Fortinet (FTNT) J.P. Morgan 54th Annual Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference summary

AI and data center trends

• Growing demand for AI data centers is driving consistent, global deployments, with a focus on low power consumption and high performance as key differentiators.

• Enterprises are increasingly evaluating on-premise AI deployments due to long-term cloud costs and data sovereignty concerns, especially in EMEA.

• The ability to run unified OS across environments, including on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, simplifies security management for operations teams.

Product mix, growth, and security needs

• Recent quarters have seen a shift toward higher firewall-related hardware sales, with operational technology (OT) and AI use cases driving demand.

• OT security is a significant growth area, fueled by high-profile attacks and increased awareness of operational risks.

• Security spending is prioritized and elevated due to AI-driven threats, nation-state activity, and critical infrastructure attacks, especially in Europe.

Technology innovation and service bundling

• FortiOS 8.0 introduces agentic AI, enhancing usability, automation, and visibility into shadow AI, with new service components increasing attach rates.

• Bundling SD-WAN and SASE services streamlines deployment, encourages upsell opportunities, and enables unified policy management.

• Unified offerings and single SaaS portals are converging endpoint and SOC products for operational efficiency.