Fortinet, which specializes in unified threat management (UTM) solutions, acquired certain assets and intellectual property of Woven Systems, a start-up that was developing high-performance Ethernet fabric switching solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Woven developed a family of Ethernet switching products, including a 10 GbE switch, based on a custom-designed switching ASIC with unique traffic management capabilities.
Fortinet said it plans to use Woven's high-speed switching and sophisticated traffic management technology to further enhance the performance of its FortiGate-5000 Series chassis-based security solutions. Increased switching power in the chassis-based product means communications within and between security blades will happen at greater speeds and result in overall superior scalability and performance for Fortinet's high-end customers, including large enterprises, carriers and service providers.
Fortinet intends to continue selling certain Woven products and to provide support to new and existing customers who purchase FortiCare 24x7 support contracts.
"Woven's ASIC-driven approach to high performance is highly complementary to Fortinet's own strategy for maximizing performance through customized processors," said Ken Xie, CEO and co-founder, Fortinet. "This acquisition will harness the performance power of our respective technologies to offer tremendous benefits to customers who require the fastest and, often, the most mission-critical network security environments."http://www.fortinet.com
- In September 2007, Woven Systems announced $20 million in venture funding for its 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) fabric solutions. The funding was led by MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures and included existing investors, Goldman Sachs and Palomar Ventures. That round of funding raised the total investment in the company to $35 million.
