We’ve discussed SD-WAN on this blog many times and this has been a growing space for several years. But how has this model worked with the considerations required for Covid? And how does that fit with SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)?
The Switch to Remote Working
The key change for organisations and their IT networks was the sudden need to embrace home-working. This isn’t a natural fit for a traditional SD-WAN deployment. One reason is that they are based on a hub and spoke model. For example, connecting branch offices to a datacentre or cloud. This relies on Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) running SD-WAN software. Of course, SD-WAN brings with it a flexibility to select that hardware or use existing infrastructure. Regardless, there is still often a need to place that hardware close to the users.
Many more people have been working from home during the pandemic and many plan to continue. Many organisations will find the traditional SD-WAN solution falls short in this environment.
SASE to the Rescue!
This is where Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) comes to the rescue. Like much modern network jargon, a lot of what comes together to enable SASE is not new tech, but a combination of existing tech. The essence of SASE has been around for years but only fairly recently has been given a name by the analyst firm Gartner.
SASE moves away from the traditional hub and spoke network approach. This approach to corporate networks that has dominated for many years has begun to weaken with greater adoption of cloud-based services. With this comes greater need for security and global connectivity at the edge. Traditionally, you have SD-WAN appliances at each of your branch offices, managed by a central server. With SASE, everything is managed in the cloud and designed to accommodate users connecting from anywhere, with policies applied at the edge.
This means that a user working from home just needs to start their SASE connectivity agent. When connected, they can access all their cloud services in a secure manner using their home broadband connection. There is no need to worry about VPNs and their associated limitations and security concerns.
Does Replify Accelerator WAN Optimization Fit with SASE?
We launched Replify Accelerator in 2007. From the start, we provided a client for end-user devices and a Linux package that can be installed in the cloud. Yes, we provide virtual appliances for many of the hypervisor platforms, but this is simply for ease of deployment, rather than being an integral requirement. This means we don’t care whether we are running on your phone, laptop, container, hypervisor, server or cloud platform. We provide the same optimization capabilities for all of these.
This architecture means that Replify can easily slot into your SASE solution. You can install our client software alongside the SASE connectivity agent. Indeed we are happy for our OEM partners to include it as an integral part of their own agent’s installation.
Our server software can be installed at relevant endpoints in the cloud and hey presto, WAN optimization is available for all users of the solution.
If you would like to find out more about how we can improve your SASE or SD-WAN offering to improve the experience for remote workers just drop us an email.