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 24×7 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.
