We had a great chat with Patrick Chen, director of regional engineering at Intelisys, about what’s on the horizon for SD-WAN in 2023. Spoiler alert: it’s about to get a little SASE up in here!
Before we get into it, you might want to review some of the trends from 2022 in this on-demand SE Webinar segment on the topic of SD-WAN with Patrick and Bryce Parker.
Gartner recently released six trends that they anticipate will significantly impact infrastructure and operations over the next year and guess what? Secure Access Service Edge (“SASE”) topped the list. SASE will be the big focus over traditional SD-WAN technologies in 2023, and Gartner forecasts worldwide end-user spending on SASE will reach $9.2 billion in 2023, a 39 percent increase from 2022.
This increase is remarkable as the latest report from Dell’Oro Group shows the SASE market grew 33 percent in 2022 alone. As we look ahead to 2023, a significant portion of the fast adoption of SASE will be due to the need to secure access to devices and elements at the edge, hybrid work, and this shift to cloud computing.
Here’s what Patrick expects to see in 2023:
- Continued Focus on Security and Privacy
With the proliferation of cyberattacks and data breaches, businesses are more concerned than ever about protecting their networks and data. Companies will continue to explore and invest in SASE since it is a technology framework for converging network access and security in a cloud-native environment.
What’s interesting is SASE is still a new concept and technology framework. There’s not a comprehensive list of Single-Vendor SASE solutions that truly offer a complete solution with both networking AND Secure Service Edge (“SSE”) capabilities. SSE is a new term that emerged in 2022 that primarily focuses on the security components of the SASE framework, i.e., Firewall-as-a-Service (“FWaaS”), Cloud Access Security Brokers (“CASB”), Zero Trust Network Architecture (“ZTNA”), Secure Web Gateway (“SWG”), etc.
- Increased Interest in Single-Vendor SASE Solutions
Due to the sheer number of security features that can be rolled into SASE, most enterprises will be consolidating individual SASE components into one or two SASE vendors by 2025. Single-vendor solutions improve security posture and provide less administrative overhead due to fewer management portals and efficiency, triggered by security and network decisions being made in a single pass instead of requiring integration between multiple solutions.
The SASE space is exploding. The time for you to jump on the opportunity to capture that revenue from small enterprises is NOW.
- Increased Adoption of SSE
More businesses are moving their operations to the cloud and continue the hybrid work-from-home model, thus increasing the demand for cloud-native solutions like SSE.
Reports in 2022 indicated many employers were pulling back on remote work and requiring employees to return to the office. We now know that’s not true. A recent report from Upwork, one of the world’s largest work marketplaces, released a survey examining hiring habits and sentiments of over 1,000 US hiring managers. Their findings show that by 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely, an 87 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels. Nearly 22 percent of the workforce will work remotely, primarily due to managers’ changing mindsets.
However, the biggest challenge — and, therefore, why we see some companies initially pull back — is the need for the right policies and technologies to enable the remote work environment. The annual report from the State of IT indicates that 35 percent of organizations will be increasing the IT budget this year to support the remote workforce.
- Cloud-based Services and Applications Continue to Drive the Adoption of SSE
Enterprises are adopting these cloud solutions to enable a distributed workforce to access company resources. Patrick argues that most customers are focused on something other than deploying data centers. As a result, they are deploying centers for data. Due to the consumption model and flexibility for different workloads and use cases, data center customers are partnering with colocation, cloud service, and hyper-scale providers.
In contrast, remote connections through WFH environments and additional cloud presence extend the enterprise’s perimeter and increase the attack surface. While it does not directly target network components like SD-WAN, SSE does provide more secure remote access regardless of user location or connection. This applies irrespective of data location and connection.
Therefore, hybrid environments and SSE correlate as all internet-based activities need to be secured. This will be the priority of all businesses. To maintain adequate protection levels and meet industry compliances, more limited access to only the identity and role required by cloud resources and applications will be necessary.
- Solutions Will be in High Demand
The continued adoption of WFH and Cloud initiatives will keep all of the solutions I mention above in high demand. In a few words, here’s what I’d recommend you keep in mind.
SSE is a subset of SASE offerings. Many SASE companies are increasingly offering the SSE framework as a standalone without requiring the SD-WAN components. If you only wanted the cloud-native security components of SASE without wanting to buy the network access components, you would purchase SSE instead of the complete SASE solution.
Therefore, there will be significant increase in SSE growth this year since many companies have already adopted traditional SD-WAN solutions. Due to SASE, most companies are shifting their SD-WAN/Network decisions to focus on both immediate and long-term security capabilities. This was the trend in 2022, and Patrick anticipates this will continue to occur in 2023.
- A Growing Focus on Automation and Machine Learning in the World of SD-WAN
In the overall scheme of things, automation is critical to operating at cloud scale and efficiency. As networks expand and increase complexity, it will push network support teams to their limits. Once again, the increasing concerns around cloud adoption and security will fuel the developments in network automation.
Machine learning algorithms can help SD-WAN solutions optimize network traffic and routing automatically, improving performance and reliability and bringing consistency and simplicity to an environment spanning multiple clouds and remote work offices.
AI/ML-driven support in SD-WAN/SASE solutions will help proactively address network and security issues and decrease the mean time to resolution. This will reduce downtime and operation costs and address the increasing staffing shortages that IT and Infosec operation teams are facing today. This trend is likely to continue as businesses look for ways to streamline their operations and reduce the need for manual intervention.
*Bonus Prediction*
For a wild and out in left field prediction, Patrick believes Microsoft will make a play into the SASE arena. He argues that it is highly plausible — even though they aren’t players in today’s SASE world.
Microsoft already has all the necessary features and elements today that are talked about in the SASE space: they have identity access management, firewalls, email security, content filtering, web application firewalls, DDoS solutions, cloud networking, etc.
Plus, they have been heavily promoting the fact that they should be considered a significant player in the security space. If you look at the other major security companies heavily invested in building out their SASE program (Cisco, Fortinet, Palo, Symantec, etc.), they seemingly built out their SASE product overnight. Either by integrating their networking and security solutions or buying an SD-WAN company outright to create their new SASE product. (Symantec/Broadcom bought VMware in 2022). With all its assets and capabilities, Microsoft could do the same overnight and suddenly compete for significant dollars in the SASE/SSE space.
Overall, the world of SD-WAN is constantly evolving, and these are just a few of the trends we can expect to see this year. Whether it is enhanced security, cloud-based solutions, or machine learning, SD-WAN will continue to be a key enabler for businesses of all sizes as they look to connect and collaborate more effectively.
Trying to figure out where to start? Set up a meeting with your BDM to discuss opportunities for your customers this year.
