Fortinet has concluded its first Middle East Partner Conference in Dubai, UAE at Sofitel – The Palm and announced the winners of the top partner awards. Fortinet’s Middle East Partner Conference awards recognize the outstanding achievements drawn from the company’s distributors and resellers across the region. The two-day conference welcomed more than 100 partners from across the GCC & Levant region.

Gulf Business Machines (Middle East except Saudi) and Dynamic Systems (Saudi Arabia) were recognised as joint winners of the Partner of the Year category• Alpha Data (Gulf) and BMC (Saudi Arabia) were both declared the Enterprise Partner of the Year. In the ‘Best Growth of the Year’ category, Emircom (UAE & Saudi), Zak Solutions (North Gulf), Bahwan IT LLC (South Gulf) and Intertec Systems (UAE) were the winners. Security Matterz was winner of the Service Award whereas, Paramount Computer Systems was declared the SME Partner of the Year. The Distribution Award of the Year award went to Exclusive Networks while Redington Gulf FZE was awarded the Most Focused Distributor whereas the Enhanced Technologies Partner of the Year winner was OFFTEC. The category Services Partner of the Year saw Triple C (North Gulf), DTS Solutions (South Gulf) and Security (Saudi Arabia) emerge as winners. The MSSP Partner of the Year was Etisalat

Fortinet’s Middle East Partner Conference provides the Fortinet partner community with access to key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and information regarding specific customer solutions designed to help partners succeed in the marketplace. Along with informative learning opportunities covering sales, marketing, services and technology, the Fortinet Middle East Partner Conference presents an ideal setting for partners to take away valuable knowledge from their peers and from Fortinet.

Over the course of the event, partners were updated on Internal Segmentation Firewalls (ISFW), the Advanced Threat Protect (ATP) framework, the Cyber Threat Assessment Program (CTAP), as well as the newly-expanded secure wireless and broader secure access solutions. The latter will enable partners to sell beyond the access point to their customers.

“Fortinet is in a leadership position across the Middle East, and this would not have been possible without the support of our partners, as well as our consistent and growing commitment to the region,” said Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet. “As a company we have invested significantly in local resources and, from a global perspective, we’ve made big investments into our solutions, our channel, and our joint marketing efforts. We are extremely proud to have hosted our first Middle East partner conference this year – it allowed us to better engage with our partners, and set the stage for future mutual business success.”