Versa Networks announced that new research from Futuriom Research and Versa Networks has revealed 98 percent of organizations feel that hybrid work has increased demand for SASE and ZTNA solutions. The study, titled "SD-WAN and SASE Managed Services Survey Report," also found 94 percent of respondents said they prefer a single-pass architecture when evaluating and deploying SASE solutions.

To gather information for the report, Futuriom surveyed 196 qualified enterprise networking and security users, director-level and above. The goal of the study was to find key needs for software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) and secure access service edge (SASE) in managed services.

According to the survey report, 98 percent of respondents want a hybrid solution that can accommodate networking and security both on premises and using cloud points of presence (PoPs), and 92 percent consider ZTNA a crucial component of SASE solutions. When asked about the largest challenges in managing WANs, 85 percent of respondents identified complexity, followed by expertise and knowledge (68%). Rounding out the responses were cost (60%) and time (47%).

"It's no surprise that changing work dynamics and hybrid work have increased demand for SASE solutions with ZTNA functionality, and that the overwhelming majority of organizations prefer a single-pass architecture when evaluating and deploying SASE solutions," said Scott Raynovich, Founder and Principal Analyst of Futuriom. "The leading SD-WAN and SASE solutions have been evolving to help networking and cybersecurity professionals with many new challenges, including the growing complexity created by distributed applications, cloud connectivity, and sprawling security risks. The unique approach of melding software-based control of SD-WAN and SASE has driven broad adoption across both enterprises and service providers, with service providers adopting the technology to deliver enterprise managed services."

For a free copy of the Futuriom "SD-WAN and SASE Managed Services Survey Report," see https://versa-networks.com/resources/reports/sd-wan-and-sase-managed-services-survey-report/.

The study also found that 98 percent of respondents see the benefits of combining SD-WAN with SASE. When asked about whether they are managing end users from an on-premises or hybrid scenario, 66 percent of respondents have immediate plans for hybrid scenarios of on-premise and remote connectivity, while 32 percent are planning on rolling hybrid capabilities out over the next 6-12 months. When asked to rank the importance of global connectivity, a majority (61%) of respondents ranked it as very important, 31 percent ranked it as important, while zero respondents said it wasn't important at all.

"Cloud transformation and hybrid work requirements have created security and networking complexities for organizations," said Dan Maier, CMO for Versa Networks. "This insightful research from Futuriom shows how security and network architects are thinking about solving these problems via advanced SASE solutions, and their understanding of the importance of a single-pass architecture. From Versa's perspective, we're gratified that this research confirms the value customers are seeing from our product strategy to deliver an integrated, Unified SASE solution that delivers world-class SD-WAN and best-of-breed network and internet security."