The secure access service edge (SASE) market will nearly double over the next several years, shrugging off short-term macroeconomic uncertainty and riding a surge of enterprises seeking integrated and easier to manage networking and security services, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group.

The research firm is predicting the overall SASE market will hit $17 billion in revenues by 2029, surging at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over that time period. The firm added that the market will see a growing number of vendors offering SD-WAN and secure service edge (SSE) capabilities that power single-vendor SASE platforms and will account for 90% of the total SASE market.

Mauricio Sanchez, senior director for enterprise security and networking at Dell’Oro Group, explained in an interview that the security (SSE) aspect remains the driving force behind SASE “while bringing along networking.”

“I think people realize that trying to treat these separately as has been done in the past doesn't lead or it's very hard or possible to get to the end result, which is a much more secure WAN-branch network,” Sanchez said. “I don't want to minimize [networking], I think that's still part-and-parcel to why people are leaving access routing … so we shouldn't minimize that piece. But I think what the higher strategic goal here is let's embrace this and do the total transformation because it'll get us a better security outcome, and along with it get to a better networking outcome.”

This is driving the single-vendor SASE approach that is set to propel the market and boost vendor earnings.

“The clear thing here is that the vendors are positioning themselves increasingly – with no great surprise – to want to sell both, to try to get the entire share of wallet,” Sanchez added.

The single-vendor SASE surge has been forecast by other analyst firms.

Gartner last year predicted that 65% of new SD-WAN purchases by 2027 will be part of a single-vendor SASE offering, a significant rise from the 20% it expected in 2024. Gartner said the client interest in single-vendor SASE has more than doubled compared to the previous year and it estimates there are more than 10,000 organizations using a vendor’s primary single-vendor SASE offering.

“The market for well-architected single-vendor SASE offerings is dynamic and maturing, and SASE interest among our clients has been growing rapidly,” Gartner noted in its SASE Magic Quadrant report.

Gartner also noted that multiple SASE vendors now have a single-vendor SASE offering but “few offer the required breadth and depth of functionality with integration across all components, a single management plane, and unified data model and data lake.”

Gartner’s research found that the single-vendor SASE market will see new entrants, mandatory generative artificial intelligence (genAI) assistants, and notable price differences based on point-of-presence (PoP) strategies. SASE vendors will also extend their support for unmanaged devices and expand into adjacent markets such as endpoint security, data security posture management (DSPM), microsegmentation, and network access control.

SASE market control While new entrants are expected, Dell’Oro Group had previously noted that six SASE vendors collectively controlled 72% of $2.4 billion in segment revenues collected during the third quarter of 2024. Those six vendors include Zscaler, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Broadcom-VMware, Fortinet, and Netskope.

Sanchez had previously explained that the top-heavy nature of the SASE market is due to growing segment maturity.

“The SASE market is entering a new maturity phase,” Sanchez wrote. “As enterprises focus on trusted, integrated solutions during economic uncertainty, the largest vendors are capturing a growing share of investments, setting the stage for continued leadership and innovation.”

Gartner pointed to similar names dominating the space. The firm’s mid-2024 SASE ranking placed Palo Alto Networks, Cato Networks, and Netskope in its “leaders” quadrant. Fortinet and Versa Networks were labeled as “challengers,” while Cisco was placed in the “visionaries” box.

However, Sanchez did add that there remain opportunities for innovative entrants in the space.

“I don't want to say that the war has been won,” Sanchez said of the market. “I think there are still opportunities for smaller players to come in and blossom and do interesting things. To say that the Zscalers’s or Palo Alto’s of the world have locked in the opportunity for evermore is premature.”

While the large enterprise space will continue to drive revenues, Sanchez noted smaller targets could prove lucrative for the right offering.

“For the smaller vendors in this space – and even for the for the large vendors – getting down market is an opportunity because that down market is still a laggard in shifting over to a more chassis-centric style of for their branch and for their remote access. But that down market, they don't have the pockets nor the wherewithal for being able to consume the technology that large enterprises have been using. So the market need is to figure out how do you bring the value, the goodness in a way that is it the right price points and at the right level of simplicity.”