Cisco teamed up with KDDI to launch a secure access service edge (SASE) offering for the Japanese market.

The partnership will see the Japanese carrier leverage Cisco's single-vendor SASE solution to provide business customers with secure, unified network and security services.

KDDI's solution integrates Cisco's Secure Access platform with SD-WAN capabilities, aiming to replace traditional virtual private network (VPN) setups with what the companies describe as a zero-trust approach to network security.

Junji Hori, GM in KDDI's product division business solution department, said the partnership eliminates “the complexity of multivendor environments and deliver[s] a seamless, secure experience for businesses embracing hybrid work.”

Japanese financial consulting firm TKC Corp was listed as an early adopter of the KDDI-offered Cisco service, using it to replace legacy VPN systems.

Raj Chopra, SVP and CPO of Cisco’s security business group, wrote in a blog post that its KDDI work “demonstrates our shared commitment to advancing secure, cloud-delivered networking for enterprises.”

“Service providers bring global reach, deep networking expertise, and robust managed services, making them ideal partners for organizations navigating SASE adoption,” Chopra added.

The announcement was, however, light on technical specifics about what differentiates this offering from existing managed security services in Japan, with the pair instead focusing on touting it as the country’s first fully managed, single-vendor SASE solution.

Is Cisco a single-vendor SASE leader?

The KDDI partnership comes as part of Cisco's broader push to position itself as a leader in the single-vendor SASE market, combining networking and security functions into cloud-delivered services.

Cisco was recently labeled a “challenger” on Gartner’s latest SASE rankings, suggesting the vendor was among the smaller players in the market, with around 500 active SASE platform enterprise customers, according to the analyst firm’s report.

A Dell’Oro Group report from late last year, however, had Cisco as one of six SASE heavyweights, with a combined market share of 72% alongside vendors including Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Broadcom-VMware, Fortinet, and Netskope.

Cisco is optimistic about its SASE offerings; however, as its recent earnings report saw the vendor post strong growth in its security segment, as from some drag on the federal side.

CEO Chuck Robbins backed its security unit to investors, expressing confidence in new releases, including updates to its secure service edge (SSE) offering that bolsters its SASE component, as well as its Hypershield management platform.

“We have 80 new Hypershield customers … largely connected to this new smart switch, so that strategy is working, and … we have 480-plus new SSE customers during the quarter, so that's … really getting good traction,” Robbins said. “Based on how we see this stuff evolving, I would see the growth rate continuing to improve as we get through the fiscal year this year.”