Case Study: Major Japanese Manufacturing Company achieves simplified, secure WAN and SD‑WAN readiness with Fortinet FortiGate

Manufacturer Seeking Simpler Cloud Strategy Replaces Legacy Routers With FortiGate Secure Wide-area Network

A major Japanese manufacturer with multiple siloed IT organizations needed to consolidate its data centers, networks, and security to support digital initiatives. Executive leaders wanted a unified network policy, better fault tolerance and quality, and to address worsening performance as internet and cloud traffic grew—prompting exploration of SD-WAN to avoid backhauling internet-bound traffic through corporate data centers.

The company replaced expensive legacy routers with FortiGate next‑generation firewalls used as routers, then phased in Fortinet Secure SD‑WAN to enable local internet breakout, integrated security, and centralized management. The change simplified configuration and policy enforcement, improved remote-site performance and resilience, reduced costs, and provided a scalable, single-console foundation for broader SD‑WAN rollout.