Fortinet launches cloud-to-cloud SD-WAN

Fortinet is setting its sights on the security opportunities born from the rise of software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), with a mission to help enterprises provide connectivity and security across diverse cloud infrastructures.

According to the company, most enterprises utilise a multi-cloud strategy to deal with business needs such as coverage, backup and recovery, and application resilience. While many organisations choose to use an on-premise wide-area networking (WAN) to connect to the cloud, Fortinet believes this can result in cost, complexity, and inconsistent network performance for the sake of security.

The company built its solution, known as Fortinet Secure SD-WAN for Multi-Cloud, as a way of providing security and connectivity without cost and complexity.

Fortinet EVP products and CMO John Maddison says, "For enterprises deploying applications and workloads across multiple clouds, the need to seamlessly manage connectivity and maintain security across the diverse infrastructure is higher than ever.

The solution complements Fortinet's existing Secure SD-WAN Cloud On-Ramp capabilities to securely connect users and offices to applications and cloud workloads.

Fortinet delivers Secure SD-WAN as an integrated feature the FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN for Multi-Cloud, delivered via FortiGate-VM, a virtual appliance, is powered by Fortinet's patented vSPU technology for fast encrypted connections over internet and leased line links to reduce operational costs.

Secure SD-WAN for Multi-Cloud is available across all major cloud providers to enable a "consistent network architecture leveraging SD-WAN capabilities between clouds and empowers application developers and enterprise IT to build a high speed and seamless cloud-to-cloud network and security architecture".

Fortinet lists some of the solution benefits as:

• Automating the deployment of a consistent overlay network across different cloud networks, reducing complexity and increasing agility to save teams time and resources.
• Offers end-to-end visibility, control, and centralised management that unifies functionality across multiple cloud environments through cloud native integrations.
• Securely transports application traffic between clouds without needing to backhaul through the data center, enabling better scaling of deployments and reducing latency.
• Intelligently selects connections based on application characteristics employing dynamic path selection, improving performance and optimising cost by selecting the best internet or leased line link.
• Provides an application developer-friendly API to enable programmers the ability to consistently represent their network and security requirements.

"Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solutions provide connectivity and security across diverse cloud infrastructures while optimising application user experience. Fortinet enables enterprises to realise the true potential of SD-WAN by enabling it to be implemented anywhere," says Maddison.