Fortinet announces new R&D Center in Singapore

Fortinet, which provides high-performance network security, plans to establish a regional centre in Singapore this year to conduct network security research and development, and help extend its innovation lead in the marketplace to better protect enterprises and service providers amidst escalating cyber security threats. 

Source: Fortinet. Xie.

Along with the setting up of this R&D facility, Fortinet intends to leverage local high-quality talent to boost its regional technical support, marketing, finance and legal employee base in Singapore.

To be located in Fortinet's Asia Pacific headquarters at Beach Road, this centre will house security research and development professionals to extend collaboration on threat intelligence and provide emergency threat response to customers. The facility will complement and extend Fortinet's existing R&D centres, including FortiGuard Labs, primarily located in the US and Canada. 

The company also expects those additional resources to help support its growth. Fortinet increased its worldwide billings by 33% year-over-year, and 22% in Asia Pacific, during Q2 2014. The company is recognised as the no. 2 network security appliances vendor by factory revenue market share in Asia Pacific, according to data from IDC's quarterly network security appliances tracker.

"The Singapore government's vision to make the republic a cybersecurity business and research hub drew us to set up an R&D base here," said Michael Xie, Fortinet's Founder, President and CTO. "The abundance of well-trained IT professionals here gives us ready access to a deep talent pool, while the country's strong cybersecurity ecosystem and regional hub status gives us synergy and immediate connectivity to fast growing Asia Pacific markets."

Kiren Kumar, Director of the Infocomms and Media Division at the Singapore Economic Development Board, said: “We warmly welcome Fortinet’s decision to establish its network security R&D Centre in Singapore. Fortinet is a well respected innovator and worldwide leader in network security, and its decision to invest in its presence in Singapore offers strong validation of Singapore's growing position as a regional hub for cybersecurity solutions in Asia Pacific. Cybersecurity companies like Fortinet can leverage Singapore's strong connectivity to regional markets and access to a diverse talent pool to develop new capabilities that help their customers navigate a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape.”