SASE market emerges as the ‘wave of the future’

As SASE technology gains recognition and marketing hype, incumbent vendors are promoting their strong points to claim a stake in the SASE market. This vendor rush has spawned a variety of approaches, such as single-vendor SASE and multivendor SASE. With the latter, customers stitch together networking and security functions from different vendors.

Cato Networks and Open Systems offer single-vendor platforms that distinguish them as top SASE contenders, Garson said. While these vendors can “deliver a platform that works without having to cobble together pieces,” he said only a handful of vendors can accomplish this approach. Burke agreed, saying he doubted single-vendor SASE would be widely attainable, which will push vendors to better accommodate multivendor approaches within their frameworks.

“Other vendors will emerge into the space and probably come in with more flexibility as a differentiator,” Burke said, citing Palo Alto Networks as an example.

Palo Alto completed its acquisition of SD-WAN vendor CloudGenix in April, with the expectation to build a SASE platform Cisco, meanwhile, announced in mid-June a software update to its Viptela SD-WAN devices, which integrates security capabilities from its Cisco Umbrella portfolio into the same offering. But Cisco’s integration plans don’t always go smoothly, Garson said.

“[Customers] have seen how Cisco acquires companies with a plan to integrate the platform, and it doesn’t always go so well,” Garson said. Even if companies have legacy Cisco environments, most are willing to evaluate other vendors, he added.