Summary: In this post, we are going to break down the basics of SASE including what it is, what it’s not, and what types of environments can benefit from it. Let’s start as basic as it gets: SASE stands for Secure Access Service Edge. For the first few years of existence, SASE was a buzzword…
Open Systems was kind enough to invite me, along with other Avant employees and Trusted Advisors, to their headquarters in Zurich Switzerland. Of course, we’d be indulging in Swiss chocolate and fondue, but the intention was to dive deep into their SASE offering, understand exactly the types of customers they’d be a good fit for,…
The second SASE Gartner Magic Quadrant has been released! There have been some major changes from the 2023 version. I read through this report in its entirety, so keep reading for a summary of the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant and my thoughts on this year’s changes. If you’d like to compare the 2024 report with…
Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has been a hot topic in the cloud industry, to say the least. It seemed like it was on the horizon for a long time and in November of 2023, it finally went through. Since then, customers are understandably concerned about their investments in VMware after Broadcom implemented licensing changes around…
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is comprised of many features which can be grouped into two buckets: WAN Edge Services and Network Security Services. The most common feature within the WAN Edge Services is SD-WAN, and the most common features we see on the Network Security side are CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker), ZTNA (Zero…
Gartner has officially released the first ever Single-Vendor SASE Magic Quadrant. The report specifically says it will replace the Market Guide for Single-Vendor SASE, so I think we can expect the SSE and WAN Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrants to stay in place for the time being. I read through this report in its entirety and…
More companies than ever are giving their employees flexibility around location. This can look like a hybrid model, where employees go into the office a few days a week, or a fully remote workforce. As a result, more job candidates expect this location flexibility and may consider it a deal-breaker if a potential employer doesn’t…
If you’ve read my article on SD-WAN architecture types, you’ll know that the main difference between a gateway- and POP-based SD-WAN solution is a network backbone connecting the POPs. In that post, I gave a brief description of the scenarios in which this network backbone would be beneficial, but I’ll dive a bit deeper here….
In 2021, Gartner completed the SASE puzzle by introducing SSE as a standalone solution. SSE (Security Service Edge) is the network security portion of SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). Some companies don’t need the Access (mainly SD-WAN) portion of SASE, so SSE is what they should be looking at. The SASE Formula: SD-WAN + SSE…
The term “SASE” started off as an allusive acronym that was hard to define and even harder to understand. SASE isn’t necessarily a product or a one-size-fits-all solution. SASE is a framework, and while it’s comprised of different network access and security features, those features may vary from provider to provider. It has always been…