CF20: 2023's Top SASE Providers You Should Know
Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Cato Networks and Fortinet all made the list. See who else did and why.
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Omdia’s Fernando Montenegro; Rik Turner, senior principal analyst with Omdia; and Frost & Sullivan’s Vivien Pua cited Palo Alto Networks among leading SASE providers. In March, Palo Alto Networks announced new capabilities to boost its single-vendor SASE solution enabling organizations to automate their IT and network operations center (NOC) functions. Additionally, it unveiled features to secure IoT and automate branch management.
Montenegro, Turner and Pua said Fortinet is among top SASE providers. In March, Fortinet announced several enhancements to FortiSASE, its single-vendor SASE solution, to enable additional deployment flexibility and new secure access capabilities for digital resources across private applications, SaaS and the internet.
Cisco is among leading SASE providers, according to Montenegro and Pua. In February, Cisco announced several product updates spanning networking, security and operations. They include new cloud management tools for industrial IoT applications, simplified dashboards to converge IT and OT operations, and network intelligence updates.
Montenegro said Proofpoint is among specialist SSE-centric vendors that have significant SASE/SSE offerings.
“The fundamental need for adaptable networking capabilities with integrated security hasn’t changed,” said S&P Global’s Eric Hanselman. “Priorities have shifted from the urgency of pandemic-driven VPN and remote working, to a formalization of hybrid working support. That’s meant that deeper support of SaaS-based office productivity applications is now mandatory. The ability to blend SSE and SASE functionality to secure both remote and on-premises workers has become a critical differentiator.”
Montenegro, Turner and Pua cite Check Point Software Technologies among top contenders in SASE. Check Point Harmony Connect SASE is a prevention-focused SASE solution that defends against the latest malware. It secures 55 million corporate access transactions and prevents 240,000 cyberattacks per month.
Montenegro counts Juniper Networks among leading SASE providers.
“There is no SASE model that fits all,” Pua said. “We still believe that an effective SASE model is one that can help organizations, regardless of their size, deal with all the challenges they are facing, in both networking and security aspects. Depending on their needs and infrastructure situation, they can choose to deploy either a service chaining/ component-based SASE model or an integrated/converged SASE platform, provided that it works best for them. The composition of the platform needs continuous evolution, either through in-house development or acquisition, to remain relevant to customers’ evolving use cases.”
Montenegro and Pua cite Forcepoint among top contenders in SASE. In February, Forcepoint unveiled Forcepoint One, an all-in-one cloud platform that simplifies enterprise security by integrating zero trust and SASE technologies, allowing security teams to manage one set of policies through a single console.
Montenegro and Pua said Versa Networks is among leaders in SASE. With Versa Zero Trust Everywhere, enterprises can leverage Versa’s artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-powered unified SASE platform to enable in-line zero trust policy enforcement for both remote workers and onsite/hybrid workers in campus and branch offices.
Turner, Montenegro and Pua count Cato Networks among top contenders in SASE. In June, Cato Networks announced a new SASE throughput record, achieving 5 Gbps on a single encrypted tunnel with all security inspections enabled. It also introduced cloud cross-connect, enabling high-speed, SLA-backed, direct connectivity from Cato Networks into nearly any cloud provider worldwide. Both capabilities extend SASE to meet the needs of large, cloud-centric enterprises.
Montenegro said Zscaler is among specialist SSE-centric vendors that have significant SASE/SSE offerings. According to Dell’Oro’s First Quarter 2023 SASE and SD-WAN Quarterly Report, for the first time since it started tracking SASE in first-quarter 2019, there was a revenue position change in the No. 1 spot, with Zscaler overtaking Cisco.
Montenegro said Broadcom is among broad technology vendors with significant SASE/SSE offerings. Earlier this month, Britain’s competition regulator provisionally cleared the $69 billion Broadcom acquisition of VMware. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ruled the deal would not weaken competition in the server market.. The proposed acquisition is also being examined by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The organization has yet to say whether it will also approve the deal. It, too, has expressed uncertainty about Broadcom’s hold on the server market.
Montenegro said Netskope is among specialist SSE-centric vendors that have significant SASE/SSE offerings. Hughes Network Systems, an EchoStar company, and Netskope have partnered to bring Hughes customers a new SASE solution that combines Hughes managed services expertise with Netskope’s SSE capabilities.
Montenegro said Cloudflare is among top content delivery network (CDN)/platform vendors with significant SASE/SSE offerings. In May, Cloudflare announced it has extended its single-vendor SASE platform, Cloudflare One, to generative AI services. The company said Cloudflare One for AI, a suite of zero trust security controls, will enable enterprises to safely and securely use the latest generative AI tools without putting intellectual property and customer data at risk.
Montenegro said Skyhigh Security is among specialist SSE-centric vendors that have significant SASE/SSE offerings.
“I would say one of the key developments in the market over the last year or two has been the bifurcation of SASE and SSE, the latter being a term Gartner came up with in 2021 or 2022, if I remember correctly,” Turner said. “From the outside, it looked like they did so in response to demands from vendors that were getting lumped into the SASE category even though they didn’t have the connectivity bit of the offering, only the security side of things, and presumably wanted Gartner to clarify that via the creation of a second category, or should that be a sub-category, to facilitate conversations with prospective customers. In other words, they didn’t have to start out saying, ‘Well, we’re almost a SASE, but you bring your own connectivity.'”
Turner, Montenegro and Pua count VMware among top contenders in SASE.
“The requirements for effective SASE capabilities has expanded, with the need to offer more deeply integrated controls for office productivity applications,” Hanselman said. “API-level integration, rather than simple proxy, is now mandatory for effective security. The core SD-WAN requirements are still as strong as ever, but there is more to secure and deeper integration needed to manage today’s more complex threats.”
Turner said Perimeter 81 is among top SASE providers, and Montenegro said it’s among specialist SSE-centric vendors with significant SASE/SSE offerings. Perimeter 81 said its multi-regional SASE network provides a comprehensive set of converged secure network capabilities, delivered and managed over its multi-tenant cloud, providing a secure and scalable network for organizations everywhere.
Montenegro said Microsoft is among broad technology vendors with significant SASE/SSE offerings. Microsoft Security has now surpassed $20 billion in annual revenue, making the business what Turner calls a “serious contender” in various parts of the cyber market.
Montenegro cites Akamai among top CDN/platform vendors with significant SASE/SSE offerings.
“There’s significant innovation taking place in managed SASE services,” Hanselman said. “Those deploying SASE capability today typically need greater support to address the complexities of their environments. An additional shift that’s taking place in the market is the addition of application networking functionality as vendors look to secure inter-application traffic as part of their offerings.”
Montenegro said HPE/Aruba Networks is among broad technology vendors with significant SASE/SSE offerings. In March, HPE announced it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Axis Security, a cloud security provider. This acquisition will allow HPE to expand its edge-to-cloud security capabilities by offering a unified SASE solution to meet the increasing demand for integrated networking and security solutions delivered as a service. HPE will integrate Axis Security technology with its existing Aruba secure networking offerings to complete its SASE offering.
Montenegro said Lookout is among specialist SSE-centric vendors that have significant SASE/SSE offerings. In April, Lookout announced the integration of the Lookout Cloud Security Platform with VMware SD-WAN. The Lookout platform with VMware SD-WAN provides customers with a SASE solution that delivers optimized network connectivity and data protection from any device and any location.
Montenegro said Lookout is among specialist SSE-centric vendors that have significant SASE/SSE offerings. In April, Lookout announced the integration of the Lookout Cloud Security Platform with VMware SD-WAN. The Lookout platform with VMware SD-WAN provides customers with a SASE solution that delivers optimized network connectivity and data protection from any device and any location.
Secure access service edge (SASE) providers have experienced increasing adoption over the past two years with the rise of hybrid working models and the surge in cloud migration among enterprises.
SD-WAN is an overlay network that backhauls traffic to data centers. SASE is a cloud platform that inspects data at various points of presence (PoPs) at the edge. As remote work remains a part of everyday life, architectures like SASE are better suited for remote access than SD-WAN.
This is our second annual “CF20” focused on top SASE providers. Analysts share their views on what it takes to succeed with the technology. It includes a new list and fresh views on changes in the competitive landscape.
SASE Providers Face Strengthening Market
Frost & Sullivan’s Voice of Customer report 2023, which surveyed 2,360 CISOs and C-level leaders globally, showed 56% of the organizations have adopted SASE, and 38% of them plan on doing so by 2024.
Frost & Sullivan’s Vivien Pua
Vivien Pua, senior industry analyst of cybersecurity at Frost & Sullivan, said with the arrival of hybrid workforces and an increasing reliance on cloud-based SaaS applications, her firm expects demand for SASE will continue to increase in the next five years as companies become more digitalized, which requires them to adopt SASE architecture for more agility. Moving forward, SASE providers will see an acceleration of the technology among most organizations that are looking to achieve consistency, flexibility and high performance for both their security and networking needs.
“Vendors with different backgrounds take different approaches to SASE,” she said. “Frost & Sullivan observed more companies, including network and security vendors, and security startups, aggressively promoting SASE architecture over the last two years. SASE vendors continue to move towards unified/converged SASE platforms by developing and buying networking or security capabilities, integrating them into their existing solutions to strengthen their converged SASE offering. The convergence of point products into platforms is expected to increase, with established vendors filling gaps in their existing offerings with internal R&D, and larger vendors acquiring smaller point‐product companies. This can be observed in the recent M&A activities in the market.”
Addressing Aging Infrastructure, Supporting Digital Transformation
Fernando Montenegro, senior principal analyst with Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa), said interest in SASE adoption is high, not so much just to address remote worker needs, which was a thing during the first few years of the pandemic, but also aging infrastructure and support digital transformation.
Omdia’s Fernando Montenegro
“We think there is a clear interest from customers to optimize their security spend,” he said. “The basic [SASE] requirements – providing strong networking and security functionality as a service – remain. We definitely see more vendors supporting additional use cases — remote browser isolation (RBI) is a good example. We think customers expect SASE offerings to be comprehensive (both networking and security needs), but depending on the specific needs of the buyer at that point in time, they may be OK with just a security component — security service edge (SSE) or just the networking functionality (mostly SD-WAN).”
Growing, Evolving Market for SASE Providers
Eric Hanselman, principal research analyst at 451 Research, a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the market for SASE providers continues to grow and evolve.
S&P Global Intelligence’s Eric Hanselman
“The market demands that fueled rapid early growth have expanded as the deployment models have adapted to enterprise needs,” he said. “The split off of SSE was rationalization that addressed different enterprise requirements. The need for the SD-WAN capability that SASE offers is still critical for the modern, distributed organization.”
In the last year, the SASE marketplace has seen a buttressing of existing product offerings, Hanselman said.
“M&A activity has shifted to the managed services arena, where consolidation across providers has seen more activity,” he said. “As later SASE adopters make the transition, service-delivered options are particularly attractive. Ongoing security staff and skill shortages will continue to maintain focus on managed offerings.”
We’ve compiled a list in the slideshow above, in no particular order, of 20 top SASE providers. It’s based on feedback from analysts and recent news reports. The providers are making the most of the ongoing competitive landscape and charting success.
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