Before the end of 2020, Cavell Group hosted their Cloud Networking Summit focusing on the challenges faced by service providers as the IT industry moves to cloud-delivered services. Throughout the event, the theme focused on digital transformation and the rapid adoption of cloud services, shifting users, devices, services, and data outside the enterprise.
What’s the significant impact of this digital transformation? Organizations need to rethink their networks to cope with legacy wide area networks (WANs) complexity and enable connectivity between users and applications residing in the cloud. Many are turning to a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
The Shift Towards Cloud-Delivered Services
SD-WAN comes with the promise to leverage the Internet to deliver secure, highly flexible, encrypted services to users and their devices. This is great news for those organizations which are trying to slowly become less dependable on private Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connectivity. Many organizations opt for a hybrid network approach which mixes MPLS and SD-WAN to help alleviate the cost implications of MPLS.
While service providers may be impacted by businesses stopping MPLS usage for SD-WAN solutions, the value of the service provider is undervalued. Service providers are more than a mere contractor of service connections; they offer end-to-end services. Organizations are not just looking for connectivity when they turn to managed service providers (MSP), they need network services capable of supporting their business objectives. An MSP delivers a service with predictable and measurable Service Level Agreements (SLA), and clear contractual measurements that go beyond a technology decision. They offer A to B connectivity with best application performance and security regardless of the underlying transport and the infrastructure type, private or cloud.
Existing network solutions and technologies no longer provide the levels of security and access control organizations need. These organizations demand immediate, uninterrupted access for their users, no matter where they are located. Secure access service edge (SASE) has emerged as a cybersecurity concept to define the convergence of WAN and network security services into a single, cloud-delivered model.
By consuming cloud-delivered security, organizations can eliminate on-premises security appliances, thus reducing capital costs while cutting their overhead – operational costs and IT resources. Organizations can migrate to this model at their own pace, but many feel they are not ready to undertake the complexity of an increasingly challenging threat landscape. They turn to manage services offered by service providers.
Service Providers Opportunity with SASE
By adopting a SASE platform on top of their existing transport services, service providers are able to create a managed networking and security practice that can deliver to their customer’s promises. With SASE being cloud-delivered, service providers benefit from a highly scalable platform that doesn’t require hardware, software or complex integrations. This enables them to accelerate time-to-market with new differentiated services. By owning the transport providing the connectivity to the SASE platform, services providers add value to the end-to-end service.
When you combine the customer connectivity, network infrastructure, the secure SASE fabric, and its end-to-end management with guaranteed SLAs, service providers are in prime position to help organisations to secure their cloud journeys.
By navigating the SASE opportunity, service providers differentiate themselves, and drive revenue with new service offerings.
To learn how cloud secure services catalysts for change in the managed service market, hear from Gail Smith, Cavell Group, and Stuart Borgman, Palo Alto Networks in this fireside chat.
This post is part of the MSSP partners series.