The first virtual edition of the SASE Conference was a great success. VMware was a Gold sponsor, with a presence that included a virtual booth, chat sessions, and two presentations featuring Craig Connors, VP and CTO of VMware’s Service Provider and Edge business.
Day one of the conference focused on understanding the concept and application of SASE, offering different perspectives from analysts and a live debate about whether SASE is an architecture or a product. Representatives gave tutorial and keynote sessions surrounding the basic infrastructure and concept of SASE.
Access and security for the anywhere workforce
Connors led a presentation on Rethinking the WAN as an Anywhere Workforce Network. The shift to distributed enterprises post-pandemic, as well as increased consumption of SaaS and IaaS services, means that both users and applications are “all over the place,” said Connors. This has created a lot of access and security challenges around device trust, network performance and resilience, protecting sensitive data, and how we effectively scale our operations to support all these types of users accessing all these types of applications. Consistency, no matter if you’re at home, on the road or in the office, is also key.
It’s really important for folks to remember that zero trust is not a product, it’s a new way of thinking.
Craig Connors
What’s the solution? VMware SASE™, said Connors, “We’re bringing together the cloud networking solutions that we have and the cloud security solutions that we’re developing to deliver a complete end-to-end solution to cover all of these different use cases.” Watch the video to learn more.
All about zero trust
Day two featured presentations related to the SASE ecosystem, service provider experiences, and ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Architecture) principles, while also offering a lively debate about what “zero trust” means.
“VMware SASE is intrinsically secured, it is cloud delivered, and it provides a global presence for securing the Anywhere Workforce for you,” said Connors, who took part in the discussion about what zero trust means for the changing landscape of networks. “It’s really important for folks to remember that it’s not a product, it’s a new way of thinking.” To learn more about Connors’ and the other panelists’ perspectives on this critical topic, watch the video.
More about VMware SASE
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is the convergence of cloud networking and cloud security that delivers secure, anywhere access to applications, regardless of location. VMware SASE expands the unique advantages of VMware SD-WAN™ with additional services across global and geographically distributed points of presence (PoPs), providing the closest on-ramp to cloud and SaaS applications, while securing access to these applications.
VMware SD-WAN also encompasses VMware Secure Access™, which combines the consistent, secure cloud application access functionality of VMware SD-WAN with the capability of VMware Workspace ONE to allow only trusted devices and users to access applications hosted on-premises, or in the cloud.
VMware Cloud Web Security™ brings no-compromise security, rich user experience, and simplified operations and management. It protects the anywhere workforce by administering security including SSL decryption, security inspection and enforcement on the optimal path between users and applications.
VMware Edge Network Intelligence™ adds an intelligence and big-data component to VMware SASE. It’s an AIOps solution that gives IT true visibility and analytics for the IoT and end user devices on their network.
