Case Study: African Airline achieves lower network costs, better cloud performance, and stronger security with Fortinet Secure SD‑WAN

African Airline Opens New Routes to Profitability Through SD-WAN

An established African airline carrying millions of passengers modernized its IT to cut costs and compete with rising state-subsidized rivals. Pursuing a cloud-first strategy and moving many applications to SaaS and Azure, the carrier identified its costly, inflexible MPLS WAN as a barrier; SD-WAN promised better cloud performance and lower connectivity costs but raised concerns about expanding the attack surface when branches connected directly to the internet.

The airline deployed Fortinet Secure SD-WAN (FortiGate NGFW with FortiManager/FortiAnalyzer Fabric Management Center), FortiAP wireless access points and FortiClient EMS, replacing most MPLS links with broadband and centrally enforcing edge security. This delivered reduced WAN expenses, improved cloud and branch application performance, greater connection reliability, centralized visibility for faster issue resolution, and simplified administration while maintaining strong security.

African Airline