Record Sales and Growth in 2009, Market Validation by Gartner

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since my last post…

First off, today we announced record numbers and growth in 2009: 45% revenue growth over 2008, over 4000% aggregate revenue growth in the past 5 years, moving from 280 to over 500 customers, and much more. It was especially challenging to achieve this in a year like 2009, which was not “optimal”, to say the least. We maintained profitability and were again cash-flow positive (we’ve always been cash-flow positive, and it’s a tradition we expect to continue).

Those of you at Tufin, as well as our customers and partners, know that the real “secret sauce” is having great people – it’s a pleasure and an honor to work with such a talented team, and I’m constantly inspired by everyone at the company.

We are continuing our growth in 2010 with many new open positions, in sales, marketing, support and R&D – we’re always looking for great people to join the Tufin family.

Another interesting piece I heard today was a podcast by Vic Wheatman and Greg Young, VP of research at Gartner, who specializes in network security and firewalls (podcast available for Gartner customers only). The podcast topics were mostly Next Generation Firewalls, and Firewall Policy Management. Greg indicated that the two areas of innovation around the firewall space are the NG firewalls, and of course the area of Firewall Policy Management. Firewall policy optimization and workflow were mentioned as topics that are key, and referred to as the future of firewalls.

Greg is absolutely right in his assessment of the market – we’ve been talking about this for the past few years, and now it seems that the concept of vendor-neutral firewall policy management has finally taken hold. The market validation is there (500 enterprise customers can’t be wrong), and the products have matured enough to be widely accepted. It’s great to have validation not just from the customers, but also from the security experts and opinion leaders out there.