According to the latest "SASE & SD-WAN & SSE Market Research Report" released by Dell'Oro Group, the SSE (Security Service Edge) market in the first quarter of 2022 increased by 40% year-on-year to more than 800 million US dollars. SSE is a relatively new market, incorporating cloud-centric security features to facilitate secure access to the web, cloud services and private applications.

SSE forms the secure part of SASE. Inside SASE, SSE focuses on unifying all security services, including Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), and Firewall as a Service (FWaaS). The other half of the SASE platform focuses on the simplification and unification of network services, including software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), WAN optimization, quality of service (QoS), and other methods to improve routing to cloud applications.

"In an era of distributed applications and hybrid work, enterprises are increasingly focusing on cloud-delivered security, rather than traditional on-premises solutions," said Mauricio Sanchez, research director, cybersecurity, SASE and SD-WAN at Dell'Oro Group.

In addition, the report mentions the following points:

• FWaaS and ZTNA revenue cumulatively increased by more than 100% year-on-year.
• SWG and CASB revenue cumulatively increased nearly 30% year over year.
• Total SASE networking and security revenue was nearly $1.5 billion, up more than 30% year over year.
• SD-WAN revenue grew more than 20% year over year.
• There are more than 35 vendors in the SASE market, with the top 11 vendors accounting for 80% of market revenue.

However, despite the growing market, the intricate challenges surrounding SD-WAN and SASE remain. MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) interviewed and surveyed 36 experts from 10 service providers, and summarized the current problems and challenges in the development of SD-WAN and SASE.

Challenge #1: Managed SD-WAN Services Lack of Clear Standardization

SD-WAN service providers are challenged by a lack of clear standards and interoperability, MEF said. Standards groups such as MEF are working on SD-WAN specifications, but service providers have yet to agree on how to standardize SD-WAN. One vendor's services may not be compatible with another, creating challenges in how to integrate services between vendors.

SD-WAN challenges include:

• Multi-vendor SD-WAN complexity. Service providers often use and offer SD-WAN services from different vendors, so there are interoperability issues that lead to management and operational complexity.
• Security integration. Implementing security in an SD-WAN environment still faces some difficulties, as the industry has yet to define standard security terms and requirements. In addition, enterprises lack cybersecurity experts who can migrate customers from traditional security services to SD-WAN security.
• Difficult to provide SLA. The challenges of managing an SD-WAN overlay and underlay network make it difficult for service providers to guarantee optimal network performance to customers through SLAs.
• Lack of customer awareness. Customers are largely unaware of how SD-WAN service providers work.

Challenge 2: SASE services are also difficult to define

SASE is a relatively new technology, and its challenges are comparable to those of SD-WAN, but more complex because the technology is still in the early stages of development.

SASE challenges include:

• Lack of industry standards. The MEF stated that SASE products lack a standardized definition specifically for those offered by network MSPs. MEF is trying to meet this challenge by developing the W117 standard.
• Customer awareness and departmental integration. SASE has a limited number of industry standards, resulting in a lack of customer understanding of how the service works. In addition, most organizations' network and security teams are two separate divisions. According to MEF, integrating the network and security departments into one SASE-based team will take years.
• Product is incomplete. Most current SASE vendors offer products that are not fully functional, which means that MSPs must integrate potentially incompatible services to provide a complete product to enterprise customers.
• Inconsistent security services. Security teams struggle to provide ideal security in complex SASE environments because the definitions of security requirements are not yet uniform and relatively scarce.
• Tools are in short supply. The SASE market is still very new, making it difficult for service providers to determine the type of tools, testing, and certification to offer businesses.
• Define SLAs. SASE providers have difficulty offering customers larger SLAs than SD-WAN service providers.

While the SD-WAN and SASE markets are currently on the rise, challenges posed by the complexities of both technologies could hamper their momentum in the future, MEF said.