Ganahl Lumber Simplifies Network Management with Fortinet

Name: Ganahl Lumber Simplifies Network Management with Fortinet
Uploaded: 2026-06-11T09:34:07-04:00
Duration: 2 min 27 s
Description: TL;DR Ganahl Lumber operates 14 locations across Southern California with challenging outdoor environments requiring extensive wireless coverage through wood-filled yards spanning 2-20 acres. Before Fortinet, the company suffered from fragmented infras...

Fortinet

06/11/2026

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I'm the IT manager at Ganahl Lumber Company. Ganahl Lumber, we're California's oldest still operating lumber yard and hardware store. The company was founded in 1884. We mostly cater to the professional. So we have 14 locations now across LA, Orange County, Riverside, and as of about a month and a half ago, San Diego. Our stores and yards range from, let's say, two acres all the way up to 20. It's a lot of outdoor, so getting wireless coverage sort of everywhere where you don't have a lot of opportunity to place APs and you have the wood sort of blocking signal all over the place presents kind of an interesting challenge for us. So before Fortinet was really, I would say like fully onboarded, it was just a lot of fragmentation, manual configurations all over the place, a lot of switching gear without passwords. Some of the challenges we faced too was we had a very fragmented LAN. So we had FortiGates doing sort of traditional perimeter security stuff, but we also had a different SD-WAN solution. So it was very complicated to get all of those pieces to route and interoperate with each other or not step on each other. So troubleshooting was challenging. Now it's all together in one shot, so it's been a lot simpler and easier to manage. The Fortinet products we're using today are like everybody FortiGate, right? FortiSwitch, which has been great. All managed by FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer. We are a very small team compared to maybe what people would expect and having templatized configurations has been huge, especially for rollouts. It just makes things so simple. I'm a huge fan of simplicity and consistency. I'm a big proactive person too. And again, the consistency, simplicity, stability, to me, those are all ways that you get to be proactive by not fighting fires all the time or everything's different in this location than that location, which again, it was before. We compress and change things to make simplicity be one of our kind of ruling design principles.

TL;DR

Ganahl Lumber operates 14 locations across Southern California with challenging outdoor environments requiring extensive wireless coverage through wood-filled yards spanning 2-20 acres.
Before Fortinet, the company suffered from fragmented infrastructure with manual configurations, unsecured switches, and incompatible SD-WAN and security solutions that complicated troubleshooting.
Consolidating onto Fortinet's integrated platform (FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer) enabled templatized configurations and consistent management across all locations with a small IT team.

Summary

Andy Takas, IT Manager at Ganahl Lumber Company, describes how Fortinet's integrated security fabric transformed the company's fragmented network infrastructure. Operating California's oldest lumber yard since 1884 across 14 locations spanning up to 20 acres each, Ganahl faced unique challenges with outdoor wireless coverage, wood materials blocking signals, and a patchwork of incompatible networking solutions. Before Fortinet, the company struggled with manual configurations, unsecured switching gear, and a complicated mix of FortiGate perimeter security alongside a separate SD-WAN solution that created routing conflicts and troubleshooting nightmares. By consolidating onto FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer, the small IT team achieved templatized configurations that enable rapid rollouts and consistent management across all locations. Takas emphasizes that simplicity, consistency, and stability are core design principles that allow his team to operate proactively rather than constantly fighting fires, a transformation made possible by Fortinet's unified platform approach.

Chapters

0:00 - Ganahl Lumber Company Introduction
0:33 - Network Coverage Challenges
0:49 - Pre-Fortinet Infrastructure Problems
1:31 - Fortinet Solution and Benefits

Key Quotes

0:49 "So before Fortinet was really, I would say like fully onboarded, it was just a lot of fragmentation, manual configurations all over the place, a lot of switching gear without passwords."
1:23 "So troubleshooting was challenging. Now it's all together in one shot, so it's been a lot simpler and easier to manage."
1:54 "We are a very small team compared to maybe what people would expect and having templatized configurations has been huge, especially for rollouts."

FAQ

What specific challenges did Ganahl Lumber face with their network infrastructure?

Ganahl struggled with outdoor wireless coverage across large lumber yards (2-20 acres) where wood materials blocked signals, plus a fragmented network with manual configurations, unsecured switches, and incompatible SD-WAN and FortiGate solutions that created routing conflicts and troubleshooting complexity.

How did Fortinet's solution improve operations for Ganahl's small IT team?

By consolidating onto FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer, the team gained templatized configurations that enable rapid, consistent rollouts across all locations, eliminating the need to fight fires and allowing proactive management instead of reactive troubleshooting.

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TL;DR

Summary

Chapters

Key Quotes

FAQ

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