Masergy teams with Fortinet for at-home SD-WAN

Working from home is becoming more of a permanent option with each passing day, but working from home means your network is provided not by your corporate enterprise but by carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast.

Masergy this week introduced its SD-WAN Work From Anywhere portfolio that brings the benefits of SD-WAN networking to home and mobile users. The portfolio includes a home SD-WAN solution and a SASE-based mobile solution.

The new offerings extend Masergy’s Managed SD-WAN Secure solutions to the remote workforce, supporting their network connections with built-in security, dual-link redundancy, load balancing, and dynamic traffic-steering capabilities.

The SD-WAN Secure Home offering utilizes a lightweight Fortinet Secure SD-WAN device for connectivity and improved application performance over a home Internet connection. It also includes built-in next-generation firewall and routing, direct connections to an ecosystem of cloud services, as well as secure access service edge (SASE) cybersecurity capabilities.

The service is available either on Masergy’s private software-defined network or with the service running over the top of the public internet via their home ISP. The service can also provide direct connections to cloud service providers.

SD-WAN Secure Home offers zero-touch-provisioning for remote users, a client portal simplifies management and optimization for IT managers, and bundles with Masery’s Unified Communications as a Service, Wi-Fi-enabled video phones, and comprehensive security services.

Next month, Masergy will launch a mobile-friendly solution called SD-WAN On the Go. The software client and VPN helps mobile users securely connect to corporate networks.

The Massergy-Fortinet alliance will enable flexible security for SASE architectures, said John Maddison, executive vice president of products and CMO at Fortinet in a statement.

Masergy cited a Nemertes Research study, which found that 75% businesses making a pandemic-related budget increase are investing in connectivity. In a ZK Research study, 58% of IT professionals say SD-WAN made the transition to remote work easier, and 46% of respondents found that COVID-19 sped up their SD-WAN deployment timeline.