Prior to Fortinet, Ken Xie founded and served as an executive for NetScreen, a company that was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004. Michael Xie served as an executive for ServeGate.[5][6] In 2000, they co-founded Appligation Inc. The company was renamed to ApSecure in December 2000 and later renamed again to Fortinet, based on the phrase "Fortified Networks."[7]