Versa drove its secure access service edge (SASE) platform down market today through an integration with its small to midsized business (SMB)-focused Titan SD-WAN offering.

Announced in 2019, Titan aimed to make SD-WAN simpler and easier to implement for businesses of any size. The platform was built on the same Versa Operating System (VOS) framework as its enterprise-focused SD-WAN, but the user experience was retooled for use by small, resource-constrained IT teams.

“It’s super easy to use. It’s really a software-as-a-service model delivered via the cloud, and the user interface is incredibly simple,” Versa CMO Mike Wood said about Titan.

With today’s update, Versa is extending that same logic to its SASE platform. “Creating a simple mechanism and model for IT to actually implement SASE is not easy,” Wood said. “What we’ve done with Versa Titan is really simplify SASE for lean IT.”

Versa leaped headlong into the SASE market late last spring. Initially, the platform relied on a software agent to route traffic to Versa’s points of presence (PoPs). At the PoPs, Versa applied security functionality to the traffic — this included zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), and cloud-based firewalls — before the traffic was sent on to its destination. Since then, Versa has integrated its SASE stack into its core Secure SD-WAN and Titan offerings.

Existing Titan customers can now extend Versa’s SASE security stack to the branch and even remote workers via an optional subscription. And, using the Versa Secure Access client, users can also take advantage of cloud-based routing and security functionality without the need for a CPE appliance. The endpoint client runs on any PC, Mac, smartphone, or tablet, and it servers as a gateway to Versa’s SASE network of PoPs.

“This enables employees literally to travel anywhere and get, not the full feature set, but get secure access, some improvements in quality of experience, reliability, along with segmentation and policy all the way down to the devices,” Wood said. “That's now available for lean IT implementations.”

Catalyzed by the pandemic shift to remote work, SASE has become a hot topic in recent months. In December, just six months after launching its SASE platform, Versa claimed a 100-fold increase in remote deployments of its SD-WAN and SASE products.

Unlike competing vendors such as Cisco, which built its SASE platform around technologies obtained via a combination of internal development and acquisitions, and companies like VMware, which has leaned heavily on partnerships, Versa took a different tact.

Early in the development of its SD-WAN platform, the company recognized the need to layer in security. But rather than partnering with third-party security vendors like Zscaler, Versa decided to develop its own security stack, which eventually formed the basis of its SASE offering.

“Our differentiation is that it’s one software stack, one single-pass pipeline, and one management interface,” Wood said.

While Versa did develop its own SASE stack internally, the company has bucked the idea that the entire platform should be cloud delivered in every situation. Instead, the company leaves it up to the customer or service provider to deploy the software stack where it makes the most sense — whether that’s on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination of the two.

“We see many businesses aren’t pushing everything to the cloud, and they’re not necessarily bringing everything on premises, either,” Wood said. Customers “oftentimes want something of a blended model.”

And thanks to today’s update, customers have even more ways to deploy Versa's SASE and SD-WAN technologies.