SASE market grows 30% in the second quarter
Against the backdrop of an inflationary economy and warnings signs of a recession, the combination of networking, security and other services at the enterprise edge is surging, according to recent analysis. Dell’Oro Group tracked 30% growth in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) market in Q2 and sees spending on pace to pass $6 billion by the end of the year.
For background, here’s an explainer on SASE and another on Security Service Edge (SSE).
According to Dell’Oro’s Mauricio Sanchez, research director for SSE and SD-WAN, chalked the increased appetite for SASE investment up to how “enterprises value SASE’s network and security transformation benefits. Even in an environment with macroeconomic angst, enterprises continued to strategically invest in SASE technologies to secure and improve connectivity for cloud-based apps and hybrid work.”
In terms of other SASE-related trends Dell’Oro is tracking, the leading 11 vendors are winning 80% of the spend with the top four–Broadcom/Symantec, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler–taking half of the revenue. Use cases leading enterprise investment include “zero trust network access (ZTNA) and firewall-as-a-service.” Also of note in an era of open networking and hardware/software disaggregation, Dell’Oro sees integrated SASE solution spend growing at twice the rate of disaggregated SASE.
In terms of what this has to do with operators that have traditionally offered SD-WAN services, there’s an evolution to a SASE offering built using components provided by a range of specialist vendors. Verizon Business, for instance, has an Advanced SASE product described as “merging SD-WAN capabilities with hybrid network connectivity and security services to create a unified, cloud-delivered service able to meet the increasingly complex digital demands of enterprises.” Verizon’s product incorporates technologies from Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Versa Networks and Zscaler.
AT&T Business went to market with its SASE product, alongside Cisco Meraki, described by the operator as a “new managed service [that] helps organizations improve network performance, enable resilient access and defend sensitive data.”
Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, speaking at a recent investment conference, discussed the role of operators in delivering SASE to enterprises. “I think the big shift that is happening in security is the traditional channel partners were hardware resellers,” he said during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. “The new channel is more and more telcos and service providers, system integrators…You’re going to save money, get rid of MPLS, deploy SASE, consolidate seven vendors, put Palo Alto in. That’s not something every customer can do for themselves. That requires them to get an adviser…That adviser now is systems integrators and service providers which is not the traditional channel…So my job has been get closer to the system integrators and service providers and embed our capabilities in them.”
Back to Sanchez: “Enterprises realize that legacy networks and security architectures are inadequate and cannot provide the necessary security and performance in a user and application environment that has become highly distributed, interactive, and mobile across the internet.
“As a result, enterprises are thinking differently about networking and security. Instead of considering them as separate toolsets to be deployed once and infrequently changed, the problem and solution space is conceptualized along a continuum in the emerging view. The vendor community has responded with a service-centric, cloud-based technology solution that provides network connectivity and enforces security between users, devices, and applications.’
