Case Study: Zakher Marine International achieves reliable, optimized connectivity and a 65% drop in support tickets with Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

Premier Emirates Marine Services Provider Transforms User Experience and Operational Efficiency through Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

Zakher Marine International (ZMI), an Abu Dhabi–based marine services provider with over 60 offshore vessels, faced growing operational and safety challenges as its fleet became more digital. Reliant on slow satellite WAN links, ZMI’s prior SD-WAN struggled with limited bandwidth, intermittent false failovers, firewall processing gaps that allowed traffic to bypass security, and blocked updates that required manual intervention — all while needing to meet IMO cybersecurity requirements.

ZMI deployed Fortinet Secure SD-WAN built on FortiGate NGFWs and managed with FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and FortiAuthenticator to provide application-aware traffic steering, granular QoS, seamless interface-level failover, centralized management and automated threat analytics. The result was immediate service improvements — a 65% drop in user support tickets, 40% faster mean time to respond and 35% faster average resolution time — plus better bandwidth sharing, remote device control and a secure foundation for future IT/OT convergence.

Zakher Marine International

Wadie Farah

ICT Manager