Barracuda just rolled out its SD-WAN service built natively on Azure in July, and now has rolled out new enhancements to build on momentum they are seeing in the market.

Today, cybersecurity vendor Barracuda has announced enhancements to the CloudGen WAN secure SD-WAN service built natively on Microsoft Azure which they launched in July. They include cloud-delivered personal remote access functionality that eliminates the implicit trust model deployed by traditional point-to-site solutions. Barracuda also announced the introduction of two new CloudGen WAN devices for Internet of Things [IoT] endpoints.

Barracuda CloudGen WAN features much simpler configuration and management than Barracuda’s firewall, and saves customers money by deploying the Microsoft Global Network as their secure enterprise WAN backbone, rather than MPLS.

“There has been a strong amount of global interest in CloudGen WAN,” said Tim Jefferson, SVP of Data, Network and Application Security, Engineering, at Barracuda. “It just shows the reach of Microsoft, which covers every point in the globe. There is lots of demand from Europe where they have higher fidelity data storage laws. Microsoft has zones and regions everywhere so, it’s easier to fit local regulatory laws.”

It’s still somewhat early to assess the number of sales closed, since SD-WAN deployment is a more invasive sale and two to three months seems to be the normal sales cycle, but Barracuda said that interest has been strong among both customers and channel partners.

“Microsoft sellers have been excited because Microsoft has pivoted to driving performance around Azure consumption, and there has been a strong move from firewalls to SD-WAN,” Jefferson said. “They have more control now with this type of product. It helps their Azure consumption, and their Azure Consumed Revenues. It makes them better Microsoft partners, and there’s a lot of goodness that comes from that.

“Every partner looks for a way to get sticky and add value,” Jefferson added. “This gives them insight into their Azure environments. It helps them land and expand beyond building and managing the WAN.”

Barracuda CloudGen WAN’s new cloud-delivered personal remote access functionality eliminates the implicit trust model used in traditional VPNs.

“Partners, especially MSPs, have asked us for remote user support,” Jefferson said. “A major challenge with cloud is managing authentication infrastructure. With this. remote users can use this Cloud delivered service where you can log into Azure Active Directory and connect directly to CloudGen WAN gateways that run inside Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN Hubs. You go right to the cloud, not routing through a branch office. We deploy a client on the device to map back to the applications they run on, so the admin has control of what users have access to what applications. These policies are automatically enforced by CloudGen WAN, rather than the implicit trust which was used by traditional VPN solutions.” This ensures that only authorized users can access specific applications.

Jefferson said that all the routing information being pushed through the hub is especially important in the public cloud where IPs commonly change.

“That improves the user experience, because if the client wants to reach a  SaaS application, they don’t have to have routed back, and we also support the use case where all traffic is routed through the cloud service,” he stated. “It gives more flexibility into how you deploy your controls, unlike historical VPNs which are very rigid.”

The other new news component is the introduction of two new CloudGen WAN devices for industrial endpoints, CloudGen WAN T93 and CloudGen WAN T193, the latter of which has fiber connectivity. These IoT devices are available now.

“Partners have been asking us for secure connectivity around industrial environments,” Jefferson said. “It’s an interesting area because there’s a lot of innovation going around IoT, where we can provide security.”

Jefferson said that while only a small number of partners are in this market today, it is becoming a strong one for them.

“It’s a fast growing and ‘lumpy’ business now,” he said. “A few partners are leaning in hard and building up expertise. And its like a rabbit hole, because as they get into it, they see more stuff there they could be doing where they can add value.”