SASE Isn't Revolutionary. It's Evolutionary.

Here's a hot take: the networking hype cycle has moved on from SD-WAN in favor of SASE and now SSE.

To help us understand how these changes are impacting the modern infrastructure team, especially with respect to SD-WAN, Greg welcomes Nav Chander, Head of Service Provider SD-WAN/SASE Product Marketing at Aruba, to the podcast. 

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Key Takeaways

SASE is an Evolutionary Framework, Not a Revolutionary Market Segment

The term emerged from Gartner in late 2019, just before the significant shift to remote work. SASE combines existing networking and security building blocks like zero trust, CASB, SWG, FWaaS, and SD-WAN to address the challenges posed by trends such as cloud migration, increased use of cloud apps, and the diminishing role of the traditional data center security perimeter. This framework provides IT teams with a structured way to deal with integrating networking and security.

SASE is Fundamentally a Combination of SD-WAN and Security Service Edge 

SASE is defined through five major technologies: Cloud Access Security Broker, Secure Web Gateway), Zero Trust Network Access, WAN Edge (primarily SD-WAN), and Firewall as a Service.

The security components have been sub-grouped into the SSE category. The simple equation is SASE = SD-WAN + SSE, meaning both a networking pillar and a security pillar are essential.

SD-WAN is considered critical for its networking capabilities, such as policy control, application steering, maximizing bandwidth usage, and ensuring performance, which are necessary alongside the security functions.

Implementing SASE Often Involves Integrating Multiple Vendors and Requires Careful Consideration in Hybrid Environments

Enterprises and service providers frequently have existing infrastructure and vendor relationships for both networking and security.

While single-vendor SASE stacks exist, a "best-of-breed" approach that integrates solutions from different providers is often preferred by organizations, especially larger ones, to avoid compromising on capabilities in either networking or security. Successfully adopting SASE also necessitates collaboration between traditional networking and security teams within organizations.