Johannesburg - November 12, 2007 - Fortinet® - a pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -today announced the appointment of Perry Hutton as its country manager for Sub Saharan Africa. Hutton will be responsible for driving the company's aggressive growth in South Africa and leading its expansion into the Sub-Saharan territory.

Hutton joins Fortinet from its South African distributor, Maxtec Peripherals for which he was partner and director in the last 16 years. At Maxtec, Hutton was instrumental in the creation and development of the networking and network security division, which started four years ago and has since turned into one of the most profitable business units of the company.

"While it was a difficult decision to leave Maxtec after so many years and such involvement, my long relationship with Fortinet as a distributor allowed me to build strong conviction in the company's vision and its ability to execute it," said Hutton. "I'm very excited to leverage my sales expertise in Sub Saharan Africa to further drive Fortinet's market penetration, specifically into the telecom and government verticals, for which Fortinet provides very strong solutions."

Through its partnership with Maxtec, Fortinet has already sold in excess of 3,000 FortiGate multi-threat security appliances in South Africa in the past three years. Fortinet is sold exclusively via a channel of distributors and resellers.

"Fortinet's growth and market acceptance in South Africa over the past four years has been great, in particular thanks to the work achieved by our partners. It is now time to take Fortinet to the next level of development by adding a local office in the region," said Andre Stewart, EMEA vice president at Fortinet. "I am convinced that Perry, with his strong knowledge of the channel as well as his extensive sales and management experience, will be able to successfully drive Fortinet into this exciting new phase and strengthen our market position."