Compared to the other VMs in the market, Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to use.

We had a competitive evaluation of other products. We chose Fortinet FortiGate-VM because of its affordability. It also had some of the features that were part of our roadmap.

I can't speak to if the client evaluated another solution prior to choosing this.

We have been using Check Point Firewall so it was easy to identity the difference.

I have used Netgate. I prefer Fortinet FortiGate-VM.

We don't make product decisions. Decisions of that scale come from Luxembourg. 

I evaluated Sophos.

Our team evaluated Palo Alto as well, although I did not evaluate it directly. I'm not sure what the main difference was between Palo Alto and Fortigate.

However, we have evaluated Fortinet for the last four or five months and now we're officially acquiring the licenses for it. 

I believe the pricing was a big part of the decision to choose Fortigate.

We did look at Barracuda, but we decided against them because it gets a bit too technical. Also, unlike Sophos, for example, you can't pick the license you want and instead have to buy a package that may include things you don't need. Barracuda's interface looks like something designed in the 90s as well, which was a turn-off.

We're currently looking for alternatives to this solution.

We're looking at alternatives. However, the deficiencies that they have are not significant enough that I would like to immediately leave them, however, they're big enough that I'm looking for alternatives. 

When I come to end the life and I do a tech refresh, if we're not going to go 100% virtual, which is certainly another consideration, I am going to look at an alternate product. I'm not sure we're going to go away from them with a timeline right now, however, I'm certainly looking at it.

We don't yet have a shortlist, however, we'll likely look at the top big names in the market.

Sophos has a nice interface and is easy to configure. The XG products are good and so are the endpoints. Sophos access points and on-premise are not good.  Sophos also doesn't have enough support to get into the console. Sophos has a Linux box, which is easy to try to resolve most issues, but Sophos support is not good.

Previously we evaluated other solutions, such as Check Point and the Palo Alto firewalls. This solution is easier to understand than the others.

Right now, I'm also interested in learning more about Cisco, and how it compares to Fortigate. I know Cisco quite well, but I've never directly compared Cisco and Fortigate together before. Of course, I still believe I know Fortigate better.

We did evaluate other options, including Cisco.

No, I did not evaluate other products.

We compared it with Check Point.

I tried SonicWall, Cisco ASA & Sophos but Fortinet is best among them in term of service and price.

We are the technologies partner so we have recommended the solution by customer dependence upon their use cases

We reviewed Palo Alto, Barracuda, and Sophos.

Prior to selecting FortiGate-VM, we evaluated Meraki and one other solution.

No, we did not evaluate other options. It was the firewall rated numerically behind Palo Alto, and we could afford this one.

I have tested virtual appliances from almost every vendor and the only ones that I can recommend are those from Fortinet. Many do not have the maturity or a proper licensing model, whereas others lack performance optimization for the virtual scenarios, and some vendors lack field engineering experience.

We evaluated Cisco, Huawei, and Palo Alto. 

Cisco, Sophos, and SonicWall.

We also considered Sophos, Checkpoint, and Palo Alto. 

We do have Palo Alto at one of our smaller offices of about 60 people. We noticed that Palo Alto is a much more costly solution.

I can't remember.

I evaluated different options before choosing FortiGate. It has four separate modules which give fast reactions when it is analysing. It has an app ID and user ID option, which are the most important.

I was not involved in the corporate decision-making.

We evaluated Cisco, Meraki, SonicWall, and Juniper.