BY: Patrick Villalobos, Contributor

Network security provider Fortinet has won Microsoft’s 2020 Commercial Marketplace Partner of the Year award for its excellent innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on the technology giant’s offerings. 

“This award reflects the proven growth and success of Fortinet’s offerings on Azure Marketplace as we continue to see significant customer demand,” said John Maddison, executive vice president of products and chief marketing officer at Fortinet.

 As organizations are challenged with limited cloud security resources and expertise, there’s an increasing preference to use certain security functionalities as security-as-a-service and through pay-as-you-go models. 

 In view of this, Fortinet offers its vas security solutions that are natively integrated with Azure and available on its marketplace. 

 Through Azure Marketplace, the company’s products available include the award-winning FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall and FortiWeb Cloud as a Service.

“We look forward to building on our shared commitment to ensuring customers can use the cloud with confidence by enabling fast and simple deployment of new security services,” he noted.

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize companies that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based solutions during the past year. 

The accolades were classified in several categories, with honorees chosen from a set of over 3,300 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries globally.

“It is an honor to recognize the winners and finalists of the 2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards,” said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft. 

“These partners go above and beyond, delivering timely solutions that solve the complex challenges that businesses around the world face—from communicating and collaborating virtually to helping customers realize their full potential with Azure cloud services, and beyond. I am proud to honor and congratulate each winner and finalist,” she added. 

Fortinet is ranked No. 1 for being the most security appliances shipped worldwide. It caters to over 455,000 customers to protect their businesses.