Versa Networks is helping business embrace lean IT and secure access service edge (SASE) at the same time.

The San Jose, California-based vendor announced that its Versa Titan SD-WAN solution now offers several SASE capabilities. Versa launched a SASE offering last summer, but Tuesday’s announcement supports a different use case: lean IT.

Versa initially launched Titan as a simplified and less expensive version of its secure SD-WAN offering. Titan caters to small IT organizations that lack security and network expertise and want to cut down on vendor sprawl. According to Versa, such organizations often require two or more weeks to successfully deploy SASE solutions. Titan’s new capabilities speed up SASE deployment and simplify management for lean IT companies.

Apurva Mehta, Versa’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said the offering “democratizes SASE.”

Versa’s Mehta Apurva

“Many organizations looking to simplify their IT infrastructure and policies do not need an on-premises solution and are looking for something cloud-delivered with lightweight configuration, management and elasticity,” Mehta said. “However, they do not want to compromise on security, network performance or resiliency. Versa Titan delivers that cloud service for organizations looking for simplicity and an out-of-the-box SASE service that requires very little manual installation or configuration.”

The additional features include secure web gateway; Versa Secure Access and Versa Secure Access client; and zero-trust network access.

Titan already featured next-gen firewall, antivirus and other security elements, in addition to its SD-WAN capabilities.

Versa said that channel partners, MSPs and VARs will find the solution easy to quote and simple to deploy, due to its single-vendor nature. Partners can also use Titan’s cloud-managed platform to build recurring revenue.

Customer and Partner Perspectives

Tom Kraft, who leads IT at an environmental services consultancy named Gel Group, said his team needed to support a plethora of work-from-home employees in 2020. Versa Titan delivered a combination of secure networking and cloud-based scalability for business-critical applications.

“To reduce the number of incidents and security gaps, we had to reduce the amount of appliance and application sprawl, and needed an easy-to-use cloud native solution that could offer secure site-to-site and client-to-cloud connectivity,” Kraft said.

Jayesh Dave serves as chief technology officer for Atlanta-based MSP Ripple IT. Dave said SMB customers are struggling with “sprawl at the edge of the network.”

“For smaller organizations, being able to deliver a reliable and secure network without having to deploy separate technologies for each function is critical,” Dave said. “Versa Titan tightly integrated SASE functions make the solution easy. By unifying complex networking, advanced security, analytics and reporting in one place, Versa Titan effectively eliminates the sprawl without giving up reliability or security.”

We recently spoke to John Atchison, head of global partner marketing, about Versa’s ambitions for the channel.

Other Vendors

Other vendors made announcements around SASE.

McAfee enhanced its SASE solutions by forming partnerships with three zero-trust network access companies. In addition, cloud network security provider iboss announced its first channel partner program, two months after wrapping a $145 million funding round.