The adoption of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) has become a strategic imperative for organisations in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, and aims to bolster cybersecurity, improve network performance and enhance business agility.

The case studies in the qualitative research commissioned by S&P Global Market Intelligence on behalf of Verizon Business Group¹ shows a timeline of APAC organisations’ journeys.

Source: Shutterstock

“We learned that the global pandemic was an accelerant of digital transformation that underpinned a broad spectrum of readiness and capability for customers. Initially, they were compelled to change their operating environments very rapidly, then many went through a process to understand and appreciate the value they can unlock from that transition by migrating to a SASE environment,” said Rob Le Busque, Regional Vice President at Verizon APAC.

“We see the adoption of SASE continue to accelerate among enterprise and government customers in this region for two reasons. First, there is an intrinsic cost benefit to moving to SASE architecture. Second, the cyber attack surface is increasing and becoming more complex; SASE provides the ability to containerise applications or servers under attack,” said Le Busque.

Delivering outcomes from SASE

The research revealed the value for CIOs in examining the differences between a project’s expected outcomes versus the reality. For SASE, many expect reduced risk, cost savings and improved productivity and/or user experience.

While most participants with complete (or nearly complete) SASE projects reported that they achieved their expected outcomes, they also discovered some unexpected results.

For example, a large mining and metals organisation in Singapore reported: “One unexpected benefit of a SASE framework is to have synergies and convergence of interests between infra/network and security where usually it is a fight between what performance/user experience versus security constraints will be considered (which is rare enough to be highlighted!). Here we have a common ground where both can be conciliated.”

Effects of SASE on the overall digital transformation journey

While most participating organisations in the research did not consider their SASE deployment a part of a larger digital transformation initiative, some said that SASE helped their larger transformation project by reducing risk and simplifying user experience.

“We started off with streamlining connectivity and the effort that spearheaded the related identity and access management projects are now supporting almost all the other applications as well. So, yes, there was an acceleration effect in our DX journey,” said a regional information security manager for a large IT services firm in Australia.

“We hear from our customers that SASE shortened provisioning times and access to networks on traditional VPN architectures. This solves the first principle issue of connecting dynamic users to dynamic applications. SASE provides capability and uplift to do that as organisations,” said Rob Le Busque.

Key benefits from SASE, according to the research, included:

• Unified security architecture,
• Enhanced user experience,
• Scalability and flexibility,
• Improved compliance and governance.

Source: Shutterstock

Identifying top SASE deployment roadblocks

Several themes emerged regarding the barriers participants encountered and expected to encounter during SASE implementation.

Technical debt was most cited as the barrier to overcome before gaining the rewards of SASE. “You need to invest time up front to fully understand all aspects, rather than piecing it all together in a troubleshooting mode during project implementation,” said a CIO of a large Hong Kong-based Insurance organisation.

The main deployment roadblocks included:

• Legacy infrastructure challenges: Legacy systems and outdated network architectures pose integration challenges during SASE adoption. CIOs should address compatibility issues, data migration complexities, and ensure integration with existing IT environments to maximise the benefits of SASE while minimising disruptions to business operations.
• Skills gap and talent acquisition: The shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals and network engineers is a significant barrier to effective SASE implementation. CIOs should invest in talent development, upskilling initiatives, and partnerships with managed security service providers (MSSPs) to bridge the skills gap and build internal expertise for managing SASE solutions effectively.
• Change management and organisational alignment: Implementing SASE often requires cultural and organisational changes to move to a Zero Trust security model, including the adoption of agile practices, and increasing collaboration between IT and business functions. CIOs must address resistance to change, communicate the benefits of SASE to stakeholders and align the organisation’s goals with security and digital transformation initiatives.

Lessons Learned from SASE Implementation

The final section of the study focused on gathering participants’ insights they gained during a SASE implementation project.

• Needs assessment: Participants noted the need for a strong requirements framework and business case development before initiating the project. They recommended taking a ‘security first’ approach and advised prospective implementors not to run SASE implementation like a network infrastructure alteration. They cited the importance of obtaining support from key stakeholders and establishing strong governance structures.
• Upskill, plan and prepare: Participants emphasised increasing internal competencies and resources in advance. A common theme was the importance of understanding the data, application and device assets involved in or affected by SASE.
• Vendor/partner selection: Study participants recommended focusing on vendor competencies, examining specific SASE requirements and comparing vendor claims versus actual competencies, although they reported this was difficult. Participants also mentioned the importance of using a tried-and-tested partner and establishing strong vendor and partner relations.
• Deployment planning: Respondents said using a standardised deployment model was particularly important, as well as planning and scheduling the rollout.

Conclusion

SASE implementation offers significant outcomes such as unified security, enhanced user experience, scalability and compliance for organisations in APAC. However, barriers such as legacy infrastructure, skills gaps, and resistance to organisational change require planning, talent development, and effective change management.

By learning from industry best practices, and emphasising user-centric design and continuous monitoring, CIOs can collaborate with CISOs to successfully navigate SASE adoption, strengthen cybersecurity resilience, and drive business agility.

Download the full report to read the findings in detail, and to talk to an expert on SASE deployment best practices and technologies, contact a Verizon representative near you.

¹ “SASE Enables Zero-Trust Networking, Improves Business Agility, Reduces Costs and Streamlines Digital Transformations”

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There is no denying that cloud computing has revolutionized digitalization and enabled companies to do a lot more than they ever could. Yet, the mainframe is still a key component in ensuring they are able to run their business workloads properly with minimal disruptions.

In fact, according to a recent IBM study, 71% of IT executives surveyed feel that critical mainframe-based applications are still central to their business strategy. The study also highlighted that the percentage of organizations leveraging mainframe assets in a hybrid cloud environment could increase more than two-fold.

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Looking at specific industries, the financial industry would most likely be the most relevant industry to continue leveraging its mainframe while enjoying the capabilities offered by the cloud. The IBM z16, which was unveiled last year, is now enabling organizations, especially those in the financial industry to embrace modernization with minimal complexities.

Simply put, the IBM z16 brings AI and cyber resiliency into the hybrid cloud by using innovative on-chip AI inferencing and quantum-safe technologies. It can accelerate decision velocity and provide the agility needed for business to move forward. It is also the world’s first system with the computing power and intelligent infrastructure to prevent fraud in real-time at scale – a cross-industry challenge that, for example, cost financial services institutions US$32 billion in card losses in 2021.

With the ability to analyze and process more than 300 billion high-value transactions with just one millisecond of latency, this next-generation IBM zSystem features a multitude of industry-first breakthroughs. This includes deep-learning inferencing (AI) for mission-critical workloads like credit cards, healthcare, and financial transactions. BNP Paribas for example has been able to innovate its core systems that reside on Z. It opens up to APIs, enabling a developer to be the cloud and write an application via z16.

“You can have a developer on native cloud on AWS, Azure, or IBM Cloud, writing an application calling an API on Z. The developer never knows it’s Z API, but only knows that it’s asking for data. That’s powerful. And that’s how organizations like BNP Paribas are doing,” explained Jose Castano, Vice President WW Sales IBM Z & LinuxOne.

What makes this possible is the IBM Telum processor. The Telum processor is IBM’s first processor to contain on-chip acceleration for AI inferencing while a transaction is taking place. This allows clients to apply this first-in-industry integrated accelerator to their enterprise AI workloads. The on-chip AI design unlocks the low latency inferencing necessary to analyze transactions as they happen to prevent fraud in real-time and at a massive scale.

(Source – IBM)

IBM z16 in the financial industry

According to Castano, in the financial industry, the z16 mainframe can help with loan approvals by helping to speed up approval of business or consumer loans from days to hours or minutes. It can also assist in clearing and settlement by determining which trades and/or transactions may have a high-risk exposure before settlement as well as designing better model risk against fraud and theft.

Specifically, when it comes to banking and the financial industry, IBM z16 can:

• Predict and automate with accelerated AI1 – Prevent fraud before it happens by scoring up to 100% of credit card transactions in real time.
• Secure with a cyber resilient system – Defend against ransomware and cyberwar; show audit-ready compliance in days not weeks; automatically move workloads in minutes if disaster strikes.
• Modernize with hybrid cloud – Enhance customer experiences through fast cloud integrations, existing skills, and familiar tools.

In Malaysia, Catherine Lian, Managing Director and Technology Leader of IBM Malaysia pointed out that with over 70% of the global transaction value running on IBM zSytems, the top banks in Malaysia are relying on IBM’s mainframe, showing a significant penetration in the financial market in the country. Recipients of Malaysia’s digital banking licenses are also leveraging z16, which Lian believes will allow IBM to build a whole resiliency strategy with them. This will enable IBM to offer its unmatched security offerings and brand agility.

For Lian, success in the digital economy is contingent on making IT a creator of value— internally and externally. Fundamental to this is a flexible infrastructure that positions organizations strategically, leveraging AI and hybrid cloud while protecting existing investments and improving sustainability.

“The IBM z16 platform delivers this with scale, agility, resiliency, performance, a security-rich environment IBM z16 gives businesses across industries in Malaysia the confidence to build the future of their business,” concluded Lian.

Jose Castano, Vice President WW Sales IBM Z & LinuxOne and Catherine Lian, Managing Director and Technology Leader, IBM Malaysia

Mainframes are here to stay

Castano also pointed out that IBM z16 allows clients to fully embrace the hybrid cloud by empowering developers to modernize existing data and applications that reside on IBM z16 with new digital services across complex, multi-cloud environments. For decades, key industries have turned to IBM zSystems and IBM storage to manage transactions and store customer data, with IBM partnering with some of the largest banking, insurance, public sector, and healthcare institutions – including two-thirds of the Fortune 100.

When it comes to security, Castano also highlighted that the z16 represents the industry’s first quantum-safe system, underpinned by lattice-based cryptography – an approach for constructing security primitives that helps protect data and systems against current and future threats. For background, quantum-safe cryptography refers to efforts to identify algorithms that are resistant to attacks by both classical and near-future capabilities of quantum computers, to keep information assets secure even after a large-scale quantum computer has been built.

“The global economy runs on the mainframe. If all mainframes were to stop today, you couldn’t use your credit card. You won’t be able to work with your bank or even reserve an airline ticket or even claim insurance. It’s a global economy. We have all the stats and public references for this. And this is what the z16 is about. It’s about modernization and security with the hybrid cloud,” explained Castano.

The post IBM z16 reduces complexities of the hybrid cloud in the financial industry appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

As demands continue to ramp up rapidly overburdened data centers won’t be sustainable for long. To manage new challenges around bandwidth, security and emerging technologies such as AI and 5G, more processing power will be required by businesses. 

To accommodate for increasing workloads, data needs to be moved away from the central data center alone, and distributed across a variety of platforms such as core data centers, cloud and particularly, the edge.

Gathering more limelight recently, much of what 5G and IoT can offer is only made possible through edge computing. It brings data storage and computation closer to where it’s needed, expediting processing and at the same time, minimizing latency.

But it also helps with ‘cloud offload’, where network traffic going to and from the cloud can be drastically reduced. 

With the immense growth in the amount of data being generated, moving data to and from the cloud is not only time consuming, but costly. The concept of cloud offload has arisen because of this, and edge computing allows for value to be extracted from data at the location where it’s generated. If necessary, it can even be ‘downsized’ to be sent over to the cloud for storage or analysis.

With this said, will edge computing replace the cloud?

The edge and the cloud are part of the same continuum, and the edge can be thought of as an enabler for the cloud to expand its reach. 

Edge computing does not focus on storing data, rather, it is designed to gather and process data on-site quickly, and analyze data in real-time. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is made to store data, and can easily be scaled according to needs.

Take a look at public cloud providers such as AWS and the complementary role of the edge in cloud computing is evident. 

For the enterprise looking to do on-premise edge computing, Amazon’s AWS Outpost – a fully assembled rack of computing and storage that mimics the hardware design of Amazon’s own data centers – will be installed at the client’s premises. 

Outpost runs on services such as the EC2 compute service, which makes it operationally similar to the cloud.

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Edge computing is still in the early stages, but it is already playing a key role in shaping the industry today, and investment from big industry players shows its early worth. 

Companies such as Walmart are already using it to generate profit: the US retail giant plans to rent out space at its supercenters as edge computing data centers scattered regularly across the country. 

To keep up, enterprises must begin to invest more into their data infrastructure, and start implementing edge computing in stages.

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