The total economic impact of Palo Alto Networks software firewalls

Organizations face challenges maintaining security with legacy physical firewalls, which are labor-intensive and provide limited visibility. Palo Alto Networks Software Firewalls, managed via Panorama, offer centralized governance, faster deployment, and enhanced security across cloud, virtual, and containerized environments.

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study found that organizations replacing physical firewalls with Palo Alto’s Software Firewalls achieved $5.99M in benefits over three years versus $2.28M in costs—an ROI of 163% and NPV of $3.71M. Key benefits include 25% deployment savings, 35% management time savings, 50% less effort to reach compliance, automated incident filtration reducing remediation labor by 50%, 67% reduction in downtime, and over $1.6M saved in avoided hardware costs. Organizations also lowered breach likelihood by 15%, saving an additional $1.6M.

Unquantified benefits include faster, more secure cloud migrations and additional capabilities when integrated with other Palo Alto solutions. Costs included $1.2M in licensing, $40K in deployment, and $987K in ongoing management. Overall, Software Firewalls improve reliability, reduce risk, and free IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.