Zscaler finally launched its SD-WAN solution today, stepping firmly into the growing and competitive single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) market. The security services edge (SSE) leader has been working with almost all of the leading SD-WAN vendors for its multivendor SASE approach.

The security vendor announced the general availability of its Zero Trust SD-WAN solution and portfolio of plug-and-play appliances, designed to help customers modernize secure connectivity for branch offices, factories and data centers while also eliminating the need for ineffective firewalls and VPNs.

Zscaler introduced a networking appliance at the Zenith Live 2023 event as the hardware part of its Zero Trust Branch Connectivity product. The vendor claims the new Zero Trust SD-WAN, which provides secure inbound and outbound connectivity in one device, includes the following:

• Plug-and-play Z-Connector appliances to simplify deployment at branch offices, support zero-touch provisioning and eliminate the need for additional routers or firewalls.
• Integration with its SSE solution — Zero Trust Exchange — which consolidates Cloud Access Security Broker, data loss protection (DLP), secure web gateways (SWG) and zero-trust capabilities.
• Centralized cloud-based management to allow for streamlined policy management across users, locations and clouds, enhancing visibility and control for IT teams.

“Users and organizations want a café-like branch experience to empower hybrid work,” said Naresh Kumar, VP of product management at Zscaler. “Hybrid employees expect the same seamless and secure access they would have in an office setting, whether they are at home or on the go, without having to access their applications over a slow, cumbersome VPN.”

“Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN will connect and secure users, devices, sites and clouds using our single-vendor SASE platform, without the risks of traditional SD-WAN,” he added.

The single-vendor SASE market has witnessed remarkable growth, with a nearly 60% year-over-year increase, representing over half of the SASE market in the third quarter of 2023, according to a recent report from Dell’Oro Group.

Mauricio Sanchez, Sr. research director for Enterprise networking and security market research at Dell’Oro Group, identified HPE Aruba, Aryaka, Cato Networks, Check Point, Cisco, Forcepoint, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Netskope, Versa Networks and VMware as vendors that offer single-vendor SASE, which includes both SD-WAN and SSE.

Sanchez also noted that Zscaler's offering until now was “an exception,” in that the vendor offered a single-vendor SASE product, but with a multivendor SD-WAN piece. “They are the largest SASE vendor and have been growing at remarkable rates even as a multivendor SASE,” Mauricio said in an earlier interview.

In Gartner’s first-ever Magic Quadrant for Single-Vendor SASE, the firm noted that the single-vendor SASE market is undergoing rapid changes, with a more than 50% jump in the number of vendors expected by 2025, compared to mid-2023.

It identified Palo Alto Networks as the only leader, with Cato Networks, Versa Networks and Fortinet listed as challengers. Cisco and Forcepoint were labeled as visionaries, and VMware and Juniper Networks were cited as niche players.

When questioned during Zscaler's earnings call last September about the company's absence from Gartner’s single-vendor SASE Magic Quadrant (MQ), Zscaler Chairman and CEO Jay Chaudhry defended the vendor’s multivendor SASE and SSE approach. He said, “We’re not in that MQ. We are about changing the world, not really propagating the old world, and we are very successful in doing so.”

However, several industry analysts have been expecting Zscaler to enter the single-vendor SASE market by expanding its network capabilities. Sanchez told SDxCentral in an earlier interview that some Zscaler customers have expressed concerns about the company’s current networking capability, including its Internet protocol architecture limitations and certain challenges with getting traffic to or from Zscaler. The company has been trying to make it easy to on-ramp traffic into its cloud as a response to those concerns.

Yet Zscaler has also been facing a paradoxical challenge: As soon as it moves toward offering networking, its relationships with existing SD-WAN vendors could turn competitive. And for now, a fair degree of Zscaler’s SASE sales go through its networking partners. “It’s like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario, Sanchez said then.