An Introduction to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

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An Introduction to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

Published December 22, 2020

DAN

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us for a Tech Talk today. I'm Dan Kronstal. I lead the Cloud and Data Center Transformation solution area for Insight Canada.

And I'm joined today by Garrett Jones and Carlande Desarme who are going to speak with us a little bit about SASE, which is an interesting new edge and a network security approach. And they're going to show a little or tell a little bit about why this is relevant for our clients today and what Insight can do to help get you started.

GARRETT
Well, good morning. My name is Garrett Jones and I'm a Cloud and Data Center Transformation specialist at Insight. I’m here to help our customers navigate the multi-cloud reality that we're in today.

CARLANDE
Good morning, this is Carlande Desarme. I joined the team and also I have extensive experience in networking troubleshooting and also designing architecting network on the telecom and deploy as point of view and as well from the cloud point of view deployment. So, I'm here to support and help the customers with the solutions that we provide and get successfully with the team.

DAN
Thanks guys. Carlande maybe you can share a little bit from the technical perspective. What is SASE and why is this new kind of technology for networking clients?

CARLANDE
Sure, sure, definitely.

Actually, SASE is one of the new model architectural approach that we use to actually leverage the cloud solutions and also the migration from the legacy traditional environment to the cloud. So, SASE provides us with facility to actually use different sides of the deployments and also the solutions the services to the customers with the best way efficiently and also with more security involved with more connectivity approach and also the identity. When I say identity, I'm talking about the zero-touch provisioning and also SAML, SSO all those staff, all these things.

So, SASE is helping us actually providing a better service to the customers that seamlessly access to the services and the solutions and provide the customers and the clients I mean not just access the solution but make sure that the security is taken care by providing a better security, better access and also the identity protection security sides and also high availability with the service.

So, with SASE we are ready to move either to the cloud to leveraging SD-WAN security will be all measured with our major providers in the network and just, and the industry, and also take advantage as well to what we already have in your data center so that all we can do with SASE.

DAN
Cool. So, it sounds like it's basically a way of capturing a bunch of tools that have already been either in customer environments or available from different providers and putting a real model and framework around it.

Garrett can you tell us a little bit about where the need for this kind of package comes from?

GARRETT
Sure Dan, you know, the answer of the question why SASE and SD-WAN now?

I think, you know, let's start by looking back. You know, long ago data traffic in the enterprise was, you know, 75 ,80% internal. But the headquarters and our branches and maybe 20, 25% was over the internet. So, you know, the smaller amount and now it's almost the exact opposite. And there's a few things that have driven this change over the last number of years. You know, the consumption of public cloud apps and cloud services has exploded and continues to explode and add to that this distributed workforce that had been growing but now, certainly in a COVID era, it's having become even more profound and had a significant impact on how we manage and look after that distributed workforce. And finally, the one thing that we all see every day, the proliferation of smart, you know, smart mobile devices and different things that we connect into the enterprise wherever we might be has had a tremendous impact on how we manage and secure and deliver services.

So, what's happened is we've had a complete inversion 75 to 80% of this traffic is now over the internet and only 20, 25% is internal. So, what used to be what we call the enterprise perimeter has definitely evolved. It's no longer a location. And it really, it requires a set of dynamic edge capabilities to protect and secure our customer's data and their businesses. You know, traditional land and point security products have become quite complex and costly in this new world and they're not easy and they take a long time to deploy often difficult to manage and don't have a lot of flexibility. And ultimately what's happened is performance has started to suffer and become an issue. And as a result, the end user experience and productivity is, has been negatively impacted.

So, the bottom line, all branch connectivity technologies like MPLS which so great for so many years and point security products to service and protect this new cloud edge are just not making the grade for customers. And we're in this increasingly digital world and security is a number one priority. And this is where our customers need help and secure access services edge SASE and SD-WAN architecture Is that new solution that's here to help customers address that problem.

DAN
Well, that's great Garrett thanks. That's a really clear need and opportunity.

Carlande maybe you can share a little bit about where does Insight get started with SASE for our customers?

CARLANDE
Sure.

One would be --just even before we go like what Insight is like helping the customers want more add in line on what Garrett just said. So, one of the potential needs we have for SASE is that way will it will be helpful. Is that when now the way customers or clients use to access the services and the solutions before is no longer the same way today. We're talking about like accessing the services. I mean, before it was like you have to be on site you have to be in the network, you have to be in the local network to be able to access the services. And now it's changed. So, it can be anywhere remote access and plus IOT. So, we also consider the way we access from where we access what do we use to access devices mobile devices.

All these things bring more traffic into the solutions. It brings more traffics to the infrastructure. And the local infrastructure they can no longer support this amount of traffic. So now we'll need a way, okay, to shift. We need to think about like moving some solutions to the cloud. Now, how do we integrate those cloud solutions? We exist in data center solution. That's where SASE is going to be one of the key features or the model that we will follow. We will use to like make sure that we still care for the security. We still care for the connectivity. But reachability to the solutions is not the aspects because we are accessing from different ways, different devices, different locations and to different geographic hosting point of the solutions where they're hosting the center, in the cloud or anywhere.

So, this is very important for SASE where we are going to be really beneficial in terms of using or put this model into practice for the developer services. Now come back to the question then how Insight is helping in terms of like delivering the solution what is the approach inside this taking?

It's simple. First thing we make sure we understand the customer infrastructure. We understand where we can start leveraging the technology or the model. Where we can start thinking about migrating the customer networks. And what's the requirement? The requirement is just it's not just what we have they have now. It's like short medium long-term exposure of the network where the customers go in. And that's where we will think about the connectivity. Okay. What the customer has. Do they have like what now an MPLS link? Okay. We will be thinking about going to SD-WAN. You should go to SD-WAN why do you want to keep paying those expensive MPLS socket when we can diverge an SD-WAN solution that will help you to wane the cost down of the business and also be more scalable to the solution accessibility and security.

So, we take care of all this with the analysis of the customers infrastructure. We go beyond about security. Okay. How they access, what is the strategy that can be used to make sure the customers that you're not just accessing the solution but in the secure way. Like do we-- we take care about the identity. Like you access, okay. One service then you will have access to all of the services which is SSO, single sign on. So, SASE gives us all the support and we from inside we take care of that. We make sure that we understand your service. We understand your solution and your infrastructure and provide you with the best services. And I will encourage that you please contact the executive contact for any questions that may have, and they will be able to assist and also identify the best solution specialist from our team that will be able to help you to onboard the solution and help you to deploy in design integrate the solution with your infrastructure.

DAN
Interesting stuff for sure. There's a very comprehensive set of things that we're able to work with our customers to align to their company's outcomes and where they're headed.

I just want to add a little bit then that at a high-level SASE really is a digital business enabler for our customers, right. And, you know, Carlande went over a lot of great things. As we distill this down this is about converging land and network security services, right? And in the SASE, SD-WAN solution delivers some really key powerful things to organizations performance and agility is at the foundation significant opportunity to impact costs

GARRETT
Yeah.

And reduce those costs and really reduce the complexity that is involved with things being accessed from all kinds of devices from all kinds of places as you heard Carlande speak too. And it also simplifies management and gives us the agility. And that's really key. So as businesses look into this kind of thing, improving their service levels the ROI obviously has to matter. And customers are already seeing, you know, anywhere from eight months to two years. Forrester did a study that showed in on customer's case that there was an ROI of 243% in three years. So, these are very, very strong benefits as well as economic impact that are of great value to customers as well.

So, if any of the things that you've heard about today, resonate a bit with what's going on in your organization. You know, some of the challenges you're having in dealing with this new network this new security implications with more of the traffic going over the internet versus in our internal networks. We have a great deal of experience and a number of certified specialists and architects inside of Insight supporting these types of solutions. So, I encourage you to contact your Insight account manager or your Cloud and Data Center Transformation specialists and we'll coordinate our team and align it with your organization and your next generation network and security journey. And we can help with assessments, proof of value, rolling out these services even helping you manage the services if that's something that is of interest to you. So, I'll hand it back to you Dan just wanted to have a couple of final thoughts there.

DAN
That's great. Thanks very much guys. Really appreciate your time Garrett and Carlande. Thanks for sharing the word about SASE and insights capabilities in this area.

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