As software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WANs) hit the peak of excitement, Forrester analysts noticed that the hype wasn’t turning into deployments. Many of the SD-WAN investigations were being held up by security teams that put a pause on the projects as the teams tried to wrap their heads around the shift in security architecture and controls from data center to cloud. At the time, networking and security were becoming interdependent, yet organizations and solutions were not quite there.
Forrester put together a model that would help clients build a single, integrated networking and security model, coining a term that we thought was fitting — Zero Trust edge (ZTE) — as these changes made way for providing Zero Trust security via networking at the edge. But we weren’t the only ones naming this same new phenomenon; the term secure access service edge (SASE) rose around the same time. It didn’t set the bar quite at the same threshold as ZTE, but it described the same change.
At the time, the market was full of partnerships between networking and security vendors, and only a few vendors had started to create a single solution with management and monitoring delivered from the cloud.
Why Now?
Five years later, the market is full of integrated solutions. It is also clear at this time that SASE (pronounced “sassy”) is the preferred market term. As such, we are going to switch over to this market-preferred term while pushing that term to meet the same bar we set for ZTE. For me, this is an easy decision, as customer-first has always been my one key truth to live by. Why? Please indulge me as I take a trip down memory lane, as my career is shaped by two prior experiences:
- Engineering aircraft components. Straight out of college, I spent time at a small aircraft company engineering new capabilities and improving the manufacturing, safety, or quality of existing parts. In that world, a slight change in dimension of component, such as landing-gear tube thickness, could cause a crash. I spent a lot of time talking to the pilots to see what improvements would drive them to buy the next model or lure new buyers. My greatest contribution: a curved dashboard. The costs of manufacturing the dashboard increased, but current and potential clients loved it. It made the aircraft feel personalized, and the instruments were easier to read.
- Launching ProVision ASIC and 5400. While I was at HP ProCurve (before the HP split into HPE and HP Inc.), account managers heavily pushed client visits to promote the previous launch (5400 and ProVision ASIC). Not only did I get a lot of direct feedback from customers about the new products (and launch) that helped shape the next cycle, but they also weren’t shy about sharing their thoughts about other products. Many of these thoughts were about real barriers they faced that made their day-to-day or real-world scenarios challenging.
Hence, I try to create and release information as if I’m walking in the customer’s shoes, removing any hurdles to getting the best information to make the right decision for their organizations. If clients search “SASE” looking for best practices, design guides, and vendor comparisons, then that is the term we must use to get them what they need. Rather than waste cycles drawing comparisons between the two, we will simply push SASE to be better and achieve a higher standard to meet clients’ needs.
We will be pivoting our original definition to now define SASE this way:
A solution that combines security and networking functionalities — such as software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WANs), cloud access security brokers (CASBs), Zero Trust network access (ZTNA), and secure web gateways (SWGs) — delivered and supported by a single vendor with any combination of cloud, software, or hardware components.
Tactically, this means that over the next few weeks, our current research with ZTE will be relabeled with SASE, along with any future research listed.
A big thank you to my friend and former colleague, David Holmes, for his collaboration on this research. It was truly a pleasure.
