8 things you probably didn’t know about Palo Alto Networks

We've put together what we think are some interesting tid bits about Palo Alto Networks and their products.

1)Palo Alto essentially designs, builds and implements advanced firewall appliances.

2)The founder and CTO, Nir Zuk, was heavily involved in Check Point, before starting his own firm which was later acquired by Netscreen, then Juniper.

3)He then founded Palo Alto Networks in 2005 as the 'next-generation firewall company'; this was soon changed to 'next generation network security company', as their solution is so flexible, many initial clients were implementing them not only as perimeter security, but also Data Center and Intrusion Prevention solutions.

4)Without the baggage of legacy architecture, Palo Alto solutions are built from the ground up, giving true application visibility.

5)You choose a model from their range based upon the throughput required, from 250Mbps to 20Gbps. This determines whether the unit is 1U or 2U in height. There are ongoing subscriptions to enable advanced threat-management (including DLP) as well as a sub for url filtering data and technical support.

6)Pricing ranges between NZ $10k and $250k depending upon the throughput required, with a single subscription including all forms of malware, DLP and IPS.

7)Palo Alto doesn't sell direct to end users. The brand is distributed in New Zealand by Renaissance. Some of the key installations in NZ have been sold by Katana Technologies, Datacom, Fujitsu and Kaon Technologies.

8)Renaissance, in conjunction with channel partners, are offering proof of concept machines for loan at present. This has been so successful that almost 100% of customers trialling the units have gone on to purchase them.

PS - We didn't get paid to write this, we just thought it was interesting.