Secure access service edge (SASE) is growing fast, according to recently released figures, as organizations continue to adopt the network security model. While vendors are booking solid SASE revenues, consultants and professional services are playing a pivotal role in adoption overall as challenges to deployment introduce friction.

According to a new report from Dell'Oro Group, spending on SASE solutions grew 33% year-over-year in Q3 2023, reaching a new record of $2.2 billion. SASE combines SD-WAN networking and security services delivered from the cloud. The growth in SASE is being driven by several factors, including enterprises needing to support hybrid work and cloud applications.

Revenue from single-vendor SASE solutions grew nearly 60% according to Dell'Oro and now represents over half of the total SASE market. The top 5 SASE vendors were Zscaler, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Broadcom (Symantec) and Fortinet. Notably,  Zscaler retook the top revenue position in overall SASE from Cisco and was the first vendor to exceed $400 million in quarterly SASE revenue. Looking forward, the SASE market is expected to surpass $8 billion in total 2023 revenue, indicating continued strong growth.

Increasingly consultants and professional services firms are a core part of many organizations' SASE adoption and deployment activities.

“We see the majority of SASE deals being spearheaded as part of transformation initiatives, and as such, should be leaning on additional services to help them on the journey,”  Mauricio Sanchez, sr. director at Dell'Oro Group told SDxCentral.

Sanchez added that “in the wild” there are some enterprises who think they can go at it alone but then suffer the consequences of picking the wrong vendor or implementation approach.

“SASE isn’t like upgrading a Switch or firewall to the bigger, better version. It requires thoughtful consideration of how architecture and workflows will get impacted,” he said.

The path to SASE is not always direct

Adoption and deployment of SASE can take any number of approaches.

Martin Mackay, chief revenue officer at Versa Networks, told SDxCentral that many organizations will rely on external expertise from analysts to look at potential vendors and to explore what other peer group companies are doing.

Mackay said that after the market evaluation, organizations will then typically go down one of two routes: Either they will approach the vendors directly (with some form of RFI / RFP process) or they will turn to a consulting firm to give them direct advice. Mackay noted that what is common in all of these different ways of looking at the market landscape is that they will want to run a  detailed proof of concept process with a shortlist of vendors, primarily to prove that the marketing hype is matched by the technology reality.

Robert Arandjelovic, director of solutions strategy at Netskope, told SDxCentral that the acquisition and implementation path for SASE can vary from organization to organization based on their size, industry, and maturity. For the largest organizations that have experience integrating technologies, they will often look to directly acquire a converged security services edge (SSE), SD-WAN or full SASE solution. He noted that some smaller organizations will also look to acquire  SASE directly if they have a strong IT department.

Beyond those two segments, Arandjelovic said that many organizations are looking to partner-delivered SASE offerings.

“Managed service providers [MSPs] serve as the ideal intermediary, using their extensive infrastructure and personnel to deploy and administer SASE deployments for organizations, often at a set per-user subscription fee,” Arandjelovic said.

The role of consultant and professional services in SASE adoption

Implementing a SASE approach is one of the biggest network and security initiatives for an organization to take on, which is often why consultants and professional services are part of the adoption and deployment path.

Prem Iyer, senior vice president, global ecosystems at Palo Alto Networks, told SDxCentral that SASE requires significant transformation, involving planning, deployment and management of new tools and capabilities.

“Engaging a partner in the journey to acquire and implement a SASE solution offers enterprises many benefits in planning, implementing, and operating these solutions,” Iyer said

Iyer noted that Gartner predicts that by 2025, 65% of enterprises will have consolidated individual SASE components into one or two explicitly partnered SASE vendors, up from 15% in 2021, and according to ESG, 45% of the total addressable market for SASE will be delivered as managed SASE.

Multiple vendors, including Palo Alto Networks had announcements in recent years detailing partnerships with management consulting firms like Deloitte to help with the execution of the transformation efforts.

“We’ve seen that large transformation projects are increasingly led by our partners,” Iyer said. “ In addition to the Deloitte announcement, we recently made similar managed SASE announcements, for example, with Accenture, NTT and Wipro.”

3 reasons why is SASE deployments are hard

SASE deployment often involves various forms of friction that can make deployment somewhat difficult.

Dell'Oro Group's Sanchez said that he sees several key sources of friction for SASE adoption today.

Change as friction

The simple reality is that for a lot of organizations, change is hard and SASE requires change. Sanchez said that it’s not terribly surprising to see pushback from the IT ops team that must learn a new way of doing things. There are ripples across the IT fabric and teams must be ready to be sometimes unexpectedly surprised by how things break - and they will break.

“Success does require the executive layer to be fully bought in and ensure that the entire organization is rowing in the same direction,” he said.

 Macroeconomic conditions

The current macroeconomic environment remains strained. While security and network transformation remain a top priority, enterprises are becoming more judicious in their spending.  In Sanchez's view, deals are taking longer to close.

Vendor ecosystem

SASE is bringing together networking and security, which as IT technology domains has had distinct vendor ecosystems. Most enterprises have traditionally picked different vendors for each, and if so, there is some inherent friction to picking a vendor. Should it be the standing networking vendor? Or the security? Or some new vendor?  Moreover, SASE solutions come in all stripes, so some enterprises find it difficult to decide which vendor is the best fit.