Even in the final days of 2021, Fortinet is still hustling to expand its service provider empire and strengthen its grip on the SD-WAN market.

The networking and security vendor today announced seven more managed service providers added support for its FortiGate SD-WAN platform. They include Convergia, Eastern Communications, Halo Global, Lintasarta, Ooredoo Qatar, PLDT, and Transtelco.

These partnerships are core to Fortinet's strategy, especially as enterprises turn to MSPs for help insulating their networks and infrastructure from cyberthreats. The security vendor has added dozens of service providers and channel partners over the past few years as the company’s SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) products have grown in popularity.

This strategy has paid dividends for the security-turned-networking vendor. Dell’Oro Group again ranked Fortinet as the third-largest SD-WAN vendor by market share behind Cisco and VMware. Meanwhile, Gartner ranked Fortinet as a leader in its latest WAN Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrant report.

But while Fortinet retained its leadership title, Gartner analysts criticized the company for its failure to support multi-vendor SASE architectures and called its FortiSASE platform “largely unproven.”

Despite only recently wading into the SASE market with the acquisition of Opaq last year, Fortinet scored several high-profile telco contracts in 2021.

This spring, AT&T tapped Fortinet to power its first managed SASE service. It includes Fortinet’s suite of SD-WAN and security capabilities, is fully managed by AT&T Cybersecurity, and integrates with AT&T Alien Lab's Threat Intelligence platform for improved visibility across cloud, networks, and endpoints.

In October, Fortinet scored another pair of telco victories when Verizon and Telefónica rolled the vendor into their respective managed service portfolios.

Telefónica Tech’s flexWAN combines Fortinet’s FortiGate SD-WAN and FortiSASE security capabilities into a single managed service.

Verizon’s integration, on the other hand, centered on Fortinet’s SD-WAN functionality and didn’t directly address SASE. Verizon does, however, offer managed SASE services in collaboration with Fortinet rivals Versa Networks and Zscaler.