SD-WAN & SASE Solutions Comparison: Should your company use SASE?

Your company has an existing network solution in place but you’re wondering whether SASE or SD-WAN is actually a good fit — and you’re not sure where to get reliable information without calling a bunch of vendors on your own.

In this video, I break down the 3 ideal fits for a SASE solution so you can quickly figure out whether your company should be exploring it.

Want my recommendation on whether SASE is the right fit for your company? Ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company has an existing network solution in place but you’re wondering whether SASE or SD-WAN is a good fit, and you’re not sure where to get reliable information without calling a bunch of vendors on your own.
In this video, I break down the three ideal fits for a SASE solution so you can quickly figure out whether your company should be exploring it.
Want my recommendation on whether SASE is the right fit for your company? Ask me today.

My Recommendation

If you’d like my recommendation on whether SASE is a good solution for your company — or which SASE and SD-WAN vendors you should be quoting — send me an email or give me a call at 714.593.0011. It doesn’t cost you anything to get my recommendations. I’ve been a broker for all the major SASE and SD-WAN vendors in the marketplace for over 20 years and I know the landscape inside and out. I know which vendors your company should be quoting, and I’ll get you better pricing and better information than you’d be able to get calling them directly on your own. Join the thousands of other companies who have used me to help their company make a better decision in a fraction of the time. Also don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and go check out AeroComInc.com — you can read and write reviews on service providers, watch videos, and filter providers by features.

Where Did This Information Come From?

The three ideal fits I’m covering today came from a conversation I had with Cato Networks — one of the SASE vendors I quote regularly. They walked me through what they consider their perfect customer fit, and when I heard it I thought it was great information to pass on. I agree with their assessment, and in my experience it applies not just to Cato but to most SASE solutions on the market. If you’d like information on Cato or any of their competitors, don’t call them directly — contact me instead. I’ll get you much better pricing.

Ideal Fit 1: Your Company Has an Inefficient, Complex, or Costly Wide Area Network

The first ideal fit for a SASE solution is if your company’s existing wide area network is a problem — too expensive, too complex, or simply not meeting your expectations anymore.

Your MPLS Network Is Costing Too Much

If your company runs an MPLS network today, you know how expensive it can get. MPLS is reliable but it carries a heavy price tag, and as your business grows and adds locations, that cost compounds fast. SASE gives you a way to replace or supplement your MPLS network with a more cost-effective architecture without sacrificing performance.

Too Many Vendors, Too Much Complexity

Maybe your company has an MPLS network or a WAN, separate firewalls from one vendor, endpoint protection from another, VPNs from a third — and the whole stack has become unmanageable. SASE consolidates those functions into a single platform, reducing both complexity and the number of vendor relationships your IT team has to manage.

Your Existing Vendors Are Failing You

Or simply put — your current vendors are not delivering on what they promised. If your wide area network or security solution has consistently underperformed, SASE is worth a serious look as a replacement.

Ideal Fit 2: Simplification Is a Hard Business Requirement

The second ideal fit is if your company genuinely needs to simplify its network and security stack — not just as a nice-to-have, but as an actual business requirement.

Contract Renewals and End of Life Are Forcing Your Hand

If your company has multiple apps in place — security applications, VPNs, firewalls, network edge apps — and some of those are coming up for contract renewals or hitting end of life, that is a natural forcing function to consolidate. Instead of renewing each one separately, SASE lets you bring them all under one platform.

You Need to Implement ZTNA

If your company is still using site-to-site VPNs to connect remote users, Zero Trust Network Access is the modern replacement. VPNs are complex to manage at scale and create security gaps that ZTNA eliminates. If implementing ZTNA is on your IT roadmap, SASE is the natural vehicle to do it.

You Need to Reduce Cost

When you have a different vendor for every application, the cost adds up fast. Legacy apps like MPLS make it worse. If your company needs to reduce overall technology spend on your wide area network and security stack, consolidating onto a SASE platform is one of the most effective ways to do it.

Ideal Fit 3: Your Company Has a Small IT Team

The third ideal fit is if your company has a lot of users and a lot of locations, but a small IT team trying to manage everything.

Centralized Cloud Management Across Every Site

With most SASE solutions, everything is controlled in the cloud and deployed remotely. You do not need technical staff at every site to stand things up or manage day-to-day operations. If your company has been held back from expanding its network footprint because you do not have enough IT staff to manage more locations, SASE removes that bottleneck.

Your Current Solution Is Too Complex for a Small Team

Maybe your existing SD-WAN or SASE solution is technically capable but too complex for your team to manage effectively — especially when everyone on the team is already stretched thin handling other responsibilities. A well-designed SASE platform simplifies management to the point where a small team can run a large and complex network without burning out.

Visibility and Remote Troubleshooting Tools

If your IT team does not have technical people on-site at every location, visibility is everything. SASE gives you centralized tools — alerts, dashboards, remote diagnostics — so your team can see exactly what is happening across the entire network and fix issues remotely without dispatching someone on-site. A small IT team with the right SASE tools can operate like a much larger team across a broad network footprint.

Is SASE the Right Fit for Your Company?

If your company fits any of those three scenarios — a costly or complex WAN, a need to simplify, or a small IT team managing a large network — reach out and contact me. Send me an email or give me a call at 714.593.0011. Do not start calling SASE vendors all over the internet on your own — you will likely end up with the wrong one. I am a broker for all the major SASE and SD-WAN vendors, I know which ones your company should be quoting, and I will get you better pricing on the vendor of your choice than if you call them directly. I will introduce you to the best salespeople, set up a demo, and oversee the quoting process to make sure your company gets the best deal available. And I do not charge you anything — the service providers pay my broker fee. There is no excuse not to at least reach out and get my opinion. Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and check out AeroComInc.com. Thanks for watching — I’ll catch you on the next one.