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Fortinet beefed up its presence in the cloud space Monday with the launch of four new virtual appliances, catering to a growing trend of hybrid infrastructure with its integration in both physical and virtual environments.
Altogether, the comprehensive launch includes virtual versions of the company's FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and FortiMail appliances. Both the FortiGate and FortiManager are currently available, while the FortiAnalyzer and FortiMail appliances will be released during Q4 2010.
Chris Simmons, Fortinet director of product strategy, said that the appliances, which are all built to run on top of VMware hypervisors, are designed to integrate in both physical and virtual environments, and work in tandem with physical infrastructures to fill in security gaps and eliminate what they call "blind spots." Essentially, the virtual offerings repair visibility impediments common in hybrid environments by providing IT administrators one interface that can manage both physical and virtual systems, he added.
"You wouldn't want to expose the hypervisor to the Internet," said. "It's good to manage both physical and virtual platforms from a central place, from one management console."
Simmons said that the virtual appliance release addresses the growing demand for hybrid infrastructures in the enterprise as more organizations move to virtualize parts of their environment. Meanwhile, the ability to oversee both physical and virtual appliances from one window is a selling point for existing Fortinet customers who currently just have a physical IT infrastructure but are considering virtualizing it or moving it to the cloud.
Next: Virtual Offerings Serve Hybrid Environments
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