As for using the Palo Alto firewall to simplify your infrastructure, it's possible to replace multiple devices with just this one. That's what John Kovacevich, systems analyst at Texas A&M University at Galveston has done. After deploying his Palo Alto Networks box, he retired his old traffic shaper and now uses his new firewall to manage traffic bandwidth. "We can't stop students from using peer-to-peer applications, but we can shape it so that it gets a lower priority and less bandwidth than our e-learning applications," according to Kovacevich.

The university also uses the Palo Alto device to protect its network against viruses and other threats. Because of the integration with Active Directory, Kovacevich is able to identify the specific student whose machine seems to be infected. He can call the student and schedule a cleanup of the PC. "I don't have to track down someone by the port anymore. Now I can do it by name," Kovacevich says.

He likes that he now has just one device to manage for multiple functions. "I had multiple products before and now they are just sitting on a shelf," Kovacevich says. "Palo Alto offers a product with a lot of features in one box at a very competitive price."

Those words are music to the ears of the product engineers who took a chance on designing a new kind of firewall using best practices for the modern era of Internet applications.