CASE STUDY

telecommunications service provider in the Kingdom has announced the launch of its Secure SD-WAN managed service leveraging Fortinet Secure SD-WAN to deliver a differentiated value-added service to its customers .

The Fortinet partnership will allow Zain to better meet its customers ’ evolving business needs thanks to the accelerated connectivity , transport mode independence and increased application performance , while benefitting from integrated next-generation firewall security in a single service offering with centralised management and zero-touch provisioning .

Director of Enterprise and Wholesale at Zain Bahrain , Ali Mustafa , said : “ Zain ’ s strategic plans to develop a world-class portfolio of managed security services locally and globally is in line with the growing demand of our business customers in Bahrain and the region .

“ Fortinet Unified Threat Management provides significant benefits for Zain ’ s local and global customers by leveraging other Fortinet capabilities and solutions clean pipe , firewall , multi-path intelligence , cloud on-ramp , email security , anti-spam , endpoint security , advanced threat protection and much more ,” said Mustafa .

“ Zain Bahrain meets the growing need of businesses looking to deploy SD-WAN to enhance their application performance and overall user experience , but also reduce costs . By creating a value-added service platform based on Fortinet technology , Zain Bahrain can now deliver both networking and security functionalities in one offering , enabling it to offer advanced security across its hybrid WAN infrastructure with a significantly lower total cost of ownership ( TCO ),” said Alain Penel , Vice President , Middle East at Fortinet .

We caught up with Ali Mustafa , Director of Enterprise and Wholesale at Zain Bahrain , to hear more about the solution and its overall business benefits .

Can you provide an overview of the company and your overall digital strategy ?

Zain Bahrain is a part of the Zain Group , which operates and has its commercial presence in Kuwait , Bahrain , Iraq , Jordan , Saudi Arabia , Sudan and South Sudan .

We pride ourselves on being a leading telecommunications provider of government and businesses of all sizes in the Kingdom of Bahrain as Zain Business continues to address a wide array of business needs ranging from 5G , Advanced LTE and fibre connectivity to IoT , AI , cloud , security and data centre services .

Digital Transformation is at the core of our strategy where Zain Bahrain , over the years , has created a mark for itself and has been placed on the world telecom map via the introduction of innovative ICT solutions to meet our business customers ’ demand regionally and globally .

Why did you select Fortinet as the vendor ?

The Zain Bahrain and Fortinet partnership allows Zain to better meet its customers ’ evolving business needs . Zain ’ s state-ofthe-art networks along with Fortinet ’ s Next Generation Firewall ( NGFW ), including Secure SD-WAN functionality , are available to meet a broad range of customer requirements .

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