Cybersecurity firm Fortinet said that IndiGo has deployed its SD-WAN solution across its branch offices to secure its WAN edge. IndiGo is the largest passenger airline in India with a market share of 46.9 percent as of March, 2019. The airline connects to 58 domestic and 19 international destinations and operates more than 1300 flights every day. It is also the largest individual Asian low-cost carrier in terms of jet fleet size and passengers carried, and the seventh largest carrier in Asia. With a fleet size of 222 aircrafts, IndiGo has served over 300 million customers globally.
“Transitioning to hybrid WAN was our business priority as our customers and airport counters need seamless application access connecting with a link that has the lowest latency. Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution helps us with application routing, load balancing, performance monitoring and securing our customers data all in a single appliance, which reduces management complexity and delivers significant cost benefits,” said Lalit Gole, Associate – Director IT – Networks & Infrastructure, IndiGo.
IndiGo’s growing passenger traffic combined with poor MPLS network and Internet quality had resulted in delays for customers accessing their applications for flight booking, call centers, airport counters and flight status checking, adversely affecting their business. To avoid delays and provide the best possible user experience for business-critical applications, the airline decided to adopt a hybrid WAN model, supporting its 54 airport counters, that would be able to distribute traffic over a variety of links, including MPLS, Broadband and Internet Leased Line.
IndiGo selected Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution to provide best of breed SD-WAN integrated with security capabilities with one single offering. As part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution combines networking and security features, such as routing, WAN optimization, application control and next-generation firewall, enabling IndiGo to manage and configure its WAN and security system from a single-pane-of-glass view.
IndiGo has also deployed multiple FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls at 54 airport counters and in their data centers, along with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer for management and analytics. As a result, IndiGo can now map WAN resources directly making the network more efficient and responsive by combining scalability, flexibility, simplicity and cost savings with industry-leading security protection through Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution.
“Many customers are currently forced to use multiple point products and management consoles to achieve a secure SD-WAN connection. This separation of network and security operations is not only labor-intensive, but also makes performance and security a bottleneck to move towards direct internet access. Fortinet’s unique combination of next-generation firewall and SD-WAN in the same offering, managed through a single centralized controller has seen tremendous momentum in customer adoption and received two consecutive SD-WAN “Recommended” ratings from NSS Labs,” said Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC at Fortinet.
