Leaving Complexity Behind: Open Systems SASE Experience

Why it is worth reading

Data and applications sit in the cloud and on premises, people work from everywhere - and CIOs at midsize enterprises rarely have the resources or skills to secure all of it alone. Even SASE, the answer to the dissolving perimeter, brings its own complexity: multiple services, often from different vendors, run by a team that has to master network, cloud, and security at once.

This white paper makes the case for SASE as a managed experience instead of another product stack: SSE and SD-WAN as a service, operated by the tier-3 engineers who build the platform, with one user-based flat fee covering onboarding, upgrades, and unlimited support. The delivery record behind it: more than 10,000 locations across 184 countries and over 1.5 million users.

What is inside

1. The stress and mess of delivering secure accessWhy the CIO's job got harder as security moved from the data center to an edge that is everywhere.
2. What is and why SASEThe Gartner-coined model - and an honest look at the complexity it adds when assembled from multiple vendors.
3. Leaving complexity behindSASE Experience as a service: daily management and monitoring offloaded to the vendor's own support and development team.
4. A better experience with SASEDedicated tier-3 engineers, follow-the-sun support with 2- to 4-hour SLAs, and a flat OPEX fee with no CAPEX.
5. Implementing SASE in your environmentWhat the rollout looks like on a unified data platform: define policies once, enforce them everywhere.

While SASE offers many advantages, it is essential to recognize it adds yet another layer of complexity.

Who it is for

• CIOs at midsize enterprises without a large network and security team
• IT leaders comparing do-it-yourself SASE with a fully managed service
• Teams tired of coordinating separate vendors for networking and security