RWS_Spring_21

W hen Gartner proposed the concept of a converged and cloud-delivered se- cure access service edge (SASE, pronounced sassy) back in mid- 2019, it was positioned as a better enabler of businesses’ “digital transformations,” which increases the need for speed and agility as well for remote and mobile access and security. “Network and net- work security architectures were designed for an era that is waning, and they are unable to effectively serve the dynamic secure access requirements of digital business- es,” said the research and consul- tancy firm at the time. This notion of converging net- working (such as software defined WANs or SD-WAN) and security services (such as SWG, CASB and firewall as a service or FWaaS) im- mediately made sense, and folks listened; SASE services started pop- ping up from several networking vendors, including as substitutes for SD-WAN plus security. Gartner estimated that by 2024, at least 40 percent of enterprises would have explicit strategies to adopt SASE. Then almost overnight, the need for IT systems to provide robust access and security out to users on and off the edge off networks suddenly took on huge new im- portance. A survey of IT directors and executives by Cato Networks, for instance, found that manag- ing mobile/remote access was the second-most-cited IT challenge in 2020, named by 37 percent of respondents. In a similar 2018 survey, managing remote and mo- bile access was sixth on the list in terms of IT executive challenges. Similarly, the top three networking challenges cited by respondents “all were related to site connec- tivity,” said the Cato report. Those included bandwidth costs (46 percent), performance between locations (46 percent), and man- aging the network (44 percent). Back in 2019, when Gartner ar- gued for the importance of moving away from “the legacy data center as the center of the universe of networking and network security architectures” to a type of multi- verse of users, locations, devices, and sessions, most analyst never could have comprehended the massive displacement of workers to the remote edge that took place in 2020 and the subsequent need for built-in cloud connectivity. “The enterprise perimeter is no longer a location,” said Gartner in 2019, “it is a set of dynamic edge capabilities delivered when needed as a service from the cloud.” Since then, digital trans- formation went into hyperdrive, and SASE was already out there on the edge waiting. And as it turns out, surveys by Cato Networks suggest SASE users actually were better positioned to survive the shift to remote working. Certainly, the sudden push to cloud connectivity and remote and mobile strained corporate network resources, even for those compa- nies involved in digital transforma- tions. But a Cato Network survey of companies with either SD-WAN, MPLS or a mix of MPLS and VPN back- bones, and under some degree of digital transformation, found that companies utilizing SASE were more confident in their ability to handle the effects and challenges of digi- tal transformation and the move to remote work. In terms of agility, performance, security, and management, respon- dents running SASE architectures repeatedly expressed the highest levels of confidence. And when comparing confidence levels pre- and post-digital transformation, other network architectures often saw decreases in confidence levels post-digital-transformation. Asked if respondents can provide access to cloud-based resources with the performance Right on the Edge By Martin Vilaboy SASE networking was primed and ready for remote work 52 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com NETWORKS