Multi-edge convergence is a term which describe enterprises moving to a complex architecture that requires converging multiple services into a single location. This means that the traditional approach of having the best of breed for networking, security, and other services can no longer compete in today hyper-competitive market. Rather than shying away from converging their infrastructure to work together, enterprises should embrace the idea of multi-edge convergence where multiple services are consolidated into a single solution.
The emergence of multi-edge convergence came from a couple of reasons. First, enterprises of all sizes are required now to be more agile than ever. Development are required to produce at a faster rate while security needs to keep up with development. In order for development to push out applications at a competitive rate, using the cloud is unavoidable. With cloud vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud, and AliCloud offering infrastructure, platform, and software as a service readily available to be consumed by the users, enterprises find themselves adopting cloud services and distributing applications to multiple edges to compete in today's global market.
Second, as organizations grow in size, it is natural to bring on more solutions to scale their businesses. However, this creates a web of complexity whereas organizations grow, they bring in more solutions from different vendors for reasons like high availability, business efficiency, data recovery, security, and more. While that was fine in the past, it is not now. With data, application, users, and infrastructure being highly distributed, businesses need to simplify and consolidate their approach to efficiently operate their organizations while still reducing cost and increasing profit for their businesses.
Finally, to compete in a global market, businesses not only need to produce applications at a rapid pace, but business-critical applications also need to be delivered at a rapid pace. This means that applications need to be built and be delivered closer to the user. Organizations wanting to develop an efficient development pipeline should look to building not only infrastructure on the cloud, but also building easy connectivity on branch offices, remote user locations, and anywhere that their data travels to. In order to operate effectively, businesses should leverage SD-WAN for application steering, multi-cloud connectivity, and user-centric edge delivery. Rather than a cloud-delivered security that would require security retraining and process rewriting, organizations need to utilize a fabric of solutions that could integrate well together. To have an effective multi-edge architecture, a high-performance SD-WAN solution that can effectively help them migrate their applications to the cloud quickly while still remaining secure is necessary.
The SD-WAN solution should also have intelligent application steering with granular control and dynamic path selection to optimize operations. Infrastructure, Network, and Security leaders should consider implementing a multi-service edge solution that converges services like networking security together in a single platform to handle a complex and resource-intensive network. For most businesses, doing a digital transformation means using a multi-cloud, multi-edge converged solution that offers not only security, but also networking, and simplified management.
Fortinet's security-driven networking solution provides a central management console to easily create granular SD-WAN policies that can control different WAN links (LTE,MPLS,VPN,etc.) at the edge.
Our SD-WAN approach enable application steering and application-level control while still giving customers enterprise-grade security.
Additionally, SLAs policies can be defined for these cloud applications to ensure highly available and low-latency delivery for the end users to consume these applications.
Additionally, Fortinet's central management solution, FortiManager, simplify branch office deployments by offering SD-WAN templates to enable them to automate a complex multi-edge environment.
Organizations considering a move to a converged multi-edge architecture should also consider using both cloud-delivered and on-premise services for a highly available and fault-tolerant design. By partnering with 3rd party partners and constantly looking ahead with our vision, Fortinet is able to build a complete end to end security architecture for any businesses.
With Fortinet's Security Fabric approach, organizations of all sizes receive enterprise-grade security, integration solutions, security-driven networking, broad offerings, and automation services to enable granular security enforcement, internal segmentation, secure access controls, multi-cloud connectivity, and more. By being a part of our Fabric vision, customers can be sure that Fortinet looks ahead in helping the customer secure their environment.
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