Fortinet Unveils Enhanced SD-WAN Services for Streamlined Operations

Fortinet®, two new SD-WAN services have been added to the services portfolio of Fortinet, the industry pioneer in cybersecurity pushing the convergence of networking and security. 

John Maddison, EVP, Product Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer at Fortinet "At Fortinet, we give IT teams the tools they need to streamline operations and improve user experience by tackling the most urgent SD-WAN pain points of the moment. With the help of our new services, SD-WAN is now more affordable for businesses with limited resources because Fortinet specialists are handling the technical aspects of setting up, configuring, maintaining, and managing an SD-WAN network.

What’s New?

Underlay Performance Monitoring Service for SD-WAN: 

Fortinet is launching an Underlay Performance Monitoring Service for SD-WAN to help IT organizations increase operational effectiveness while also improving user experience. This service provides centralized visibility into the underlying performance of the entire network, allowing the sorting and reporting of ISP link performance. It is made possible by FortiManager and FortiGuard database of hundreds of well-known SaaS and cloud designations. As a result, IT teams are better equipped to quickly prioritize network traffic and effectively handle operational difficulties. A complete set of underlay monitoring features are available through this service, including:

• Underlay Setup Wizard makes SD-WAN deployment easier and more effective than ever before, even without skilled IT professionals, by utilizing Fortinet best practices.

• Underlay Monitoring Dashboard enables users to keep track of both application and underlay performance from a single, easy-to-use dashboard.
• FortiGuard Performance SLA Database provides businesses with the ability to simply build service level agreements (SLAs) for ISP connection performance by providing hundreds of preset SaaS and cloud application workloads. This shortens the setup process, lowers the possibility of configuration errors, and guarantees that businesses are making the most of their applications.
• Application Performance Scoring reduces time to remediation by utilizing advanced analytics to evaluate the entire end-to-end user experience for applications and identify specific network issues.  

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

Every company is different, with a range of sizes and goals. Some businesses might simply have a few locations, but others might have a massive network encompassing thousands of locations. It is crucial that provisioning solutions conform to the unique needs of each firm, including its objectives, financial constraints, and IT resources.

The new Overlay-as-a-Service SD-WAN service from Fortinet is intended for lean enterprises with restricted financial resources and low levels of technical competence. This technology eliminates the requirement for self-hosting or a specialized hub by enabling rapid deployment and seamless interconnection of locations within minutes. Instead, FortiCloud, a cloud-hosted service, effectively handles setup and management. This strategy lessens the burden of hosting and management costs while also reducing deployment time and associated costs. Organizations with limited resources can take advantage of an efficient secure networking solution by adopting overlay-as-a-service without sacrificing performance or going over budget. 

Further automating integration with FortiSASE, overlay-as-service enables SD-WAN hubs to swiftly connect with Fortinet SASE points of presence (POPs) for Secure Private Access, enabling remote users to connect to corporate applications easily and securely.

Availability: New services will start to roll out in Q3 2023, and more features will be introduced throughout the following quarters.