New Gartner Report: 2021 Strategic Roadmap for SASE Convergence

Digitalization, work-from-anywhere, and cloud computing have accelerated SASE offerings to address the need for secure and optimized access, anytime, anywhere, and on any device. In Gartner’s new report from March 25, Neil MacDonald, Nat Smith, Lawrence Orans, and Joe Skorupa provide invaluable insights with a clear message to enterprises: “SASE is a pragmatic and compelling model that can be partially or fully implemented today.” And, enterprises should build a strategy for replacing legacy point products with a converged SASE platform.

The migration to SASE will enable enterprises to successfully address the current and future networking and security challenges: 

• Shifting to cloud-delivered security to protect anywhere, anytime access to digital capabilities 
• Simplifying security management that has become complex due to multiple vendors, policies, and appliances  
• Reducing cost with MPLS replacement and SD-WAN alternative projects  
• Better utilizing resources and skills to overcome organizational silos and facilitate growth 

Practical Advice to Follow

Gartner analyzes the gaps between the future and current state of SASE offerings, and provides a strategic roadmap, migration plan, and  advice on SASE adoption over the next five years.  

 Short term recommendations: 

• Deploy ZTNA/SDP to replace legacy VPN for the remote workforce 
• Implement phase-out tactics for on-premises hardware in favor of SASE services 
• Reduce cost and complexity by leveraging converged offerings of SWGs, CASBs, and VPN 
• Initiate branch transformation projects to integrate cloud-based security services 

Longer–term recommendations: 

• Consolidate SASE offerings to a single vendor or two explicitly partnered vendors 
• Implement ZTNA/SDP for all users, at all locations 
• Prefer SASE offerings that allow you to control privacy and compliance related matters 

• Create a sassy team of networking and security experts responsible for secure access across all edges 

Strategic Assumptions to Consider 

The report brings new statistics and understandings of market trends, naturally accelerated by the global crisis. 

• By 2024, 30% of enterprises will adopt cloud-delivered SWG, CASB, ZTNA, and FWaaS from the same vendor, up from 5% in 2020 
• By 2025, 60% of enterprises will have explicit strategies and timelines for SASE adoption, up from 10% in 2020 
• By 2023, to deliver flexible, cost-effective scalable bandwidth, 30% of enterprises will have only Internet WAN connectivity, up from 15% in 2020.