Vodafone Business

Vodafone Business Secure Firewall with Fortinet delivers a comprehensive managed security service to setup, operate, run, manage and maintain customer firewalls in a highly secure manner. Graded partial, and the gap matters. What is documented is estate scale and ongoing maintenance: the datasheet claims 45,000 managed CPEs, includes Release Management and Vulnerability Management in the managed service list, and states Zero-touch provisioning reduces engineer time on site. Release and Vulnerability Management reasonably imply firmware upgrades and patching in service. What I could not evidence anywhere is the harder half of the definition: hardware replacement or RMA, renewals, and end-of-life planning. None of those terms appear in the datasheet or on any product page reviewed. A buyer should treat hardware refresh and EoL as an open contractual question rather than assume it is included.

Replace expensive private links with low-cost internet/5G Graded partial rather than yes because the evidence establishes only the transport half of the definition. The datasheet positions 5G as a substitute for private circuits and lists 4/5G among access options, so cellular as primary or failover transport is evidenced. I found no published detail on integrated versus external modems, SIM management, or signal monitoring. This is a case where prior knowledge would be tempting, since Vodafone is a mobile network operator and self-evidently manages SIMs at scale, but no page I fetched in this task documents SIM management as part of the SD-WAN service, so I have not graded it.

Native, confirmed directly - 'secure overlay connectivity between customer sites and extending to cloud service provider environments e.g. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services' [2]

Vodafone Business Secure Gateway Access is underpinned by the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ Platform. This is the distinction the definition is built around, and it falls clearly on the partner side. The cloud enforcement points behind Vodafone Business Secure Access Gateway ZIA and ZPA are Zscaler's, and the 2025 Fortinet announcement adds FortiSASE, described by Fortinet as FortiSASE cloud-based security solutions. Both are another company's PoP estate that Vodafone resells and manages. Vodafone Cloud Connect was also checked and offers connectivity to AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft Azure and Oracle, which the definition expressly excludes as evidence. No Vodafone-operated shared SASE gateway estate was found.

Our range of access networks is available in 192 countries using our enhanced internet backbone, reducing the number of hops and providing resilience. Graded yes because the possessive is doing real work: our enhanced internet backbone is Vodafone-owned or controlled infrastructure, and the stated scope is global rather than national, which clears the bar the definition sets against single-country networks. The datasheet corroborates with We cover underlay, overlay, local access and wider services within the solution to 192 countries. Confidence is held at medium for two reasons. First, Vodafone describes it as an internet backbone rather than a private MPLS core in the current material, so the predictable latency and loss characteristic is asserted only indirectly through reducing the number of hops. Second, the 2014 release makes clear the reach is a mix of directly operated and partner networks, so not every one of the 192 countries rides Vodafone-owned fibre. Between regions on Vodafone's own core, the capability holds.

Native, confirmed directly - 'secure overlay connectivity between customer sites and extending to cloud service provider environments e.g. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services' [2]

Our managed and co-managed services are backed up by the broadest range of SLAs in line with our vision for an excellent customer experience Graded yes on the existence of contractual commitments, which is what this field measures, and it is distinct from the sla_availability_pct field where the published number is much weaker. The datasheet also states Bundle our underlay for E2E SLAs, which is a meaningful claim: because Vodafone supplies the access circuits as well as the overlay, it can commit end to end rather than only on the overlay. The 2025 Fortinet announcement independently confirms various service-level guarantees as a purchasable management option. Change handling is covered by Change Management in the managed service list. Latency, jitter and loss targets were not found published.

Vodafone Business Secure Firewall with Fortinet delivers a comprehensive managed security service to setup, operate, run, manage and maintain customer firewalls in a highly secure manner. Fortinet technology, operated by Vodafone, so partner_integrated per the definition rather than yes. Fortinet's own release confirms the services integrate Fortinet's industry-leading software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and FortiSASE cloud-based security solutions. The datasheet's Inbuilt encryption and firewalls protects data and branches shows the firewall is integrated into the SD-WAN edge rather than sold as a separate appliance, which satisfies the integration half of the test, but the technology is not Vodafone's. I did not find a Vodafone page enumerating the individual NGFW functions (application control, IPS, malware inspection, URL filtering) by name, so that breakdown rests on the Fortinet product identification rather than on a Vodafone feature list.

Native, confirmed directly - Zscaler is described specifically as delivering 'private application connectivity through a zero-trust architecture' [2]

Native, confirmed as part of the Zscaler-based SASE partnership [2] Capability specifics depend on which underlying platform (Zscaler or Fortinet) is proposed

Native, confirmed directly - 'a single view across network health visibility, performance dashboards, and customisable reports' [5] A distinctly-branded DEM product name wasn't itemised

Our global service desk and regional operations centres run 24x7x365 The network operations half is well evidenced by the datasheet quote plus 24/7 Incidents Support and Proactive incidents in the managed service list. The security operations half is evidenced from the Tier 2 G-Cloud filing by VODAFONE LIMITED, whose support levels field reads 24 x7 x 365 Security Operations Centre, although note that filing covers Managed SOC and SIEM rather than SD-WAN. Incident ownership through to root cause is supported by Problem Management appearing as a distinct line item alongside incident handling, which is the ITIL construct for root cause work, and change governance by Change Management. Confidence is medium rather than high because the phrase root cause analysis does not itself appear on any page fetched, and structured service reviews are implied by Service Management in the list rather than described.