SASE and MSP Convergence

Leia este blog em Português Lee este blog en Espa?ol

Over the past two hundred years, the melting pot of culture, art, science, and so forth has grown. It is incredible to think that many of our direct ancestors boarded boat, horse, or walked to where our ancestral homes are located. Most of us have a “hometown”, but due to the advances in travel, many of us have had the once rare opportunity to experience such a vast and captivating variety of cultures. We also might, at some point in our lives, get to see how other people live, work, and socialize and it will be a type of convergence that you’ll never forget.?

To converge typically is defined as, “the act of moving toward union or uniformity.” However, in the world of Cisco, converge could be outlined as, “it’s the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole.” In 2019, Gartner analysts, Neil McDonald and Joe Skorupa, coined the term SASE, which stands for Secure Access Services Edge.?

Their definition, I’ll share now, but with a touch of my own. SASE is, “A ‘converged’ architectural solution that provides effective and homogenous levels of security and experience for users from anywhere on any device.” Cisco takes the power of our Networking solutions and Security technology to converge a one of a kind “As-a-Service” cloud edge model and consumption solution. To help me dive further into this opportunity for our Managed Service partners, I have brought Amy Hodge, Managed Service SBDM of Americas Distribution, onto the blog.?

Welcome Amy!?

Thank you, Renato for giving me this opportunity to share this message with our Latin American Disti audience.

Why SASE

Trust me, it’s our pleasure! So, let’s dive into SASE. It’s a technology acronym we hear often, but it takes some time to really understand the power behind this solution.?

That’s true. When we take several technologies, networking and security, and combine them, it’s not something that just comes about overnight. In fact, it took time for all of us to understand why this solution was so important. In fact, in 2020 when the Pandemic really surged, businesses needed this approach to having secure access to their applications from anywhere.?

So, this was a solution we needed to solve for overnight??

That’s a completely valid question and true. With the need to solve for identity authentication, access control, and many other standard threat detection needs, the remote work transition forced security vendors to all speed up the delivery of a true SASE solution. It’s a good thing Cisco was already ahead of the game and now has the most complete, end-to-end SASE solution available today.??

Let’s take a moment to talk about what’s included in Cisco’s SASE solution.?

That’s easy. It’s a combination of Software-defined WANs, cloud security, zero-trust, network access and observability. All that boils down to three things. Being able to Connect, Control, and Converge your network and security functionality into a single, cloud-native service.

Connect

I love that. Let’s break it down into those three categories. Want to start with Connect since it’s first??

Sure! With the power of Meraki, customers get a high-quality experience using SD-WAN. Meraki brings in advanced analytics with platform-wide visibility, which is unique to Cisco Meraki. So regardless of whether you’re connecting from your phone via an application or connecting to your network in office, you get the same insight into your WAN. To top it off, your connection has an integrated agile security solution behind it with Cisco Talos and Umbrella helping you identify and block threats.

Control

I’m good. Here’s my company card, go ahead and swipe it! Haha! If I were a small business owner, what more could I need than enterprise-level security so I can access my data from anywhere I need to be. How about Control? We all like to have a level of control, what does that look like with SASE??

That’s where our Security solution really comes into play. Cisco offers a simple, streamlined, and solid security protection with multifunction cloud security service. As cloud security pioneer and leader in zero-trust, customers can feel the difference of these best-of-platform capabilities in their network and security needs.?

Converge

I love that Cisco not only has best-in-class products and solutions but enables users with options on how to deploy.?

That’s exactly what the Converge piece of the puzzle is. With a united security and networking solution, customers also have this integrated approach that meets multi-cloud demands at scale. This is where my favorite piece of this grand melting pot comes into the picture: Managed Services. Based on a Viewpoint Research report, “Two-thirds of SD-WAN business is expected to go managed by 2025.” AppDynamics also reported, “95% of organizations changed their technology priorities during the pandemic.”?

With the constantly evolving technologies, security threats growing in sophistication, and the need to optimize resources, customers are turning to managed services to help them be more agile and reach their goals. Cisco managed service partners can help their customers while also benefiting from increase in profitability, relevant offers that are sticky and revenue growing, offers differentiation against competitors and embraces a simplified and streamlined portfolio.

Amy, thank you for joining me on this blog and for sharing your managed services expertise with me and our distributors in Latin America.?

More to See

Here at Cisco, we are always working toward reaching new goals and connecting the unconnected. Our desire to help people, technologies, and data converge is why we choose to continue crafting solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.?

Click on the following link if you’d like to learn more about?Cisco SASE?or?Managed Services.?