Accedian is now part of Cisco  |

Jay Dosanjh | Accedian
By Jay Dosanjh

The new network edge: user or device, not the data center

Feelin’ SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), my fellow IT Ops professionals?

Today more than ever, users are accessing their digital services through their smartphones, tablets, and devices. Users expect secure and fast access to their applications on demand. 

According to Gartner, there are even more users, devices, services, and data located outside the enterprise than inside. More user traffic is destined to travel through public cloud environments than to the enterprise data center. Consequently, there has been a paradigm shift in the IT industry where the user or the user’s device itself is the new edge – not the data center. Gartner refers to this concept as SASE: Secure Access Service Edge.  As users access applications from multi-cloud, SaaS or virtualized data center environments, advanced visibility capabilities are required to ensure a positive end user experience. 

Keep it SASE!

Such dynamic access requirements for the digital business require a “user-centric” view, not a “data center-centric” view. Essentially, a manageable “system” needs to be created around the user or user’s device that incorporates the security, data, application, and network requirements of the requested service. These SASE models require consolidating all point security technologies under one manageable system and delivering it as a service based on the identity of the user or their device. You can read more about this in Gartner’s The Future of Security Networks is in the Cloud report, linked here from Cloud Management Insider.

Users and/or devices are accessing digital services at an increasing rate. A positive user experience is expected at all times with secure and fast performance. Enterprises must consider network, application, and security requirements when delivering these services to their customers with a “user-centric” view that incorporates the distributed internet access requirements of the “new edge”. Having visibility in all these areas is crucial to assure the expected flawless performance users expect.  

Gartner Agrees

According to Gartner*, “By 2024, at least 40% of enterprises will have explicit strategies to adopt SASE. The move to distributed internet access is changing the security perimeter. Enterprises are increasingly making network and security decisions at the same time and with the same vendor. Customers will give preference to vendors that combine security and networking functions as they attempt to limit branch sprawl.” 

The “New Edge” requires enhanced performance visibility capabilities with a “user-centric” view. See how Accedian can help you to meet these SASE performance requirements by providing new workflow visibility for the emerging digital landscape.   

*Gartner: The Future of Network Security Is in the Cloud, 30 August 2019  Neil MacDonald, Lawrence Orans, Joe Skorupa