Good things come in threes: Musketeers, primary colors, little pigs. When it comes to SASE, the rule of three applies to areas that are ripe for transformation: clouds, workforces, and edge applications. A new analysis by Dell’Oro Group argues that modern digital enterprises need next-generation SASE solutions that address these three key elements. “The Need for Next-Gen SASE to Score the Transformation Trifecta of Distributed Cloud, Workforce, and Edge Applications,” sponsored by VMware, is available today on the VMware SASE website.
The recent pandemic accelerated enterprise requirements, leading to the development of first-generation SASE solutions that largely focused on the needs of the distributed workforce. The paper argues that as SASE evolves, those requirements should take inter- and intra-corporate networking needs more into account. As new enterprise use cases emerge that are latency and jitter sensitive, there is a need for compute pools and applications to be deployed at the edge. The Dell’Oro analysis calls for next-gen SASE solutions to evolve with these new requirements in order to stitch existing distributed workforces and environments together.
Opportunities for transformation in three important areas
Enterprise IT architecture has changed significantly over the last few years. To remain competitive, organizations need better tools to manage high levels of distributed users, data, and applications. IT teams should focus on three transformational initiatives to keep up with this shift towards a distributed enterprise:
Cloud application transformation: Kickstarted by the pandemic, enterprises shifted to online business models and placed a greater emphasis on public cloud-based applications. To continue to take advantage of this model, companies adopted methods such as microservices, continuous and fast application evolution, virtualized hardware environments, elastic cloud infrastructure, and perimeter-less security that were pioneered by the cloud hyperscalers. However, many enterprises must use these methods in hybrid or multi-cloud environments. This has significant implications for enterprise WANs and security.
Workforce transformation: Fully remote and hybrid work has moved from an occasional benefit to a requirement. But it brings security concerns including unmanaged devices connecting to the corporate network, less anti-malware protection when connecting from outside the corporate perimeter, data leakage, and adherence to compliance mandates. Deployment issues can include getting the right equipment to workers quickly and network bandwidth restrictions that lessen productivity. Enterprises need to reevaluate existing WANs and their security tools for longer term success.
Edge transformation: Companies are deploying specialized compute pools at the edge to support latency-sensitive, high-bandwidth applications such as computer vision, AI/ML analytics, IoT devices, 5G communications, augmented reality, and new healthcare methods. As these innovations grow, multiply, and even become commonplace, there will be an increased need for edge computing to process incredibly high amounts of data with real-time performance. Enterprises should evaluate not only their edge compute needs but the connectivity necessary to take advantage of emerging technologies.
Most enterprises have begun understanding the implications of cloud and workforce transformation on their WAN networking and security, but only some have started considering the edge transformation aspects of their environments. Current hub-and-spoke WAN architectures cannot meet the needs of these three transformation areas. The time is right for a new approach to enterprise networking.
Why SASE grew too fast, and what first-generation SASE solutions got wrong
What a WAN that supports future cloud, workforce and application transformation should look like
Key characteristics of networking, security, and manageability that next-generation SASE solutions must enable such as strong SD-WAN capabilities, end-to-end visibility through AI, interoperability, simplified business policies, and certified security
