Fortinet Unveils Support for VPN to Microsoft Azure

Fortinet (FTNT) is expanding its public cloud services support with the addition of VPN support for Microsoft Azure (MSFT) on its FortiGate security appliances. All FortiGate appliances now offer customers full support for VPN access to the Microsoft Azure Virtual Network service.

What this enables customers to do is easily set up a secure VPN tunnel that links on-premise networks and the Azure cloud environment. Additionally, for IT departments, FortiGate appliances provide a single pane of glass for all of the network and cloud connections currently supported.

“As we work with customers to extend on-premises infrastructure to the cloud using Microsoft Azure, we need to ensure both a high level of security and seamless data access across multiple environments,” said Michael Xie, founder, CTO and president of Fortinet, in a prepared statement. “Fortinet is unique in its ability to deliver powerful threat prevention for network, email, web and content across any combination of cloud, network and virtualized environment.”

This isn’t the first time Fortinet has partnered with a major public cloud service provider. Earlier this year, Fortinet took the opportunity at AWS Summit to launch FortiGate Security on Amazon Web Services, following up on a handful of other AWS cloud services launches.

Fortinet’s connection to Azure isn’t quite as strong, but with the addition of VPN support on its FortiGate appliances, perhaps it’s signalling future announcements connected to the Azure cloud platform.

Not that VPN access to a public cloud platform isn’t important to a lot of organizations, particularly those in the enterprise space. According to Microsoft, 57 percent of Fortune 500 enterprises are Azure customers. Of course, that’s not to say Azure is the only cloud those enterprises are using, but it still means Microsoft has gained a certain level of acceptance for Azure among some of the largest companies in the world.

We’ll have to wait to see if this is a standalone announcement or one of several that will tie Fortinet more closer to the Azure cloud.