Presents a MEF-defined SASE service for remote employee access to multiple public clouds (e.g., AWS, Azure). Access service is fully orchestrated and enables end-to-end assurance and policy through Lean NFV-based networking and security functions located in multiple SASE domains (customer premises, Connectivity Service Provider, Security Provider, Public Cloud). Lean NFV fosters an open market of best-of-breed components for connectivity, security, analytical, management, and other functions, which may be added and deployed dynamically without disruption to the existing infrastructure.
As a leading voice of the open networking movement, Dan Pitt discusses how, by showing multiple SD-WAN solutions and multiple SASE solutions, Lean NFV illustrates the flexibility service providers gain from having multiple technology options and a library of functions for service chaining.
This PoC demonstrates end-to-end SASE service layered on multiple SD-WANS with distributed security, orchestrated using principles of Lean NFV for greater openness, agility, disaggregation, and service innovation at the edge. SASE Service is established, secured, and driven by common policies over customer, service provider, security cloud, and public cloud domains. As a result, the end customer receives policy-driven, zero-trust access to multiple public cloud providers.
Currently available SASE offerings vary in architecture and functionalities, creating a lot of confusion and leaving out the importance of customer and cloud domains in end-to-end service assurance and security. Inspired by recent MEF initiatives, this POC validates E2E SASE using Lean NFV management concepts, which makes dynamic SASE options feasible.
Due to COVID-19, many employees will remain home, even after the pandemic. This change shifts previous connectivity patterns to more decentralized. To ensure security, more enterprises will start using offerings from SASE providers. Full assurance and security can be achieved only through collaboration between Security and Communication Service Providers.
Standardization of the SASE service model is required to introduce interoperability between SASE vendors and Service/Cloud Providers. Standards governing architecture and behavior will simplify SASE offering selection. More significantly, the definition of common control APIs, from a Key-Value Store to VNFs, CNFs, microcontrollers, and other Lean NFV components, is necessary to achieve facilitated NF onboarding.
Slower adoption of SASE due to limited functionality, fragmentation, and only partial coverage of end-to-end service. Continuous limited use of NFV by Service Providers, due to operational complexity and inability to rapidly onboard new virtual and containerized network functions and mix different components of a MANO stack. Perpetuation of brittle, single-vendor, monolithic solutions.
