Axis Security officially joined the security services edge (SSE) market this week with the launch of its Atmos platform.

While the company is well recognized for its zero-trust network access (ZTNA) services, Atmos adds several essential SSE components to the lineup, including secure web gateway and Cloud Access Security Broker, as well as digital experience monitoring capabilities.

The software stack is hosted on 350 points of presence running in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud, and sits in line with users' Application traffic.

“Axis is making an aggressive move from ZTNA to a much broader, fully-integrated, cloud-native security service edge platform,” noted John Grady, senior ESG analyst, in a statement.

Coined by Gartner in 2021, SSE represents vendors that offer the full stack of secure access service edge (SASE) security functionality, but either lack or partner for SD-WAN.

Axis bills Atmos as an alternative to legacy hub-and-spoke network architectures, which often rely on firewall-based network segmentation.

According to Axis Field CTO John Spiegel, in the post-COVID world, SD-WAN has outlived its usefulness.

“I really view the branch office as becoming… more like an Internet cafe,” he said. “What does the Internet cafe value? It values ease of access to the Internet and speed.”

That’s not to say that SD-WAN functionality will disappear entirely, but rather the security functionality and much of the technology's more sophisticated routing capabilities aren’t as relevant as they once were.

“I see the campus evolving to a model where the simplicity is really you have your APs, maybe you’ve got some wired switches, and a simple Router with maybe redundant connections to the Internet,” Spiegel said.

In addition to the standard fare of SSE services, Atmos also includes a slew of digital experience monitoring features, which Axis claims benefits network and help desk teams with improved visibility into device issues, network outages, and Application performance challenges.

These capabilities, Spiegel argues, are essential to supporting hybrid workers.

“You want that telemetry to understand how that Application is performing, how the user is performing, and where the challenges are,” he explained. “You can understand where an Application problem is. Is it WiFi, is it somewhere in the last mile, or is it the Software-as-a-Service provider?”

The platform is available in three flavors: Atmos Core, Enterprise, and Harmony. All three are slated for release later this spring.