By creating a single view of all network data, you can do things better like correlating threat information to identify real attacks or keep a log of packet statistics to better diagnose intermittent networking problems.

However, to turn data into value with the limitations of traditional systems, we must be creative with the solution. We must find ways to integrate the different repositories in various appliances. It’s not an easy task but an architectural shift that I’ve written about in the past, SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), should help significantly.

SASE is a new enterprise networking technology category introduced by Gartner in 2019. It represents a change in how we connect our sites, users, and cloud resources.

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During its inception, we had the early adopters and pure SD-WAN players. Soon it became obvious that something was missing, and that missing component was “security.” However, security vendors have highlighted the importance of security from the very beginning.

Today, the market seems to be moving in the direction where the security vendors are focusing on delivering SD-WAN features around pervasive security. The Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure has made a substantial prediction. It states, “By 2024, 50% of new firewall purchases in distributed enterprises will utilize SD-WAN features with the growing adoption of cloud-based services, up from less than 20% today.”

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In a cloud-centric world, users and devices require access to services everywhere. The focal point has changed. Now it is the identity of the user and device as opposed to the traditional model that focused solely on the data center. As a result, these environmental changes have created a new landscape that we need to protect and connect.

This new landscape is challenged by many common problems. The enterprises are loaded with complexity and overhead due to deployed appliances for different technology stacks. The legacy network and security designs increase latency. In addition, the world is encrypted; this dimension needs to be inspected carefully, without degrading the application performance.

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Today the telecom industry has identified the need for faster end-user-data rates. Previously users were happy to call and text each other. However, now mobile communication has converted our lives in such a dramatic way it is hard to imagine this type of communication anymore.

Nowadays, we are leaning more towards imaging and VR/AR video-based communication. Therefore, considering such needs, these applications are looking for a new type of network. Immersive experiences with 360° video applications require a lot of data and a zero-lag network.

To give you a quick idea, VR with a resolution equivalent to 4K TV resolution would require a bandwidth of 1Gbps for a smooth play or 2.5 Gbps for interactive; both requiring a minimal latency of 10ms and minimal delay. And that's for round-trip time. Soon these applications will target the smartphone, putting additional strains on networks. As AR/VR services grow in popularity, the proposed 5G networks will yield the speed and the needed performance.

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In this day and age, demands on networks are coming from a variety of sources, internal end-users, external customers and via changes in the application architecture. Such demands put pressure on traditional architectures.

To deal effectively with these demands requires the network domain to become more dynamic. For this, we must embrace digital transformation. However, current methods are delaying this much-needed transition. One major pain point that networks suffer from is the necessity to dispense with manual working, which lacks fabric wide automation. This must be addressed if organizations are to implement new products and services ahead of the competition.

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There’s a buzz in the industry about a new type of product that promises to change the way we secure and network our organizations. It is called the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). It was first mentioned by Gartner, Inc. in its hype cycle for networking. Since then Barracuda highlighted SASE in a recent PR update and Zscaler also discussed it in their earnings call. Most recently, Cato Networks announced that it was mentioned by Gartner as a “sample vendor” in the hype cycle.

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Microsoft has introduced a new virtual WAN as a competitive differentiator and is getting enough tracking that AWS and Google may follow. At present, Microsoft is the only company to offer a virtual WAN of this kind. This made me curious to discover the highs and lows of this technology. So I sat down with Sorell Slaymaker, Principal Consulting Analyst at TechVision Research to discuss. The following is a summary of our discussion.

But before we proceed, let’s gain some understanding of the cloud connectivity.

Cloud connectivity has evolved over time. When the cloud was introduced about a decade ago, let’s say, if you were an enterprise, you would connect to what's known as a cloud service provider (CSP). However, over the last 10 years, many providers like Equinix have started to offer carrier-neutral collocations. Now, there is the opportunity to meet a variety of cloud companies in a carrier-neutral colocation. On the other hand, there are certain limitations as well as cloud connectivity.

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Actions speak louder than words. Reliable actions build lasting trust in contrast to unreliable words. Imagine that you had a house with a guarded wall. You would feel safe in the house, correct? Now, what if that wall is dismantled? You might start to feel your security is under threat. Anyone could have easy access to your house.

In the same way, with traditional security products: it is as if anyone is allowed to leave their house, knock at your door and pick your locks. Wouldn’t it be more secure if only certain individuals whom you fully trust can even see your house? This is the essence of zero-trust networking and is a core concept discussed in my recent course on SDP (software-defined perimeter).

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Networking has gone through various transformations over the last decade. In essence, the network has become complex and hard to manage using traditional mechanisms. Now there is a significant need to design and integrate devices from multiple vendors and employ new technologies, such as virtualization and cloud services.

Therefore, every network is a unique snowflake. You will never come across two identical networks. The products offered by the vendors act as the building blocks for engineers to design solutions that work for them. If we all had a simple and predictable network, this would not be a problem. But there are no global references to follow and designs vary from organization to organization. These lead to network variation even while offering similar services.

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We are living in a hyperconnected world where anything can now be pushed to the cloud. The idea of having content located in one place, which could be useful from the management’s perspective, is now redundant. Today, the users and data are omnipresent.

The customer’s expectations have up-surged because of this evolution. There is now an increased expectation of high-quality service and a decrease in customer’s patience. In the past, one could patiently wait 10 hours to download the content. But this is certainly not the scenario at the present time. Nowadays we have high expectations and high-performance requirements but on the other hand, there are concerns as well. The internet is a weird place, with unpredictable asymmetric patterns, buffer bloat and a list of other performance-related problems that I wrote about on Network Insight. [Disclaimer: the author is employed by Network Insight.]

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