Gartner Evaluated SD-WAN Vendors. Here's Who Came Top

Tech market analysis firm Gartner has completed its annual review of SD-WAN vendors, and the result is good news for hSo customers.

The technology partner whose hardware powers our SD-WAN service has come out on top for SD-WAN market leadership. Again.

Fortinet was classified as a 'Leader' for the third year running and was classed as having the highest 'Ability to Execute' of any of the vendors reviewed.

In Gartner's world, Leaders (top right quadrant in the diagrams below) have 'completeness of vision' combined with the 'ability to execute' the delivery of that vision.

Challengers (top left quadrant) are deemed to be good at execution, but somewhat lacking in breadth of vision.

Visionaries (bottom right quadrant) are good at the vision thing, but not so good at executing it.

And Niche Players (bottom left quadrant) is the polite term for also-rans Gartner deems to be somewhat lacking in both the vision and execution departments. But there's still a chance those vendors could turn things around.

Gartner Magic Quadrant SD-WAN 2022

Without further ado, here's Gartner's summary of the market: 

Garter Magic Quadrant WAN Edge Infrastructure 2021

Here's Gartner's view of the situation 11 months earlier:

Garter Magic Quadrant WAN Edge Infrastructure 2020

Here's Gartner's verdict from two years ago:

Why hSo Chose Fortinet as Our Primary Technology Partner for SD-WAN

We looked at a number of leading SD-WAN vendor offerings and found that Fortinet's was closest to matching what our customers would need.

• Value for money - There were certain players who made well-regarded products, but whose solutions cost a fortune. Although many of our customers could afford such solutions, buying those solutions wouldn't be in our customers' best interests. Fortinet's use of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) allows it to offer better value than many other SD-WAN players.
• Product & company maturity - We wanted to work with a technology partner whose SD-WAN solutions were reliable, feature-rich, well-documented and well-supported. We're not in the business of being vendors' guinea pigs. We leave technology's bleeding edge to others.
• Focus on serving customers, rather than being acquired - While there are interesting startup offerings in the SD-WAN space, many seem to be burning through venture capital in the hope of being swallowed by a cash-rich giant with a hole in its product offering. Such acquisitions are great for startup shareholders, but not so great for their customers. The acquirer often cuts staff and deprioritises innovation while duplicate product lines are merged.
• Broad, relevant, well-integrated product range - Fortinet doesn't JUST do SD-WAN. Its offerings cover a lot of other areas where our customers have needs - including next-generation firewalls, VPNs and Zero Trust Network Access.
• Continued market leadership - Fortinet is extremely good at execution - an essential characteristic of leadership is to sustain your advantage through continuous innovation. We don't just want to be working with the market leader today. We also want to be working with the same market leader five years hence.

hSo + Fortinet, a Winning Combination

Building on its partnership with Fortinet, hSo delivers a manged SD-WAN service, with 24/7 UK support, backed up by Service Level Agreements. 

Where we provide the underlying connectivity, we're able to guarantee end-to-end Quality-of-Service.

If you'd like to learn more, check out our software-defined WAN service.