Specialty distributor Climb and security vendor Fortinet announced their partnership in December 2025. The agreement brings Fortinet’s vast portfolio into the Climb vendor linecard and follows years-long demand globally for security solutions available through the channel.
Channel Insider spoke with executives from both companies in early 2026 to learn more about how the two organizations are investing in the mutual growth they plan to see this year.
Why Climb and Fortinet see distribution agreement as way to solve security challenges at scale
The agreement brings Fortinet’s range of enterprise-grade solutions to Climb’s reseller and MSP base. To both companies, the partnership provides scale and net-new opportunities in a crowded security space where demand continues to grow.
“This is about solving customer challenges in a way that’s really easy for partners to take to market and add to their offerings,” said Landon Scott, Fortinet’s VP of US channel sales.
Fortinet is a bit of an outlier in the Climb portfolio, as the distributor typically focuses on emerging and focused vendors rather than large organizations such as Fortinet.
To Climb, the opportunity to bring a leader in security to its linecard was ultimately too good to pass up.
“Fortinet is not a company we typically would have gone after, because we focus more in the emerging space,” Climb CEO Dale Foster said. “This relationship, though, started from the top of both our organizations, and the more we all talked about it, the more we saw the ways it really made sense for us.”
How Fortinet fits into Climb’s current portfolio
Foster told Channel Insider the distributor views Fortinet as a way to address its partners needs and create new opportunities within its existing base.
“I didn’t realize how wide Fortinet went,” Foster said. “They have such a wide breadth that I can go to our MSPs, VARs, and our other resellers and I can really fill gaps.”
Foster added that Fortinet’s technology already integrates with several other solutions on Climb’s security linecard and that partners consistently tell the distributor they want more opportunities to work with Climb.
Bringing the Fortinet platform into the mix, Foster said, addresses partner demand for leading security vendors without sacrificing the specialty value Climb prides itself on bringing to its customers.
2026 goals include strategic growth in SMB and mid-market customers through partners
Foster told Channel Insider that Climb began transacting Fortinet’s solutions in December 2025, shortly after the public launch of the partnership.
While the companies have already seen adoption within Climb’s base, executives from both say they have ambitious goals in front of them.
“Over 2,000 partners in Climb’s base are net-new to the Fortinet team, and we see a lot of opportunities in driving incremental business with cross-sell and up-sell as well,” said Vanessa Delrieu, cybersecurity director and leader of the Fortinet business at Climb.
“People think that platforms are an enterprise play. While it certainly plays well to that segment, it applies across the entire market in a lot of ways,” Scott said.
Scott added that Fortinet’s primary target in signing the deal with Climb is to expand its footprint in the SMB and mid-market segments, where deals can close on much faster timelines and often rely on partners’ ability to deliver value in total cost of ownership and integration capabilities within SMB tech stacks.
Inside the internal resourcing both companies have committed to long-term success
Foster and Delrieu both told Channel Insider that Climb has invested heavily in ensuring its teams, from inside and field sales to engineering and others, are fully trained and deeply knowledgeable about the Fortinet solution.
Delrieu herself has an extensive background with the Fortinet team from her previous roles in security distribution and is now bringing that experience to Climb’s high-touch, personalized approach with its partners.
Fortinet, too, has invested time and resources in ensuring its team and Climb’s are prepared to accomplish the goals the leaders have set.
“I report to our CEO, and he’s big fan [of this partnership] and is investing in its success, and so is Climb,” said Trevor Pagliara, EVP of U.S. Sales at Fortinet. “We are getting everyone up to speed and we’re already seeing success, but from Q2 and beyond, we have aggressive goals we’re confident we’ll meet.”