Rising SD-WAN and security vendor Fortinet this week announced partnerships with Orange Networks, SoftBank, and Siemens that promise to expand its reach to into new markets.

SoftBank selected Fortinet to enhance its managed SD-WAN portfolios. In addition to Fortinet's SD-WAN platform, the telco also plans to use its advanced security and network analytics offerings and well as Fortinet's Multi-Cloud On-Ramp application acceleration service.

"When looking to expand our portfolio, we needed an SD-WAN solution that could deliver and enable, in addition to SD-WAN, a set of integrated and automated high-value services to solve our customer's challenges," said Kunihiro Fujinaga, SVP and head of enterprise product and business strategy at SoftBank. "We chose Fortinet Secure SD-WAN with its built-in next-generation firewall security because it gives us a real advantage in providing a natively built-in service to significantly reduce onboarding efforts and speed time-to-market."

Likewise, Orange is positioning Fortinet's SD-WAN as a security-focused offering.

Orange's collaboration with Fortinet expands on an existing partnership between the two companies. Previously Orange had tapped Fortinet as part of its managed security services offering.

"The extended scope will now provide enterprises with a secure SD-WAN solution that integrates next-generation firewall security and SD-WAN functionality in a single offering," Orange said in a statement.

In addition to expanding its service provider reach, Fortinet also announced a technological alliance with Siemens to develop an integrated product to address the security and connectivity requirements of operation technology (OT) networks.

These environments have traditionally been isolated from the rest of the IT network, and efforts to converge the two have opened the door to cybersecurity threats.

To combat these threats, Siemens joined Fortinet's Fabric-Ready Technology Alliance Partner Program.

Fortinet says ecosystem partners like Siemens enable the company to integrate and provide more comprehensive security products.

"By partnering with Siemens, a global leader in OT digital solutions, Fortinet continued our focus on expanding the Fortinet Security Fabric platform deep into OT networks," said John Maddison, VP of products and CMO of Fortinet, in a statement. "This partnership enables our customers to get even more value from their security deployments and facilitates the development and delivery of truly comprehensive, end-to-end security solutions specifically designed for OT environments."

The first product to come out of the collaboration is built around Fortinet's FortiGate next-generation firewall and Ruggedcom's Multi-Service line of switches and routers. It's designed to improve cybersecurity in hostile environments like electrical subsystems.

Fortinet has seen steady growth in the past few quarters.

Earlier this month the SD-WAN vendor unveiled its latest next-generation firewall, which featured a new, more powerful security ASIC.

Fortinet also claimed a recent contract with Telenor Sweden, securing its entrance into the Nordic market. According to Tomas Flodin, product owner of SD-WAN at Telenor, Fortinet’s security and all-in-one hardware made it an ideal choice for the service provider.

And earlier this month, IHS Markit released a report showing that the company has displaced rival Silver Peak to take the No. 4 spot behind VMware, Cisco, and Aryaka.