Fortinet Announces New SD-WAN Services to Further Simplify Operations and Enhance Digital Experience

Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, announced an expansion of its services portfolio with the addition of two new SD-WAN services.

What’s New?

Underlay Performance Monitoring Service for SD-WAN:

To support IT teams in achieving operational efficiency while simultaneously enhancing the user experience, Fortinet is introducing an Underlay Performance Monitoring Service for SD-WAN. Enabled by FortiManager and FortiGuard’s database of hundreds of popular SaaS and cloud designations, this service offers centralized visibility into the underlay performance of the entire network, facilitating the sorting and reporting of ISP link performance. This empowers IT teams to swiftly prioritize network traffic and efficiently address operational issues. This service features a full suite of underlay monitoring capabilities, including:

• Underlay Setup Wizard leverages Fortinet best practices to make SD-WAN setup easier and more efficient than ever before, even without trained IT staff.

• Underlay Monitoring Dashboard empowers customers to monitor underlay performance and application performance from a single intuitive dashboard.

• FortiGuard Performance SLA Database includes hundreds of preconfigured SaaS and cloud application workloads so customers can easily create service level agreements (SLAs) for ISP link performance. This reduces time spent on setup, curtails the chance of configuration errors, and ensures organizations are getting the most out of their applications.

• Application Performance Scoring uses advanced analytics to measure the complete end-to-end user experience for applications and pinpoint granular issues within the network, reducing time to remediation.

Overlay-as-a-Service for SD-WAN:

Every organization is unique, with varying sizes and objectives. While some may operate with only a few sites, others could have a vast network spanning thousands of locations. Because of this, it’s imperative for provisioning solutions to adapt to the specific requirements of each organization, including their goals, budget, and IT resources.

Fortinet’s new Overlay-as-a-Service offering for SD-WAN is purpose-built for lean organizations with limited technical expertise and constrained budgets. This solution facilitates rapid deployment and seamless interconnection of locations within minutes, eliminating the need for self-hosting or a dedicated hub. Instead, setup and management are efficiently handled through FortiCloud, a cloud-hosted service. This approach significantly reduces deployment time and associated costs while also alleviating the burden of hosting and management expenses. By embracing Overlay-as-a-Service, organizations with limited resources can enjoy the benefits of an effective secure networking solution without compromising performance or breaking their budget.

Additionally, Overlay-as-service further automates integration with FortiSASE, enabling SD-WAN hubs to quickly connect with Fortinet SASE points of presence (POPs) for Secure Private Access, allowing remote users to connect to corporate applications simply and securely.

John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP, Product Strategy at Fortinet, said, “At Fortinet, we empower IT teams to simplify operations and enhance user experience by addressing today’s most pressing SD-WAN pain points. Our new services make SD-WAN more accessible to organizations with limited resources, offloading the technical expertise of setting up, configuring, maintaining, and running an SD-WAN network to Fortinet experts.”

Availability: New services will be available in Q3 2023, with additional capabilities to be added in the coming quarters.