Discussions about disruption in these unprecedented times is now well worn. However, digital disruption has been occurring (and continues to occur) at pace, in the background of today’s business operations. The likes of IoT, A.I. and fast cloud adoption are all seriously affecting our industry while cybercrime continues to bloom at a rate that’s reminiscent of peak COVID. Fortinet’s answer to these challenges is innovation with a goal of offering a predictable cost model for customers in unpredictable times.

Fortinet’s Security Fabric platform has been operating since 2016. It has been growing constantly in that time and regularly introduces new services both organically and through the Fabric Partner Ready Program. Impressive growth has also been seen the company’s Security Fabric services, public cloud and SD-WAN. The resulting platform is now a perfect one-stop shop for partners and customers seeking to implement or offer new solutions.

However, rapid growth in the industry has brought with it many other issues. A genuine “commoditisation of services” has manifested whereby too many service providers offer too many similar services. This makes it difficult to compare competing services. Another issue is that market leaders are now focusing on maintaining market share rather than innovating.

In a mundane market it’s important to innovate or your business runs the risk of obsolence. This is where Fortinet’s Fabric acts as an enabler for providers to move beyond their traditional services by leveraging the platform and adding more innovative services to their portfolio. For example, a business can now offer more than just a firewall: Fortinet’s Fabric enables partners to offer SD-WAN, SD-Branch, Cloud and even 5G services. All of these services can be simply added-to and managed through the Fabric’s common management platform.

Gartner has modelled the current MSP environment. It divided the market into three fundamental areas: Technology Maintenance, Delivery Platform and Security Operations. It recommends focusing on where the circles (below) overlap: this means there are particular opportunities in Threat Detection Services, Managed Detection and Response services plus, Security Operation Centre operations, Detection and Response services.

Ultimately, utilising a centralised platform like Fortinet’s Fabric makes great sense as it provides the ability to innovate, add new offerings to customers while managing everything in one place. This keeps the cost of adding and maintaining multiple products and services less volatile - for both you and your customers – and leaves everyone to focus on your driving their business forward, rather than managing day-to-day operations and costs.

Lizzie Cohen is Vice President of Communication Service Provider Sales