In the ever-evolving landscape of networking and security, two buzzwords have been making the rounds: SD-WAN and SASE. With the confusion surrounding them and SASE (the newer of the two), you may wonder: “Does SD-WAN have a future in a SASE world?” GigaOm explores the benefits of SD-WAN, the hype around SASE, how they fit together, and whether SASE is an automatic choice for all SD-WAN customers.

The last two years accelerated Information Technology (IT) trends that were already underway: rapid increase in the adoption of cloud, multi-cloud, and internet of things (IoT); a smarter edge for use cases such as modern retail, healthcare, and manufacturing; and a distributed workforce, where employees can be anywhere. Software-defined (SD) WAN technology eliminates the traditional WAN connectivity challenges associated with distributed enterprise applications and IoT devices that held back this acceleration.

A recent survey by Gartner, Inc. found that 75% of organizations are pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022, up from 29% in 2020.

Network connections are becoming more complex as more devices require connectivity from infinitely more locations. This proliferation of IoT has driven demand for software-defined solutions to optimize networking costs, improve enterprise agility/scalability, and enable the integration of cloud applications.