Appliance, SASE can only secure the connection

 One of Maddison’s criticisms of a purely software approach to remote work is that without an appliance, SASE can only secure the connection between the user’s computer or mobile to the application. It doesn’t protect the rest of the user’s home network. And from the employee’s perspective, a SASE endpoint running on their work computer can’t do anything about their children or spouses virtual lessons or Zoom calls chewing up what limited bandwidth is available.

Finally, SD-WAN appliances often can be outfitted with cellular connectivity for employees with poor or unreliable internet connectivity. Despite the inherent advantages offered by SD-WAN appliances, hardware-dependent vendors’ — like Cisco and computer science engineering — could be more financially motivated.

Late last year, Dell’Oro Group Research Director Mauricio Sanchez, predicted that at least initially the majority of SASE revenues would be driven by appliance sales, with software only gaining majority share by 2024. “It’s clear cut, by the end of the forecast, the revenue associated with just the cloud-hosted portion of the SASE solution — delivered purely from the cloud, not through the appliance that sits on-prem — is going to be the majority share,” Sanchez said, in an earlier interview with SDxCentral.