Technologists and their crystal balls are signaling that the “era of SASE is nigh”, and many predict it promises to be a brand-new era for network architecture.

SASE – Secure Access Service Edge – first emerged in 2019 but has risen to prominence in recent months. According to Cognitive Market Research, the SASE sector was valued at US$1.92 billion in 2022 and will reach US$6.57 billion by 2030. This equates to CAGR growth of more than 25 per cent, and is a good reason to take a closer look.

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While it has not yet expanded into common lexicon, Robert Le Busque, regional vice president for Verizon Business in Asia Pacific, says it’s only a matter of time.

“We haven’t yet seen 2023 become ‘the year of SASE’, but we’re definitely entering an era of SASE architecture,” Mr Le Busque said. “It’s not a trend that will be here for 18 months then move on; it will be the defining architecture for the next five to ten years.”

Varying degrees of readiness

According to Mr Le Busque, organisations in the Asia Pacific region are leading the way in the implementation of SASE in many ways. But the level of adoption varies depending on the sector and maturity of their network architecture lifecycle.

Many organisations moved towards software-defined networking (SDN) more than six years ago, which provided a boost in digital transformation funding for the region. Those early adopters of SDN are now well prepared to move to a SASE architecture.

“Some organisations are already well advanced in cloud migration at scale and were already preparing to move to cloud network architectures,” says Mr Le Busque.

“We are seeing pockets of early adoption within Singapore, Malaysia, parts of India and parts of Australia. Interestingly, countries that have not been as far advanced in cloud network architectures – such as Japan – are now catching up very rapidly.”

The benefits of SASE

Any company with a significant number of remote workers will benefit from adopting SASE architectures, as it makes secure connections faster and more resilient. It also provides advanced network security and scalability that is fit for purpose to combat modern-day cyber threats.

One example of this can be seen at a large global healthcare company that employs tens of thousands of staff distributed across the globe and spans a number of business units, each with its own teams, technologies and security policies.

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The company wanted to improve security and harmonise its processes and technology, so it turned to SASE and Verizon’s network-as-a-service offering. First trialled in one business unit, SASE eventually enabled this healthcare company to provide staff with secure internet and application access through mobile devices from anywhere, as well as access to IT resources on both physical and cloud-based servers, all through one tech stack and one service desk.

Choosing the best SASE approach

Currently, most SASE solutions will involve a range of providers offering their individual services.

According to Mr Le Busque, companies can currently choose between implementing a single stack from a single vendor or a best-of-breed offering with a range of services from different vendors.

“Ultimately, organisations that need to scale and have increasing levels of complexity are more likely to go for the best-of-breed stack they build and manage and define themselves,” says Mr Le Busque. “Those with less sophisticated, single-stack network architectures can drive simplicity and cost out of the model.”

Why Verizon?

Verizon has helped its customers to transform their networks and core architectures for 25 years and is now leading the way on SASE.

“We’re now helping companies figure out what multi-cloud and industry-access cloud architecture they need, and what they want is secure-by-design, cloud-ready and agile,” says Mr Le Busque.

Discover how SASE can benefit your organisation with Verizon today.