(Link: Fortinet)

I was wrong by 4 months. FortOS 4.0, with SSL inspection, was released today. It boasts:

• Application Control
• SSL Inspection
• Data Leakage Prevention (DLP)
• WAN Optimization

The first three are to catch up with Palo Alto, but WAN optimization puts them ahead in the feature set.

Only 3 out of 38 companies identified Ultrasurf 9.3 as malware. Fortinet, Prevx1 and Quick Heal of India.

Contrast that with this Virustotal scan of UltraSurf 8.8 from 3/13/2008 where 9 of 31 companies labeled the executable as malicious.

Here’s his outlook on the coming year:

In terms of ’09, the conventional wisdom says it’s going to be a horrible year – but I never believe conventional wisdom. I think Q1 will be a horrible quarter – a really horrible quarter actually. But that could become a low point and therefore, from a very low base, things hopefully have got to improve. So I think there’s a chance the market could improve later this year as opposed to everybody’s perspective that it’s going to be horrible. The thing that I worry about is when things do start to improve, with all the money being put into the system inflation could come back. With inflation, interest rates would likely go up, and now you have the seeds of another downturn.

I admire and share his optimism. Interesting though when you try to match a prediction like that up to some market prediction models. Dow Theory suggests that the market may have discounted the worst, since the Transportation average broke below its November 20 bear market low and the Industrial average has thus stayed above its November 20 low of 7552.29. Dow Theorists call that a non-confirmation of the bear market. If both the Industrial and Transportation averages can now better their January highs, 9034.69 and 3717.26 ,respectively, a new bull market will have been signaled. This much I have learned from Richard Russell’s Dow Theory Letters and his 1958 book Dow Theory Today. So Dow Theory may be on the verge of confirming Ken’s sentiment but the jury’s still out.

Elliot Wave analysis take your current optimism and uses it as proof that the bear market isn’t over, since at the end of a bear market, supposedly no one is optimistic. That and they look at a chart and notice that the current bear market is missing a fifth wave down.

Image courtesy of Elliot Wave International.

Then there’s the January rule- as goes January, so goes the year – which has been right 87% in the last 25 years. We just had the worst January ever.

I’m still trying to decide which model best approximates reality. In any case, Ken’s advice about what we should do is excellent:

Don’t waste the recession. Use the time well to do things that need to be done, and force yourself to do things you might not have done otherwise.

Also interesting to have a window into Fortinet’s current strategy:

Well in our case, in technology, I’ve always learned that it’s all about the products. Always remember that – technology is all about the products. So we’re going to continue to invest heavily in R&D. We’re going to continue to focus on bringing out our new products on a timely basis. Then we’re going to look at how we can price attractively, and how we can aggressively hire good sales people from other companies. I think it is a great time to hire sales people. So we’ll continue to do what we have been doing, which is to invest in people. We will also set some high standards in terms of our quotas for this coming year. We’re setting a high bar for achievement and we’re aggressive. On the conservative side, we’re budgeting to keep our expenses under control. We’re going to make sure we’re running an efficient shop and not spending money in a nonsensical way. On the other hand, we intend to invest in areas that we think will pay dividends when we do have an upturn. We think we can grow through the tough times and gain market share.

• Spam filtering – Barracuda detection rates were fair compared to Brightmail and Fortimail
• User experience – All were good, no complaints
• Mail server integration – Barracuda fair, Fortimail much better
• Reporting – Barracuda reporting excellent
• Yearly subscription – Barracuda higher than Fortimail