Secure access service edge (SASE) products represent one of the most important technology breakthroughs in cybersecurity and networking during the past few years. The market is growing at an annual rate of 28.3% and is projected to reach more than $5.36 billion by 2027, according to Market Research Future.1
Demand for SASE products is being driven by the need to bolster edge security and resilience at a time when hybrid work, internet of things, artificial intelligence and other trends are expanding the attack surface and creating additional risk of cyberattacks and significant business disruptions.
As described by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), SASE is a framework that outlines both the network and security capabilities required for managing highly distributed environments, including on-premises, hybrid cloud, remote, edge and remote worker use cases.
With SASE solutions, organizations combine security and networking functionality to support resiliency in edge computing by leveraging zero trust architectures, malware protection, cloud access security broker and other vital elements of a cloud security platform.
SASE functionality is typically delivered as a cloud service but usually requires a hardware platform to deploy any required on-premises software or virtual capabilities, such as SD-WAN. The goal of a SASE framework is to help ensure reliable, centralized, policy-based management to make it easy to scale with resiliency to meet the demands of the business.
For a more detailed look at SASE, see ESG’s related white paper: Dell Technologies: The Foundation for a Flexible SASE Journey.
Selecting a Comprehensive SASE Solution
In evaluating potential solutions and partners, it is important for decision-makers to understand their existing environments and determine criteria for selecting a SASE solution to meet their specific business needs. Here are six factors to weigh when choosing a SASE solution for your organization:
Use standardized hardware: Organizations should use a proven, universal hardware platform to ensure consistency across all sites that require hardware, along with the capability to deliver the requisite performance, scale and resiliency. This includes hosting all virtual network functions as well as potentially custom business applications.
Leverage existing capabilities: The solution should be able to work with or integrate with any existing security capabilities. Because most organizations already have solutions in place, it is important to leverage those assets as others are added to fill out the framework. This minimizes the need to rip and replace existing solutions.
Choose a partner that offers global support: This is necessary to ensure that any potential issues are addressed rapidly before becoming urgent resiliency problems that negatively affect productivity, security, uptime, availability, user experience and brand reputation.
Use a framework that offers flexibility to select best-of-breed solutions for specific business needs: As SASE solutions evolve and functionality is increasingly delivered in the cloud, there are huge benefits to being able to choose the best solution for your environment, rather than being limited by leveraging only the solutions included in the platform.
Walk before you run: Decision-makers should be realistic about getting started with SASE. Do you need to deploy every piece of functionality at once? How much new technology can your organization realistically absorb? You can gain valuable experience and expertise by getting started with one or two functions and expanding strategically over time.
Leverage experts to help get started (and beyond): Organizations should work with a trusted partner throughout the SASE journey, according to ESG, to take advantage of the partner’s support, solutions, services and partner ecosystem.
2021 SASE Trends: Plans Coalesce but Convergence Will Be Phased
ESG surveyed 613 cybersecurity, networking, and IT professionals involved in networking and security technology and processes, with some level of familiarity with SASE. Read on to learn the SASE trends that can be found from the findings of these surveys.
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When it comes to deploying a highly resilient, scalable framework for SASE, Dell Technologies provides significant advantages other vendors are hard-pressed to match. Dell offers a flexible approach to SASE that leverages a growing ecosystem of networking, security and managed services partners.
The Dell Technologies model for SASE enables organizations to build and scale secure, global connectivity, with the flexibility to use best-of-breed technologies from Dell and its partners.
These include solutions such as Dell Virtual Edge Platform; VMware SD-WAN; Versa SD-WAN; SonicWall next-generation firewalls; Zscaler Cloud Security Platform; Dell ProDeploy Enterprise Suite; and Dell managed services partners.
Dell provides a tested and proven universal platform for organizations to build a best-of-breed approach to SASE, leveraging its expanding ecosystem of networking and security technology partners. For more information on how to ensure your successful SASE journey, please visit Dell Technologies for a comprehensive cybersecurity health check from ESG analysts.
1 “Secure Access Services Edge (SASE) Market Worth USD $5.36 Billion by 2027 at 28.3% Annual Growth,” Market Research Future, Jan. 10, 2022
