Fortinet, Barracuda expand SD-WAN cloud offerings

If you had any doubt of the growing value of SD-WAN in multi-cloud connectivity, Fortinet and Barracuda Networks have new offerings that should convince you otherwise.

Fortinet says its Secure SD-WAN for Multi-Cloud is designed to helps businesses maintain a secure network infrastructure across multiple private and public clouds. The company cites a recent report from Flexera that 93% of medium to large firms currently have a multi-cloud strategy in place for a range of benefits: disaster recovery, global coverage, avoiding vendor lock-in, and leveraging best-of-breed solutions.

However, Fortinet notes challenges in managing and securing an assortment of different cloud platforms. Few IT teams have the expertise to manage a mixed deployment of multiple public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises environments, especially considering the ongoing lack of skilled IT and cybersecurity talent.

“To address the diversity challenge, many organizations choose to connect their clouds via their on-premises data center WAN edge for centralized inspection and routing. But the use of this type of traditional WAN infrastructure approach, though secure, inhibits agility and results in deployment complexity, inconsistent network performance, and expensive connectivity,” Fortinet says in a posting announcing the new product.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN for Multi-Cloud is delivered via FortiGate-VM, a virtual appliance powered by Fortinet’s vSPU technology that offers over 20Gbps of IPsec performance, which it says is 10 times the industry average.

Fortinet says Secure SD-WAN for Multi-Cloud is available “on all major cloud providers” and delivered on-premises through the FortiGate appliance.

Barracuda embraces Azure

Barracuda Networks has introduced CloudGen WAN, what it says is the first SD-WAN offering that runs inside Microsoft Azure virtual WAN hubs. With it, companies and service providers can create a secure access service edge (SASE) in the public cloud, the company says.

Citing its own research, Barracuda says that more than half of those who have added security to their public cloud are using SD-WANs. It said secure SD-WAN services in the cloud can help overcome the top two security challenges organizations face when it comes to public cloud: lack of access control and backhauling traffic.

The new Barracuda CloudGen WAN is a SaaS service deployed directly from the Azure Marketplace for as many regions as needed and administered centrally in the CloudGen WAN portal for all office locations and remote endpoints. The new service is deployed directly from the Azure Marketplace, and gives users the option of hourly billing along with constant use.

Because it runs inside Azure Virtual WAN Hubs, those hubs can be interconnected through the Microsoft Global Network to replace more expensive and less flexible network connections. And the entire network can be dynamically sized to match current traffic, so the service can also optimize network performance and minimize cost.

“With an all-in-one, secure SD-WAN solution natively built on the public cloud network, enterprises can finally make the shift to more public cloud deployments, both faster and more securely,” said Hatem Naguib, COO at Barracuda, in a statement.

It’s been an eventful few days in the SD-WAN world; HP Enterprise just bought Silver Peak for $925 million.