Secure access service edge (SASE) has entered the hype phase as vendors flock to the new sector that was defined by Gartner last year. While the market still needs to sort itself out from pretenders to contenders, a new report by Dell'Oro Group said SASE is expected to grow at a CAGR of 116% from last year to 2024.
SASE blends SD-WAN, cloud, firewalls, secure web gateways, security functions—such as zero trust—and subscriber policies to, among other things, help users access their connectivity services safely from anywhere.
“SASE holds great appeal because it unifies and simplifies networking and security across a wide variety of network use cases, ranging from larger headquarter/branch networks down to individual users,” said Mauricio Sanchez, research director at Dell’Oro Group, in a statement. “Over the next five years, we expect the initial thrust for SASE to come from small to medium enterprises, for whom unification and simplification rank high, but also expect larger enterprises to begin pivoting.”
Appliance-based SD-WAN vendors, such as Fortinet, are joining the SASE fray along with ecosystem offerings from companies such as Cisco and VMware. According to Dell'Oro's report, software will account for the vast majority of SASE revenue, and is expected to increase its contribution over the five-year forecast period.
In the near term, the combination of software and hardware sold as physical appliances will account for the majority of the SASE revenues. Over the long haul, that will switch to cloud-hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue.
RELATED: MEF wraps its arms around defining frameworks and policies for SASE
SASE has gained momentum in 2020 with vendors such as Cisco, Fortinet, Aryaka, VMware and Cato Networks touting their SASE capabilities. In August, MEF announced it was taking on the task of defining the elements of SASE, including SD-WAN, security, edge and cloud, through a new project.