Fortinet Unveils Industry’s First SD-WAN ASIC to Accelerate and Secure the WAN Edge

ORLANDO, Fla., April 09, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Accelerate 19 --

John Maddison, EVP of product and solutions, Fortinet
“The WAN edge is now a part of digital attack surfaces, but the edge of your network must never be a bottleneck. For branch offices, the ability to provide best-of-breed WAN Edge -- including SD-WAN, WAN optimization, security and orchestration -- with optimal performance and security is critical to enable the digital experience. Fortinet’s SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC allows organizations to realize security-driven networking whether they have 100 or 10,000 branch offices.”

News Summary
Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced new secure SD-WAN offerings, including the industry’s first SD-WAN ASIC, to further enable organizations to implement security-driven networking.

As organizations adopt SD-WAN for faster and more cost-effective connectivity, security remains their top challenge. In a recent Gartner report, “72% of the respondents said that security was their topmost concern when it comes to their WAN.”¹ In response, Fortinet continues to empower customers to deploy security-driven networking with the following new innovations:

• The industry’s first SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC
• FortiGate 100F Appliance, delivering 10 times faster performance
• New SD-WAN features within FortiOS 6.2
• Fortinet 360 Protection Services

These innovations support the most pressing customer challenges by addressing the following use cases:

Use Case #1: Digital Transformation at the Enterprise WAN Edge
SaaS and multi-cloud application usage is increasing and with it the need to make the WAN Edge “application aware.” In response, Fortinet is introducing the industry’s first SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC, which delivers the industry’s fastest application identification and steering for more than 5,000 applications. This allows users to avoid delays in accessing their applications and accelerates overlay performance, providing low latency and the best possible user experience for business-critical applications.

Also announced today, FortiGate 100F Next-Generation Firewall powered by the new SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC combines SD-WAN functionalities with advanced security into one single offering. FortiGate 100F delivers 10 times faster performance when compared with competitors. It also comes with integrated 10G interfaces to accommodate for future expansion without needing another device.

Use Case #2: Reduce WAN Opex Without Compromising Application Performance
Organizations are transitioning from MPLS to broadband in order to achieve higher bandwidth requirements with lower WAN cost, but this shift often degrades the quality of experience for unified communication applications. New SD-WAN features within FortiOS 6.2 allow customers to leverage new WAN Link remediation to handle even the most volatile WAN connections and deliver superior application performance for unified communication. New SD-WAN features also allow customers to measure WAN bandwidth on-demand and can aggregate overlay bandwidth for packet-based steering to ensure the end user receives the best possible user experience and application performance at all times.

Use Case #3: Simplify WAN Edge Operations and Consolidate with SD-Branch
Many customers are currently forced to use multiple point products and management consoles to achieve a WAN Edge. In response, Fortinet is announcing new Fortinet 360 Protection Services to offer SD-WAN management and orchestration to simplify even the most complex deployments. The Fortinet 360 Protection Services include overlay controller orchestration to simplify VPN deployment at-scale through a single-pane-of-glass for improved management. Additionally, Fortinet’s FortiManager is now available in all environments, including on-premises and multi-cloud, to provide centralized management for the WAN Edge.

To further simplify WAN Edge operations, Fortinet continues to expand deeper integration between SD-WAN and the branch access layer. Fortinet’s new SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC accelerates security extension throughout WAN Edge, access points and switches to enable SD-Branch transformation.

Fortinet’s Continued Commitment to Security-Driven Networking Innovation

Fortinet has been providing best-of-breed SD-WAN and security through its FortiGate Secure SD-WAN solution, which has seen tremendous momentum in customer adoption and is the only solution with security capabilities to receive an SD-WAN "Recommended" rating in the first NSS Labs test report. With today’s introduction of the industry’s first SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC, customers can realize a fully connected branch edge powered by security-driven networking, whether they have 100 or 10,000 branch offices. Fortinet’s SD-WAN ASIC will power the new FortiGate 100F, which offers the best price/performance for WAN edge deployments. To further alleviate the burden that limited IT staff face, the new Fortinet 360 Protection Services and SD-WAN features within FortiOS 6.2 provide the best possible experience for unified communication applications with simplified orchestration.

Supporting Quotes:

“Volkswagen Groupe Retail France selected Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution enabled by its FortiGate NGFW because we were looking to simplify our operations while maintaining complete visibility, easy management and advanced security. We were able to achieve all this and more with one single offering through Fortinet’s SD-WAN solution, allowing us to adopt a hybrid WAN that helps us connect geographically distributed WANs and route traffic over a variety of links, including MPLS, without fear of performance degradation. The solution has empowered our IT team to confidently differentiate between types of traffic across our WAN, making it possible to manage latency and prioritize business-critical applications and traffic.
 - Alexandre Sacher, CIO at Volkswagen Groupe Retail France

Additional Resources

• Blog: “New SD-WAN ASIC Changes the Playing Field”
• Blog: “Fortinet’s Advanced SD-WAN Capabilities Help Achieve Maximum Performance”
• Video: “Fortinet Unveils Industry’s First SD-WAN ASIC | WAN Edge”
• Read more about our SD-WAN customer momentum here.
• Learn more about Fortinet’s security-first approach to SD-WAN here.
• Find out more about FortiGate SD-WAN’s NSS Labs Recommended Rating.
• Learn more about FortiGuard Labs and the FortiGuard Security Services portfolio.
• Sign up for the weekly FortiGuard Threat Intelligence Briefs.
• Read more about our Network Security Expert program, Network Security Academy program or our FortiVets program.
• Read more about the Fortinet Security Fabric or the Third Generation of Network Security.
• Follow Fortinet on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. 

¹ _{Gartner, “Survey Analysis: Address Security and Digital Concerns to Maintain Rapid SD-WAN Growth,” Nareesh Singh, 12 November 2018.}

About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organizations around the world. Fortinet empowers its customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network - today and into the future. Only the Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud or mobile environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide and more than 385,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. Learn more at http://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.

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