The only part about Fortinet' s new price structure that I can agree with is in their breaking out NIDS/AV from their maintenance/support contract.
I' ve had a couple of clients who have " shelved" their FortiGate for a year or more and then want to put it back in service. It' s not reasonable for them to get the benefits of a FULL contract starting from when they re-activate (lest some folks have no contract until their FortiGate barfs and then buy a contract) but at least they can put the unit back in service and get AV/NIDS protection as long as they pay for it.
The other worrisome aspect of Fortinet " maximizing revenue" as their popularity grows is in the fact that historically each new release of the OS added more features. Now their new campaign is to offer new services such as FortiGuard, FortiLog and FortiManager at a premium cost and then start " dumbing down" the OS so that the features that did at least rudimentary logging (or whatever) no longer work.
With every version of the OS I worry about what is going to break -OR- what feature is going to disappear... because they always do. Always.
I agree with most of the posters... it' s time to start shopping.
Kevin Ericson, Pres., FCNSP
Certified Fortinet Engineer
Deadbolt Security Networks
9791 W Stanford Ave #5D
Denver, CO 80123