Cloudflare Makes Magic WAN Connector and All Cloudflare One Networking Generally Available

Cloudflare (NYSE: NET), which describes itself as a connectivity cloud company, has made every connectivity component of Cloudflare One, its single-vendor SASE platform, generally available. The company says the service meets both the security and the networking sides of an organisation's transformation without making the setup more complicated, which it sees as the main thing separating it from rivals in protecting hybrid workforces.

Why buyers are consolidating on one SASE vendor

Organisations moving to the cloud to innovate faster and stay competitive tend to run into two problems at once. Their networks become harder to manage, and they still have to link up and secure staff, devices, applications and data centres spread across many locations while keeping performance intact. Where the underlying IT infrastructure is rigid, remote users and personal devices open security gaps that put corporate data at real risk and push up costs overall.

Cloudflare says this is driving a sharp move towards single-vendor SASE platforms. It cites a Gartner forecast that by 2026, 60% of new SD-WAN purchases will form part of a single-vendor SASE offering, against 15% in 2023.

Customers can adopt Cloudflare One in whatever way suits what they already run. They can deploy it natively as a single-vendor setup with Cloudflare, or build on SD-WAN they have already installed. The branch appliance, Magic WAN Connector, can either arrive pre-installed on hardware shipped by TD SYNNEX, a global IT distributor and solutions aggregator, or be installed inside an organisation's existing environment.

What the platform is meant to improve

Enterprise technology teams now have to tie together thousands of people, devices, clouds, systems, applications and networks so that work, development and delivery can happen from anywhere. Both the branch appliance and Cloudflare's networking-as-a-service run natively on its connectivity cloud, which the company says makes deployment simpler and brings gains in four areas:

• Efficiency of network and security teams. With policy managed and enforced centrally worldwide, it takes less time to bring users, sites and devices online.

• Security posture. A single dashboard acting as the control plane shrinks the customer's attack surface and cuts operational complexity.

• Experience for administrators and users. Running on the unified connectivity cloud is said to raise performance sharply for staff in the office, at home or working hybrid, with a 100% uptime SLA offered to support business continuity.

• Control of the IT environment. Because any traffic source or destination can be connected, with Zero Trust policies applied over it, IT leaders gain control over areas that were previously out of their reach.

What Cloudflare and TD SYNNEX say

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's co-founder and CEO, said the company has spent more than ten years making network security simpler, giving IT teams what they need to modernise their architecture whether they are connecting remote staff, offices, data centres or multi-cloud deployments. He described general availability of Magic WAN Connector on Cloudflare One as proof that the company can support business productivity that is "secure at speed", from what he called one of the most comprehensive SASE solutions on the market.

Jessica McDowell, senior vice president of business development and security strategy at TD SYNNEX, said her company aims to bring together IT solutions that produce business results now and support growth later. Adding Cloudflare's product to its global portfolio, she said, widens and deepens TD SYNNEX's security range and lets customers carry out the security and networking changes needed to protect hybrid workforces and keep them running, without extra complexity.