Research Shows 163% ROI with Palo Alto Networks Software Firewalls

Dec 14, 2023
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Forrester Consulting Study Now Available

Good news is here for cloud and network security professionals who need proven, cost-effective solutions that substantially reduce downtime and breaches across a range of cloud and virtualized environments. Palo Alto Networks software firewalls not only provide superb security for applications and workloads in all clouds and networks but also pay for themselves.

Find the details about a composite organization representative of interviewed and surveyed customers who realized a significant 163% return on investment (ROI) over 3 years. Those surveyed had no initial investment in the recently released Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Palo Alto Networks – The Total Economic Impact™ of Palo Alto Networks Software Firewalls. You’ll discover how our family of software Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) – virtual, container, managed cloud service – provided $3.70 million in benefits over a period of 3 years.

See Cost Avoidance Measured in Seven Figures

So where do these figures come from? The Forrester study leveraged in-depth interviews, extensive surveying and deep financial analysis to create a composite organization, which experienced benefits of $5.98 million over 3 years, versus costs of $2.28 million. All this added up to a net present value (NPV) of $3.70 million, which means the composite organization ended up getting more financial benefits than it initially invested.

Chart of key statistics for software firewalls.
3-year ROI, present value (PV) benefits and net present value (NPV) Palo Alto Networks software firewalls. Taken from The Total Economic Impact of Palo Alto Networks Software Firewalls, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Palo Alto Networks, October 2023.

The comprehensive study looks at a range of environments modern enterprises rely upon: hybrid clouds, multiclouds, private clouds, single public clouds. Software firewalls, covered by the study, comprise VM-Series virtual firewalls, CN-Series container firewalls, as well as managed cloud firewall services, such as Cloud NGFW for AWS and Cloud NGFW for Azure.

Understand How More Efficient Security Added Up

As the study details, the composite organization realized multiple financial benefits through better security:

  • $1.8 million in firewall deployment and maintenance savings, which came from a 25% decrease in deployment time, along with 35% less time needed for firewall security and network management, for a total of 12,000 hours.
  • Nearly $1.6 million in infrastructure cost reduction by bypassing the need for physical devices and their overprovisioning.
  • Another $1.6 million in savings by reducing the risk of and impact of a security breach.
  • $683 thousand in savings from reduced downtime, which stems from reducing end-user downtime by 67% and overall downtime length by 50%.
  • $239 thousand in improved remediation efficiency by reducing labor by 50%, as well as $145 thousand by cutting security posture attainment time in half.

Once you download the study, you’ll be able to dive into detailed financial charts, which let you understand the full details of year-by-year savings and increased security efficacy.

How Agile Organizations Reaped Security and Financial Benefits

The Total Economic Impact of Palo Alto Networks Software Firewalls offers deep insights into commonly shared security issues for today’s agile enterprises. The organizations surveyed and interviewed needed to find ways to resolve cost, efficiency and security issues:

  • Costly and difficult governance and management with disparate legacy, siloed and difficult to manage firewalls.
  • Downtime due to unreliable and myriad and unreliable devices.
  • Increased risk of attack, frequent downtime due to inconsistent security posture with disparate devices.

Yet, once Palo Alto Networks software firewalls were deployed, these issues were resolved. 94% of the survey respondents in the Forrester study agreed that Palo Alto Networks Software Firewalls improved their organization’s management, administration and operation efforts.

One interview respondent, a director of network security engineering in the financial services industry said:

Palo Alto Networks software firewalls [are] a cornerstone of our security program . . . if we didn’t have them, I think we’d be in trouble.

We believe that with Palo Alto Networks, your organization can stay out of trouble by shedding costly, ineffective security practices. Be sure to read the Forrester Consulting Study and see how Palo Alto Networks software firewalls save customers time, money and downtime. Contact us to arrange a thorough and personalized demo.


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