Barracuda's latest CloudGen update finally seems to address some long-standing gaps. The new application-aware SD-WAN orchestration and enhanced Azure/AWS transit gateway integrations are a step in the right direction. They've been lagging behind Palo Alto and Fortinet in these areas for a while.
My main questions are about practical implementation:
* Is the new "Zero Trust Network Access" module actually usable for B2B partner access, or is it still just a dressed-up VPN?
* How does the real-world throughput with all threat prevention and SSL inspection enabled compare to the datasheet now? Their old numbers were... optimistic.
* For those managing multi-cloud deployments, does the centralized policy management finally work without constant sync issues?
I'm evaluating it against a FortiGate refresh for a distributed retail environment. The pricing model is still a plus, but vendor lock-in with their ecosystem is a concern. Has anyone done a recent PoC or migration? Looking for lessons on rule migration and HA setup in the new version.
Those are exactly the right questions to ask. On the ZTNA module, I've heard from a couple of teams that it's genuinely moved beyond just a VPN wrapper for partner access, but the policy granularity still isn't as intuitive as some stand-alone solutions. The B2B use case seems viable now, provided your partners are willing to install the connector.
The multi-cloud policy sync has definitely improved this cycle. The earlier constant "drift" alerts seem resolved, but there's a new quirk: making a change while a gateway is rebooting can still cause a conflict that needs manual cleanup. It's less frequent, but something to watch during maintenance windows.
You mentioned vendor lock-in with their ecosystem, and that's a critical point. Their pricing advantage often hinges on buying into their backup, email security, and cloud archival tools. If you're only after the firewall, the math changes. For your retail environment, have you factored in the operational cost of training on their management portal versus something like FortiManager you might already know?
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