The latter half of 2021 saw a flurry of small, inexpensive networking and security appliances aimed at remote workers and home users. But with the mainstream adoption of technologies like secure access service edge (SASE), who are these devices really for?

They're not for everyone, according to IDC analyst Brandon Butler, who’s spent the better part of two years tracking how enterprises support remote workers, or what he calls the “branch of one.” But for a select few workers, particularly those for which access to the internet is mission critical — financial, medical, and call center workers for example — these kinds of appliances can offer significant value, he explained.

Late last year, Fortinet, Aruba, VMware, and Palo Alto Networks all launched products to address these users with products that ranged from supped-up mesh routers to full-fledged SASE and/or SD-WAN gateways.

Remote Work Has Evolved

Butler notes enterprises haven’t always had such clear-cut options.

“In the early days of COVID-19, and mid-2020, they were really BandAid solutions that organizations were putting in place because it was such a massive change that happened so quickly,” he said. “Organizations really didn’t have time to think strategically about what sorts of technologies they want to put in place.”

In this environment, Gartner’s then-fledgling SASE product category took off as vendors and managed service providers scrambled to find more robust alternatives to VPN connectivity.

In the nearly two years since then, enterprises have grown wiser, and for many, remote work is here to stay.

“Workers are much more fluid today than they ever were before, and so we need to have networking technologies that can support that fluid nature of workers” wherever they are working, Butler said. “SD-WAN gateways are one tool within that tool box... . Is it for everyone? Probably not.”

Home Networking Needs a Tiered Approach

For most employees, endpoint, VPN, and/or cloud-based security services, like SASE, are probably adequate, according to Butler.

“We look at this in terms of tiers of remote workers… . For the majority of remote workers, maybe you don’t need a hardened appliance that you’re sending to the employees' homes,” he said, adding that’s not to say there aren’t some in the organization that may require something more robust.

“An appliance that is able to supply a WiFi network that's different from the WiFi network that the kids are using for their schoolwork, that the spouse is using for their work, where they can use the same SSID as what they're using in the office at home, that sort of capability, I think, has some value to certain workers,” Butler said.

Butler cited a U.S. mid-sized manufacturing company that deployed VMware’s SD-WAN gateways to 250 of their employees who’d transition to remote work as one example. He expects this may become more common for remote workers that are dependant on the internet to do their jobs.

The State of Remote Networking and Security

While the recent crop of home-worker-focused appliances from the likes of Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Aruba, and VMware differ when it comes to features and security functionality, they all get the basics right, according to Butler.

These features include being easy to deploy via an app, zero-touch policy provisioning, centralized management, and segmented wireless networks for personal and professional communications.

“Those seem to be some of the table-stakes capabilities of these appliances,” he said. “I think where you start to see some differences and where the real value of these appliances come in, is the ability for the appliances to be able to optimize and prioritize application traffic or provide direct connections to cloud-based platforms.”

The ultimate goal of these appliances is to ensure consistent access to mission-critical applications by prioritizing that traffic over less important apps. This capability becomes even more powerful, Butler said, for vendors that can extend this functionality to a broader SASE architecture.

However, Butler emphasized the real value of putting an appliance in workers’ homes is the ability for IT to manage those devices directly. For many enterprises, this desire will ultimately dictate which platform they deploy, he added.

“If you’re already an Aruba shop, and you’re already using Aruba Central for Ethernet switches, then extending that to remote workers is less cumbersome because you’re already familiar with the platform,” he said, adding that same logic applies to any SD-WAN or security vendor.

Is a Home Security Appliance Headed Your Way?

As enterprises reassess their remote work infrastructure, Butler expects the market for home networking and security appliances to grow. They might not find their way into every remote worker's home, but they offer enough benefit that for the right worker they could prove invaluable.

To that extent, AT&T, one of the largest U.S. managed service providers, reports demand for home SD-WAN appliances remains relatively small.

“We haven’t really seen a ton of use cases really to justify enterprise or corporate equipment at the home,” Will Eborall, who heads up AT&T’s virtual edge portfolio, told SDxCentral.

Despite this, he expects that could soon change.

“I think there potentially is some long-term play with that type of SD-WAN functionality at the home. I think there’s work to be done as it relates to the form factor, the value, the pricing to really justify it,” he explained, adding that, for the moment, most businesses are using software clients to address remote access demands.

“It’s an interesting space that has a lot of evolution still to happen,” he said.