, obviously, we're
going to have some large customers that have come to us, and they're
going to speak to a specific location, in a certain city or country or
what have you, where they do want to have a PoP. And I think we'll
build something there or perhaps even partner with a cloud provider.
So I think we'll get to it in 3 different ways. But yes, in terms of
CapEx for the year, I think there's 2 things that you're seeing in that
number. One is to support the infrastructure for SASE and the PoPs. I
think we've done a pretty good job of messaging that for several
quarters and talking about margins and the impact of the data centers
on that. But I think there's also a read-through there that we
appreciate and then there's an opportunity for us to continue to
deliver additional security features and functions, not only on-prem,
but through the cloud. And I think you're seeing us position ourselves
for that with some of our own data centers as well. And then lastly on
that, I would say probably with a bit of an eye to some of the
regulatory and compliance changes that are having related to data
movement across borders and across countries. And I think we're trying
to get positioned for that.
Brian Essex
Great. Maybe I've got a few more, but I'm -- I'll ask one set of
questions, and we'll open it up for other questions from the audience,
if you'd like. So Keith, they want to keep you in the spotlight for a
minute. I'll let you swallow your water. I think some are still amazed
at the level of growth you're seeing on the product side in particular.
But I think given the guidance that you had in the quarter, I think a
little bit more conservatism, which I think we appreciate. I think
after the fourth quarter, we're a little bit surprised that the
guidance call it for as much robust growth as you kind of indicated,
but a little bit more conservative than 1Q. What are you seeing like
from a macro perspective and a demand perspective, I guess, sense
earnings and what caused that kind of incremental conservatism? Is it
just what you saw in the quarter? And has that changed? Or is it kind
of more of the same right now?
Keith Jensen
Yes. I think we're getting what we expected. That's the good news. The
bad news is what we expected isn't a lot of great news. I don't think
our view of the macro is terribly different than what you're going to
hear from other country -- other companies, particularly as we look at
the second half of the year. I think the -- as it manifests itself to
us in terms of our own pipeline, we continue to be very excited about
the growth of our total pipeline, particularly when we compare it to
the consensus numbers and things of that nature. But the change that
we've seen over the last two or three quarters, the two changes. One
was linearity, deals moving further out into the quarter to get closed.
And two, the close rates themselves, right, which are somewhat related.
And I think what you saw in the guidance setting process coming out of
-- even though we guided robustly for the year, I think we did well for
the quarter, but still cautious because we're looking at that close
rate number. Close rate was not a variable in the guidance setting
process that we had to spend a lot of time with for years and years and
years, it was very consistent. That has certainly changed now in the
current environment, and I think we've offered some caution in that
area.
Brian Essex
Is that still the case now, like what you're seeing so far in the
quarter -- is it a back-end loaded?
Keith Jensen
I would offer the same comments today about close rate pipeline that I
did before.
Brian Essex
Yes. Okay. Great. With that, we'll pause for a minute and see if
there's anyone in the audience that would like to ask a question. We
have one upfront. There's someone is running with the mic.
Unidentified Analyst
So you mentioned that you think the Fortune 50 to Fortune 100, right,
that's the group that can use separate boxes right and everybody else
would benefit from using a consolidated box. What portion of the spend
do the -- security spend do they represent?
Keith Jensen
What percentage of the security spend with the Fortune 100 represents?
Unidentified Analyst
Yes. So the ones who want to have the -- ones who can afford to have
best-of-breed boxes for everything.
Keith Jensen
I think that, for us, in terms of our business off the top, it would be
a very small percentage of the total business. Of the industry, I'll
refer to somebody else that may have a breakdown by the Fortune 100
spending. I don't.
Ken Xie
Yes, I don't have that breakdown.
Keith Jensen
Yes. I would -- for us -- and the reason I don't -- we should offer is
that our business model, 1/3 small, 1/3 mid, 1/3 large enterprise. And
then amongst the geographic split, if you will, the U.S. for us is less
than 30% of total business and 70% is international. So probably we
spend a lot more time looking at the total available market, if you
will, in the segment you're referring to.
Brian Essex
Now you have been going upmarket, though.
Keith Jensen
Pardon me?
Brian Essex
You have been going upmarket.
Keith Jensen
Extremely successfully, yes. Absolutely. Yes.
Brian Essex
One second.
Unidentified Analyst
Are you seeing a change in what drives deal closures over the last few
months, i.e., people more cost conscious or platform-based for your
products?
Ken Xie
We definitely see some more consolidation trend. So that's where if
it's an existing customer, they also look at the other product we
offer, so like the whole approach. Also, some deal definitely take a
little bit longer time to get close. But on the other side, we also see
a lot of new total addressable market or use case. So that's where
whether the SD-WAN, the OT area, which is still pretty healthy, pretty
strong growth. So -- and also even Internal Segmentation. And also, I
keep mentioned SMB from the last quarter earnings release, we see also
SMB's pretty healthy growth.
Unidentified Analyst
Yes. It seems like you guys -- solution is like a combination of
hardware and software. Are those solutions are like mainly focused on
how to provide more efficient algorithm or software? So do you see any
kind of threat from AI sort of -- like sort of AI solution in the
future or anything like that?
Ken Xie
Yes, we're keeping working on AI for probably more than 10 years, both
in the intelligence side and also in the product data analysis side and
also in the supporting side. So that's where we see kind of -- there's
probably more dependent application, how AI can be used in all these
different areas. We definitely see some benefit of using AI and lower
the cost, be more efficient and also more automate a lot of our
response on intelligent area.
But it's so far from probably finance impact, not see much yet, pretty
much still -- but it's really the technology just like other
technology, we keep -- keeping using that. So we're open for a lot of
new technology. We want to keep inside the company a lot of R&D
projects that's more forward-looking for the next 5 to 10 years,
including a lot of different areas, like certain [indiscernible]
computing, how this may impact the security and some other new
technology, 5G, 6G all those areas.
Keith Jensen
We posted a similar question to 2025 CIOs and CISOs at the Accelerate
event. And the question was, where do you think you start to see AI or
chat up here first, offense or defense? And unanimously, it was
unfortunately offense, right? The reality is the bad actors can bring
things to market, so to speak, much faster than companies can. There's
not a lot of QA perhaps that goes on. There's not a regulatory
oversight. And historically, I think consistent with history, you're
going to see a reaction from those CIOs and the CISOs about how are
they going to go about defending themselves. And in terms, what are the
technologies that the vendors are going to provide.
Brian Essex
Just to follow up on that, in the last 3 years, you've been working on
the ASIC, the 3 ASICs. Could you talk about how the change in speeds of
those ASICs? Where are they now? And how is that going to be important
with your strategy in sales? Like how is it so important to you on a
go-forward basis the next couple of years?
Ken Xie
Yes. We have 3 ASIC family. So the content processor, network processor
and also the -- we call security processor, but it's more like . So the
latest announced already this year is really the fifth generation of
SOC -- sorry, SP5 kind of -- which doubled the application we use ASIC
accelerate from 7 -- SP4 to SP5 is a 14 application we can accelerate
now and also using the pretty latest technology, which this ACI will be
used in the product in the -- probably within the next few months, and
then that's kind of helping drive for us pretty much the same cost, but
you can see the speed will be double. The function will be much more
function. And so this probably will help in drive additional use case
and also even enhance a lot of current solution, both in SD-WAN and OT
area, so give us more advantage compared to other competitors.
Unidentified Analyst
Palo Alto struggled with the first few versions for the SASE. It took
them a few iterations. What's your typical adoption curve? How does it
look like for SASE compared to Palo Alto, for example, which took
several years to roll it out? What's your strategy?
Ken Xie
I'm not quite clear. But I think the current version of -- I'll call
the first-generation SASE is definitely the -- you look at how they
process some traffic, you have [indiscernible] traffic to the PoP and
within the PoP, there's multiple machine, each running different
functions to process that one. We feel that's probably not quite
efficient and also may not working for a certain company area, which
they want to keep the data more with their own control. So that's where
-- that's the reason we try to build a SASE within the same OS and
leverage both the cloud infrastructure, also the hardware ASIC to
accelerate and more broadly deploy, also more leveraged a lot of
service providers, telecom provider, cloud provider, their
infrastructure instead of just a PoP for some SASE provider, which is
very, very limited.
So that's the way we feel SASE should be more integrated and also more
broadly deployed and also more leveraged service provider both on the
infrastructure in the resource, which we also want to support in this
service provider with the best product we can offer.
Keith Jensen
Just jumping with 2 quick comments. If you talk about the time line of
development, I would offer 2 questions or 2 comments. One is, we know
because we're so faithful to a single operating system, a single
platform that there's times that we may not be the first to market. I
think we're first to market with SD-WAN and OT, but I think in SASE, I
don't know that we would say that. In terms of when our journey
started, I would point you back to an acquisition that we did probably
3 years ago, a small company called OPAQ. Before SASE, it was really
well defined. I think it was still 15 technologies from Gartner. And we
test drove that shortly after the acquisition with some customers and
got their input. And that really, from that point forward, has been the
team, the development team working on the actual product itself and
getting into the operating system and bringing it to market. I think
you heard Ken talk about that in a very outspoken fashion during the
last earnings call. So I think that's kind of the time line behind it.
Brian Essex
Great. I think with that, we're out of time. So thank you, everyone,
for joining us. And Ken, Keith, thank you very much as well.
Ken Xie
Thank you.
Keith Jensen
Thank you.
