blueAPACHE awarded Australian Growth Partner of the Year in Fortinet Partner of the Year awards

blueAPACHE awarded Australian Growth Partner of the Year in Fortinet Partner of the Year Awards

1 February 2022. blueAPACHE has been named Australian Growth Partner of the Year in the Fortinet Partner of the Year Awards, recognising performance across the 2021 year.

The awards recognise partners that have helped customers accelerate the move beyond traditional networks, securely.

What the award is judged on

This is not a volume award. Fortinet's Partner of the Year Awards are assessed against a defined set of criteria:

1. Year-on-year revenue growth
2. Investment in training
3. Specialisations and certifications held
4. Enhanced innovation and executive engagement
5. Success in leading customer engagements with Fortinet

The mix matters. Revenue growth alone would reward a reseller that moved product. The inclusion of training investment, certification depth and customer engagement leadership means the award measures technical capability and delivery outcomes alongside commercial performance — which is a materially different thing.

For a buyer, criteria two and three are the useful ones. They indicate that the partner employs people who have been formally assessed on the technology, rather than people who can quote it.

What was said

Tim Fitzgerald, Channel Director at Fortinet:

"Fortinet is proud to announce the winners of the Australian partner awards. The awards recognise the valuable contributions of the entire partner ecosystem throughout 2021 and the partners' dedication and hard work to help customers adapt to the changing workplace, business environment, and threat landscape of the future."

Chris Marshall, Managing Director at blueAPACHE:

"We're thrilled to be named Fortinet Australian Growth Partner of the Year 2021. This award recognises our ongoing commitment to innovation and expertise, helping customers continue to operate effectively and securely regardless of the ever-changing landscape."

Fitzgerald also addressed Fortinet's own investment in the partner ecosystem:

"Fortinet has made significant investment in training and certifications, working with partners to understand where the skills gap remains and to strategically address this. Fortinet will continue to invest in its partners, helping them continue to provide value-driven approaches for customers with enhanced expertise. After seeing record growth in 2021, Fortinet is in a strong position to continue this growth in the coming year with new products, a strong team, and strong partner relationships."

The reference to a skills gap is candid and worth noting. Security tooling capability has outpaced the availability of people qualified to operate it — which is precisely why partner certification depth is a meaningful selection criterion rather than a vanity metric.

The context: 2021 and "beyond traditional networks"

The phrase in the award citation — helping customers move beyond traditional networks securely — describes the shift that dominated the period.

The traditional model assumed a defensible perimeter: users inside an office, applications inside a data centre, and a firewall between that and everything else. By 2021 that assumption had broken comprehensively. Users were distributed, applications had moved to SaaS and public cloud, and traffic no longer routed through any single point where inspection could occur.

The architectural response — SD-WAN, secure access service edge, zero trust network access — relocates security enforcement to wherever the user and the application actually are. Fortinet's portfolio sits squarely in that transition, which is what the award category is really recognising: partners who executed that shift for customers rather than deferring it.

blueAPACHE and Fortinet

blueAPACHE's relationship with Fortinet extends beyond this award. The company has previously been recognised for bolstering its network infrastructure with Fortinet technology, applying the platform within its own environment as well as in customer deployments.

That pattern — running the technology internally before and alongside deploying it for customers — recurs across blueAPACHE's vendor relationships, from Microsoft Surface in its own Standard Operating Environment to ServiceNow in its service management practice and ControlUp in its managed services delivery.

The practical value to a customer is specific: a partner operating the platform at scale in production has encountered its failure modes, its upgrade behaviour and its operational edge cases. That knowledge does not come from certification alone.

What vendor awards do and do not tell you

Used properly, a vendor partner award is a useful signal:

It confirms depth in a specific technology. Certification counts and specialisations are verifiable facts about the partner's people.

It confirms delivery track record with that vendor. Customer engagement criteria mean the vendor assessed outcomes, not just orders.

It is vendor-specific. Strength in Fortinet says nothing about capability in an unrelated platform. Match the award to the technology you are actually buying.

What it does not tell you: the partner's service levels, their response times, their security operations coverage, or how they behave during an incident. Those require direct assessment — references, contract terms, and the questions you ask before signing.

About the awards

The Fortinet Partner of the Year Awards recognise partners across the Australian ecosystem annually, spanning categories that reflect different contributions — growth, technical excellence, specialisation and customer outcomes. Winners are determined by Fortinet against the published criteria rather than by public vote.

Frequently asked questions

What did blueAPACHE win? Australian Growth Partner of the Year in the Fortinet Partner of the Year Awards, announced on 1 February 2022 and recognising performance across 2021.

What is the award judged on? Five criteria: year-on-year revenue growth, investment in training, specialisations and certifications held, enhanced innovation and executive engagement, and success in leading customer engagements with Fortinet.

Why does the criteria mix matter? Because revenue growth alone would reward a reseller that moved product. Including training investment, certification depth and customer engagement leadership means the award measures technical capability and delivery outcomes alongside commercial performance.

Which criteria matter most to a buyer? The page nominates training investment and certification depth, because they indicate the partner employs people formally assessed on the technology rather than people who can quote it.

What did Fortinet say about the skills gap? Channel Director Tim Fitzgerald described significant Fortinet investment in training and certifications, working with partners to understand where the skills gap remains and address it strategically. The page reads that candour as the reason certification depth is a meaningful selection criterion rather than a vanity metric — security tooling capability has outpaced the availability of people qualified to operate it.

What does "beyond traditional networks" mean? The traditional model assumed users inside an office, applications inside a data centre, and a firewall between that and everything else. By 2021 users were distributed, applications had moved to SaaS and public cloud, and traffic no longer routed through any single inspection point. The architectural response — SD-WAN, secure access service edge, zero trust network access — relocates enforcement to wherever the user and application actually are.

Does blueAPACHE use Fortinet internally? Yes. The page records that blueAPACHE has applied the platform within its own environment as well as in customer deployments, and notes the same pattern across Microsoft Surface in its Standard Operating Environment, ServiceNow in service management and ControlUp in managed services delivery. Its argument is that a partner operating a platform at scale in production has met its failure modes, upgrade behaviour and operational edge cases — knowledge certification alone does not provide.

What does a vendor award not tell you? Service levels, response times, security operations coverage, or behaviour during an incident. It is also vendor-specific: strength in Fortinet says nothing about capability in an unrelated platform. See support and service levels and the service agreement for what is actually committed.

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