PP102: What’s Driving SASE Adoption?

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Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of Packer Protector, the podcast at the intersection of networking and security.

I'm Jennifer J. J. Manello, who will be soon going back by Jennifer J. J. J.

So get ready for that. Here with my co-host, Drew Cronry Murray.

Hello. Hello.

And I'm still going to be Cronry Murray, so no, Drew.

You're still going to be Drew Cronry Murray. That's good.

One change at a time, my friends. We've changed colors. I'm going to change my name.

If you are so inclined in another six to nine months, we'll sign off on you changing your name.

Well, I'll have to check with my wife on that, but.

All right. Well, if you're listening to us, when this episode drops, we are at RSA Tuesday and our guest today is also at RSA with this this week as well.

Mauricio Sanchez, who you heard from last year.

And he's a senior director of enterprise security networking at Del Auro Group and Drew, tell him what we've won this episode.

Yeah. So Mauricio put out a report about fairly significant rise in sassy spending their forecasting.

So we wanted to bring them on to talk about all things sassy.

So what's driving spending how there how Del Auro Group is seeing sassy have a surprise relationship with AI governance.

And we talk about what to do if you're planning on investigating or rolling out a sassy architecture, some tips there.

And we also dig into some vendor JJ.

We did. So we kind of just poked in a little bit about the, you know, the vendor landscape.

I think I'm always interested in listeners are always interested about, you know, with who's doing what in the in the sassy and sassy way on space.

So we got a quick little pulse on Kato Cloudflare, Versa, Zscaler, Cisco, Palo Alto, that's go for Rista.

And then Mauricio dove into some of the like the sovereign sassy vendors who are letting people kind of roll their own like Fortinet.

So it was really interesting break down there.

Yeah, so lots to come. So come join us.

So Mauricio, welcome back to pack protector.

The reason we invited you on was you wrote a spending forecast recently for Del Auro that you projecting that sassy spending is going to almost triple over the next five years compared to the previous five in my immediate thought was what's what's driving that spending.

Of course, Joe, thank you for and I made good to see you JJ as well here.

So yeah, sassy. I think it's a story that that obviously started during the pandemic or at least is when it really got going and the conversation then was about how do we deal with remote access and everyone working from home during the pandemic.

And I think that that really incited and put fuel to the fire about cloud distributed network security.

It caught up SD when as an economic argument because there was over in the branch edge already have gone back part to the pandemic.

A lot of investment going towards reinventing the branch edge in favor of shifting away from say things like MPLS to come out of the internet.

And so it got swizzled together around 2020 into this notion of well, we got to bring security and our team together because it makes sense and still does on the branch edge and then also for remote users.

So I think fundamentally there those premises still exist. So we still have the economic factor as a secular win.

We've got the need to support security wherever the users may be. So that's pushing for cloud security.

So what I see now is something that's transpired in that there were leading enterprises that obviously shifted to a sassy architecture.

Those leading enterprises are not thinking about okay, how do we take advantage of the capabilities that this architecture brings to the table.

And so what's coupled up to the top for those industries that have already deployed sassy.

Is how do you leverage that to control AI? So AI is come into view in the sassy landscape from a governance perspective.

Yes, vendors are expected to just just sprinkle the AI pixie dust because it makes things better.

It smells better tastes better when when it's AI infused. It's got like spring water.

And so it that's that's table stakes, but now given that that the sassy architectures and predominantly when you've got a network security fabric that is cloud delivered.

And so it's all knowing all seeing it's an interesting position to be able then to start saying, okay, let's crack open the packets and see what this AI traffic, right.

So fundamentally what used to be in the past, something like let's do DNS white listing to now is like let's do AI governance because we don't want people to upload to chat GPT or a tropical favor AI all of the goods from a particular company.

So I see that as kind of being a thrust within the enterprises that have already deployed sassy architecture.

But as anything in the world and the transition from legacy architectures, the sassy is a very long one.

So you've got then a lot of industries and a lot of enterprises who are still amidst that transformation, right.

So it's a long tailed story there. So there you've got to then that the two two basic things you've you've got a key driver for the for the ones that already deployed as terms of how do you take advantage of it now for interesting use cases.

Secondarily, you've got this long tail of enterprises who have yet to make the transition who are now catching up and continue to then transition from legacy modalities who assess the architecture.

And is it an economic driver, an operational driver that the folks who haven't done sassy yet are looking at and thinking, yeah, I want to go this way.

All the above so so I think the as I as I pointed out, if we will go back to 2020 and when they're written and even before that with SC win, there was an economic driver, right.

And I could definitely for SD win. Yeah, you could you save a lot of money getting off MPLS.

Exactly. And and but it also then transcended in terms of of the SC win, there was also a user experience benefit, right. So it's a productivity benefit.

And where it which think gets bucket into an economic benefit. But but yes, so the short of it is that I think people people who haven't made the transition understand that there's an economic benefits.

There is palpable security benefits outside the AI domain, but I think the AI governance question and challenge question and visibility question is coming into view as turbo charging the conversation yet again, it's almost like another wave of push as to why company should be thinking about it versus saying, oh, we're going to we're going to say whatever we are on on right now.

I have to tell you though, I'm a little bit surprised to hear that that's one of the primary use cases in the sassy world right now. So I'm kind of curious, what is the benefit of managing your AI governance with with the sassy architecture versus just having visibility and control over the endpoints.

Well, because I think there's a belt of suspenders approach, right. And so for for a managed environment where where you can deploy a full blown endpoint and and then maybe that's the position that you take is that you you're with an endpoint provider that is giving you everything that that you need.

But one of the things is that that we know is that not every endpoint can have in a full blown managed endpoints offer install of it. So think of it like contractors.

Think of it like even going to the growing role of machine endpoints. So so if you think about the thesis here is that these providers want to be they want to suck up.

I can all your traffic, right, whether it's right or wrong, we can we can argue about the network implications in the in the performance implications.

If you send all your traffic to a particular as a serious hazard provider, but on the security side, if you take that pack to say, I'm going to send everything that's interesting.

And it may be not all the time, right, maybe maybe it's a snapshot of the traffic or concern in a role to for certain endpoints, but it gets back to the notion that you may not be able to to push a full blown endpoint on every endpoint.

And so you need a belt of the spinners approach is that yes, for manage endpoint, there are benefits to putting the software on the I agree that there are benefits of putting stuff on the endpoint because they're your your gun visibility.

The really everything that happened on the endpoint, but conversely, you may have a lot of endpoints where you can do that.

I mean, and that makes sense. I think every large enterprise that I've worked with at least has even a mid size enterprise has never a single comprehensive list of endpoints.

There's not a one-to-one mapping of endpoints to agents. So so it sounds like really these organizations are going full like whole hog into we are sending your our traffic to you, not just cherry picking certain devices to do like an SSE architecture.

Yeah, it's increasingly so because coming from the sassy side and I always think about sassy and the conversation of it being both a security solution, but also a networking solution.

I know that for several years there was kind of a whipsaw between some people thinking, oh, it's only security and I still run it to that every once in a while, but I appreciate that there's a strong networking on it to this.

And increasingly some of these sassy providers are saying and going to the degree of saying we will become a middle mile at your transport network.

So the performance of their networks are such that they believe that that they can replace those backbone links. So basically becoming everything not doing the last mile, but saying once you handed off to my pop close to the last mile, I will then forward it to where it needs to go.

That's a very interesting proposition, not, of course, not old providers do it and secondarily not all enterprises are necessarily going to say, oh, yeah, I'm going to go all in to have my sassy provider become my middle mile provider.

Some of the vendors are pushing single vendor sassy where I provide you the SD and the SSE or you can mix and match are you seeing how are you seeing the uptake is it still.

What's the split between sort of I'm mixing and matching and I'm going all in on one vendor for the networking and the security.

And that's a great question. So so at least on paper, the preponderance of providers now fall into the single vendor back a bucket right so what that means is that they sell both the SD and in the SSE.

But if we look at in terms of who's having success and getting the complete sure wallet in both the SD and side in the SSE, it's only very few from a from a revenue perspective or at least from market perspective.

So, you know, folks like Cisco, Apollo, Fortnite and Kato or the ones that come to mind as being kind of ones that are that relatively balanced in terms of being able to pursue both sides of the coin because otherwise what I see is in large enterprise, which is again going back to kind of where we are in the in the evolution and the adoption of sassy large enterprise tends to be multi vendor so they may still buy from a single vendor classified sassy provider.

But they've got a security solution from the security type of outfit and they've got networking from a networking type of outfit classic example that is just is just go in Z scaler.

But as you go down market, I think what we see is we do see green shoots in the market and the revenue numbers aren't terribly large yet, but they're growing very quickly.

As you go down market, of course, simplification, operational simplicity become higher levers in the purchasing acquisition. And so we do see that where people do go all in on the on the particular provider and say, OK, I just want one vendor and I'll stomach if it doesn't have all the nerve knobs that I need on either side and and it's good enough.

What about reconciling those concerns around, you know, having any single vendor be, especially somebody that's in your traffic path, be a single point of failure or a single point of control, a single point of access.

How much of that because I feel like more and more the calls and conversations we're getting from CIOs and CSOs is they're they're trying to figure out how to add redundancy within their infrastructures and that's, you know.

Different ISPs different platforms, you know, fill fill over options for various things. What's the story from the sassy side for that.

It's a real it's a real one. I think in the last two years, what I've heard, especially as we look at the large enterprises, who was early waves and there's probably deeper into the sassy story.

We clearly have greater sensitivities to up time. What I'm seeing is that they're multi sourcing not an active active type of standby, but they're architecting their sassy in a active standby configuration and saying, look, I want to make sure that that I have a backup.

And it's one of the impetus is in terms of why these large enterprises go multi vendor. So it's a question of if for a particular enterprise, there's a great sensitivity to up time, which then pushes them to say, I want the multi source and they're going to stay multi vendor.

And more and more so also say I'm going to buy or procure or architect have multiple sassy providers. And so really that's where it comes into you right not only branch edge where I want to to see peace.

That sounds very expensive and very complicated. So it is at an end. This is just pure ignorance. So I'm going to ask this question. Is it a I use vendor a and if there's a problem, it fails over to vendor B and I've in my endpoints are already, you know, in point sites, whatever or provision for that. And they're going to pick up that that that fill over as happened or is it more I'm going to consume service, you know, X from vendor a service Y from vendor B and mix and match.

No, it's more of a of a gross level and and you're absolutely right that not only is it is it.

It's not a cost issue at least at the first layer of the onion. I think the first layer of the onion is just the architecture is today, the industry hasn't made it easy to be able to on the real time swap these sorts of services.

And not lose connectivity right. And so what what I think people are looking at more is is how can I have at least at the branch edge because that's that's easier proposition than then tickling every end point that may be connecting to an end point, but it's like how can I the branch edge I quickly swap that the upstream pop that say an ACPE branch CPU is going to send traffic to that I can just flip it by tickling.

A limited number of branch edge devices to be able to steer traffic in the right direction is still ugly granted right because it involves humans and I was probably an area where vendors could could differentiate if they could make that easy on your economic front.

Yes, that comes into conversation, but in many instances because it's the the the enterprises are pushing to say because I'm not using your service.

It really is a meter service. So I'm not paying a second vendor unless I actually start using it. So so it doesn't come in in the cost of front in the instances because it becomes a pay as you go model not I'll pay you the same amount I'm paying my primary sassy provider because it's a user based license and it just it's a it typically is a all you can eat offer.

That's interesting. So there are SSE vendors who are willing to say, yeah, we won't charge you to start seeing traffic or very limited rights kind of like think because it it's a we'll put you on retainer.

We want to we want to the shrewd ones are going to say that because it that way at least they keep the keep the foot in the door.

I because otherwise it would be shut out if a vendor or a price as I'm all in on vendor a and you vendor be who I'm going to treat as my secondary backup.

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I'm curious if you see because we are putting together networking and security here and those the networking group in the security group may be different buying entities in an organization.

Do you have a sense of who carries the most weight when it's a decision of we want to go all in on one vendor.

To do the networking and the security does does networking get the say or to security get the say or is it a we all have to come together and sink.

I wish we could all think that come together to sink.

All right, I remember now that I've been in the industry 25 years that's been has been the comment refrain.

Now back 20 20 years ago, we tell you that the networking team and security teams were all in a moderate and it never mix.

I think we've come a far along the ways in having these folks sink.

But perhaps not entirely yet what I see is is most of the the action that's transpired has been probably 60 to 70% security led and then the remainder network in lead now the network continues do need to sign off or at least acknowledge that the direction of where things are going.

We still have a sizable influence on the ultimate acquisition.

But yes, unfortunately for the network practitioners out there security still seems to be steering ahead, but at least now CISOs understand that these two teams need to to work together and they are working together to take greater degree.

Do you see the sassy play.

From a who signs the PO typically coming from the IT operation side or the security side.

It typically comes from the if you if by your nomenclature IT means kind of like above the networking and the security teams.

It typically comes from the higher order, but it is led by the the security side and right now, like I said, at least for the people who have already deployed to see with AI governance is being kind of the tip of the spear and data security being the tip of the spear.

It is again, a lot of the noise or or push is coming from this the security side.

With firewalling being sort of a core capability of sassy, are you seeing sassy eat into traditional firewall revenue.

Yes, and so I think it's it's a little bit nuance because the way that that I see things is it.

Firewalls and in access routers used to live side by side in harmony and hold hands and and that was the architecture.

To branch edges and so what's happened is that security functionality is now the networking and security functionality is being consolidated to one box.

So became a knife fight first.

It was a knife fight between access routing and an sdwann boxes now it's a knife fight between access routing sdwann and security boxes because you can buy an sdw and gateway that has firewall capabilities built in.

Yes, it has 80% of the of what a firewall box does in for a branch edges, many instances that's that's enough.

It's like you don't need every last nerd knob, but your nerves.

I like when you're nubs and and so what I see is that your question is like is it is a standalone firewall being put under pressure because of sassy architectures.

The answer is yes.

And so the but the on the flip side, there's also the opportunity that because a lot of the sassy security led that the firewall vendors who have added networking functionality are eating into what was traditionally the networking.

Right, because they've been able to steal away what used to be sdwann rfp money into their own platforms.

So it's a bit of a I wouldn't say a wash because I think there is still some some particular pressure happening there, but to say if the question that comes to mind is a firewall and secular decline because of sassy going pressure on hardware, the answer is no.

OK, in part because large firewall vendors can say, you know, that branch device that shunting traffic to our cloud delivered security service just make that a firewall and we had that sdwann capability, you know, to fail over on links and such.

Exactly. And at least in the in the branch edge, which is where the the real pressure from sassy put gets put on firewall because firewalls to show up.

And many other spots in the networking and sassy doesn't necessarily play into those spaces where be internal segmentation would be in a data center and another spot for sassy has yet to creep into firewall.

There is a firewall cam or market that exists independent and that is continued to flourish but within the confines of the branch edge, which is where we see that that that.

Struggle or the tension between standalone firewall and sassy yes, there is at the those dynamics as I described.

There are some I was maybe it was kato the first time I saw there, you know, there's stuff in and got a demo maybe maybe even at RSA.

And they said, yeah, you take the firewall out and I'm like, like the branch firewall or all of the firewalls are like, yeah, all of the, you know, edge internet facing.

Firewalls design for it for the egress traffic into the internet, you don't need them anymore, you replace it with this and I was like, that's a hard.

That's a hard pill to swallow it for.

Well, I think the you got to look in terms of the class of vendor that kato is that they are the style of one that I talked about.

Some sassy vendors that want to become your middle mile, they can become your your path to the internet at large or even path between different sides.

So kid is the one that's taking aggressive stance who wants to take all your traffic.

And so what that means is that that that branch device becomes more of just a thin on ramp to be to their cloud.

Yeah, and there is benefits as well as drawbacks to that approach.

It's fair to ask you kind of who the top, you know, top or emerging vendors are in this space.

Top or in which space and sassy in the sassy space, yeah.

Oh, sure. So, so I think the I think there's by emerging vendor that I assume you mean like folks like kato have been growing very, very well in the end that got mid market space were simplicity.

And being all in right, it's like I've heard customers talk about kato in the in the context of a feeling like the apple of networking and security, which is I think it could be taken both for good and bad.

Sure, but there's a worse things to be compared to.

I know there is there is, but but the the classic customer that likes apple and that ecosystem of having everything within a wall garden.

Hey, who am I to judge versus the Android people who probably want to boot kick their device and that side load all sorts of apps.

But but so that's one.

The other one that that's very interesting coming from almost right field, it feels like is cloud flare.

So cloud flare is pushing heavy.

Still from small numbers, but they're coming at it from a that CDN pedigree and then it I talked about kind of like house sassy and networking and middle middle mile fabrics are kind of kind of blurry in parts of the market.

And so cloud flare is a very interesting use case and in cloud flip because they've got that extremely strong application developer.

Community and persona when it comes to getting into the nitty-gritty of cracking packets and doing interesting things and at the application layer.

Because it comes with strong WAF, the strong API.

So you talk about AI governance and they come with some some some capabilities technologies that that sit very well into that class of use case.

So those those are the let's see who else comes in mind because the I think the the other ones that that I'm keeping my eye on in terms of whether it takes off because it hasn't necessarily taken off or people who are playing in the sovereign sassy.

In the court in the soft sassy being it's almost like do it yourself sassy fabrics because in the past it has been that you you you subscribe to particular provider and sassy or sassy provider and they've got their clouds instantiated.

But now with whether it be the current antagonism that's existing on the geopolitical level or people wanting to own their their future and to a greater degree.

I do see that that there is a growing up swell of people who's saying just give me the technology building box and I will build my own sassy fabric.

So there is a whether being a service provider network, so a lot of telcos are are starting to do this and and doing it on their regional basis.

Other enterprises are thinking about let me do it myself right kind of like do it or so that's why I said do it yourself.

A couple of of of vendors like one that comes to mind that has been bang in the the bell and pretty loudly is is foreign that has been been saying about hey we do sassy sassy sassy because we provide the the building box so that's a very interesting

landscape that that I'm keeping my my pulse on because it it could ship the dynamics between how people architect and deploy architectures versus just saying.

I'll just go to a provider.

Yeah, me seeing person networks show up there as well in the sassy sassy side.

It does is well it I knew that there was another one that started with a V but I couldn't remember what was first for Bella class I don't want to jump in in in the in so but yes first shows up as well on on a smaller scale.

But in terms of the larger ones that are showing growth.

That's why for I mentioned poor and I prefer it OK makes sense yeah and that's a such a different architecture because I mean anytime and I've seen it from several the firewall vendors what would I consider traditional firewall vendors where it's.

You can take all of our pieces parts whether it's you know physical virtual appliances or you embedded cloud and then stitch your own right roll roll your own basically and kind of figure it out which.

Very degrees of complexity at the various workshops I've seen from you know from different vendors but I am curious like if if we.

Aside from the the sovereign sassy models who who are the big two three four players in the market right now.

And sassy at all of sassy.

Sure well I think the the biggest of the big is a Z scaler right and then follow closely behind by fiscal and then you've got the core word of folks like

dot com hello and that's go so if those are kind of the big behemoths right now and then everyone else is is a much smaller slice of the total market.

You said broadcom.

Broadcom so broke the semantic folks OK so the semantic coming from the the this the on-prem swag and so surprisingly they're kind of the dark horse in this because.

They actually been.

Is it they bought blue coat back in a day and so they have so long entrenched customers.

And that continue to rely on their solutions and so they they those are massive contracts not not not not a huge number of customers but these are massive contracts because you have a large of the large enterprises who.

Dendered eyes on blue coat 20 years ago wow and package here and package shapers because blue coat bought them and they just kind of killed them yeah it's a you've got to go back in history and kind of understand that that the.

These decisions that are made 20 years ago are still with us today yeah I mean I think that's maybe an object lesson for listeners to that the solution you might be thinking about today could still be in place 20 years from now so keep that time.

I think Z scale is interesting because I feel like they were kind of first or very early to the cloud delivered security model but.

Late to the SD when space and I.

My impression is I don't feel like they have a lot of SD when traction and I'm curious if you see that more as a you know we were the mix and match one as opposed to your single vendor.

Well like all the other vendors in the pop cohort they are classified as single vendor but you're absolutely right down the SD when side.

As they were the latest and and what we can talk about broadcast because it was a single vendor or one multi vendor single vendor multi vendor as well cloud came in and out it and but at least.

On these color you're right and and I think it didn't it didn't help that that for a number of years these color was pooping SD when they were saying is like you don't need SD when it's SD when is dead and I think the messaging was little off and now they've.

Realized that several years ago that that they needed to to recalibrate to bring in the networking fold right so so.

Going back to who's buying sassy knows may not be the networking teams but they've got to say and the last thing you want to take the networking person is like.

You don't matter as it does it matters well I feel like everybody everybody did this like wave especially their covid right oh everybody's remote everything from the cloud.

Therefore networking and just as a blanket statement does not matter and then eventually you're they went oh well actually we still have to get the packets from our stuff to the cloud so the traffic perhaps do matter now we're folding that back into the to the bigger picture.

The plumbing will always matter regardless of what whatever you're talking about and I just want to wrap this up because you mentioned velo cloud I think they were acquired by VMware which is acquired by broadcom so that's how velo cloud is also in this mix of the broadcom offering yes but then last year velo cloud got sold for Rista right.

Oh that's right good God it's like the medium fishes eating the little fishes the big fish and then suddenly we all have mercury poisoning.

Yes yes well let's not sure where to go with that but but but yeah so so velo cloud and now is part of the Rista camp and and so at least for broadcom and semantic that is left them without the SD one piece right and so I think that that that poses a.

A challenge in my view a challenge in being able to expand into new logos in very quick order because everyone else I guess it is if you look at the top tier is got both and and so it's almost I expected.

So obviously sassy relies on co-location or some kind of pop lots of pop all over the place at the same time we have seen AI roll up and just start to eat all the capacity of everything are sassy vendors getting squeezed here or are they okay what what's your view on that and the computer side not yet right so I think that the the can I haven't heard anybody.

Complain about compute pricing or compute availability what it has hit the sassy vendors particularly anyone who's dealing with hardware is memory right everyone is jumping up and down about memory because that has become very expensive.

And and so it'll remains to be seen on the compute side to what degree the compute service providers will start measuring out or doing out less than what the the sassy providers at the end of the day the sassy providers aren't necessarily leveraging GPUs in terms of packet cracking I think it's still reasonable.

And so we haven't yet hit that that tsunami like we've had it but the memory situation okay i'm even thinking about just like space in in facilities in colos in cloud provider infrastructure know if I'm Amazon do I want to take on.

You know be the be the the infrastructure for sassy provider or dedicate that to a new way I business.

I haven't heard that again because of the the the differences in terms of server types and I haven't heard anyone say that if you think about data center architecture between the back end and the front end the back end being all your clusters with the GPUs and servers and super high density high speed.

Ethernet to the front end being more the general processing and that's kind of where sassy tends to live in terms of of the pops i haven't that means become it as a sort of dilemma but you've given me an interesting point to kind of keep a pulse on as to whether that will.

If we've got a balloon squeeze situation that one size going to get squeeze right now like I said everyone is jumping up and down about what do we do with memory because it's it's become more expensive than platinum gold.

We have data center moratoriums happening in my state now so yeah it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out.

I have questions around like ROI drivers because you kind of talked about you know some of the AI governance and that I feel like that was the kind of fries with that like we got it in and oh by the way look how great it is for this.

But what else do you see is kind of like what's the big win when somebody moves to sassy what's the primary driver for them to consider that.

If they haven't already made that investment and then I think the other flip side of that is where does it not work well sure lots of people paint sassy being the the grasses greener but getting there is going to be i'm not going to say he's going to be a walk in a park right I've got to meet anyone that says oh we had a pleasant experience getting to sassy.

It was it was it was somewhere between a root canal and the fear of public speaking that most people have is kind of the fear and interpretation that that a lot of but getting to the other side besides the ability to look at networking and security policy and more uniform therefore raising your security posture it's it's been a visibility control aspect so what one of the dimensions.

And for some time I didn't give folks like these killer enough appreciation.

Was this notion of digital experience management and and and so if you if you leave the marking buzzword to to the side what what what having a sassy architecture brings a table because it is all see and all knowing is now from a networking and application and security perspective.

You get to see a lot more about what's happening over the greater when the year we did before right versus being able to only look at the IP addresses and in this name and kind of your typical area three layer for sort of metrics now you can start seeing a lot more about.

What's really happening and what's impacting the the application all the way to kind of where the club footstep and some instances as sassy providers start building into the cloud itself because that's kind of another portion no differently than test providers gone to the end point there also being pushed into the into the application space and the cloud and the cloud service providers now you're getting this.

Real time way of looking at the end to end of all your application flows for for any networking that's that's a godsend and and I know we were talking about this when I was doing networking hard 25 years ago it's like visibility was one of the key areas of.

Anything you do to improve visibility was kind of like catnet for a networking geek it still is yeah is that because the sassy pop is able to measure you know from.

The last mile from the either the gateway or the end point up to the pop and then out to the destination and back and see all that are why are we getting more visibility in sassy them yes and in all because the some of these pops are also.

So shuttling between different locations so in particular when they talk about some of the sassy providers.

Or not just dumping it on the cloud service provider network at that first at when the when the traffic hits that first pop.

The mini sassy providers just dump it on the on the on the internet or the cloud provider to then shuttle to the final destination some of these are or starting to.

Steer the traffic within the pops themselves which then gives them visibility between pops as well as I said being able to.

Instrument inside the application space within the cloud as well to starting to generate both loads of telemetry that then.

These providers are starting to then contextualize into kind of a full and then pictures to what's happening across across your network so what.

Like a black box i'm years ago is starting to turn into kind of like a fuzzy transparent when we can see some of the things that are actually happening inside.

And do you have a sense of that exposure of plump tree is generally common across all sassy providers are some size of providers emphasizing it over others.

Probably more of the ladder with some with kind of like the the ability to see an influence ranges right but I think in terms of table state that increasingly has become a table six conversation until the the.

The ability of different providers and of course is a different gradients on a scale from some having very little to some having a lot.

So that might make then a good thing to add to your list of questions to ask perspective providers what kind of telemetry can you provide me about network and application performance.

Yes and I not only do I ask that but I've started to track monetization because it has become for certain providers e up sell monetization and so in future reports i'm going to break out of course everything is about money.

And so they're going to charge you extra for this deep telemetry is what you're saying that some are able to and very successfully i and so one of the vendors is one of the early vendors going back to my comments is that i didn't give enough appreciation was e scalar because they weren't only early proponent that that digital experience management should be.

Part parcel to this has a conversation and right on the gate they have been monetizing it and so i've been tracking that monetization and it's and it's been surprisingly going well and i'm now starting to see monetization appear in another providers like like palo so it's slowly as the.

As these vendors i think i'm hit an inflection point where it's not just a nice to have what I must have and the features are good enough that the that the network.

Outside of the house says yes i need this i think we're going to see more of that happen over time sure it means more money for the providers but hopefully for the network.

Engineers it's time saves and that mean time to innocence to say hey it's not us.

Yeah i mean you almost have to have something at this point with with the complexity of those architectures and not knowing in between the application and you know did it get stopped here or filtered there or delayed there's latency here when you're hopping through other people's stuff and other people's applications because everything's.

sass controlled and i don't you mean i think for you like in risio you to i mean you've got forever spinning in a networking world you know we've had all of these overlays throughout decades of.

You know on prim and for structures of okay we're going to put on these you know you experience monitors or sensors or synthetic testing so that we understand.

And what the devices or users are getting in the environment and aggregating that up and it's a pain in the butt to overlay that everywhere so.

Building it into to an architecture like this makes a lot of sense to me.

Yes it's a nice addition right sky ice can the cake that is is.

Benders that that can do it well and I think recently they're doing much better it helped out to solve those.

That multi layer cake problem that you describe yeah and you you mentioned something a minute ago when you said you know.

Going down this path is never really easy and it's something something along the lines of a root canal and it i think that's going to resonate with a lot of people listening and you know.

I think the listeners know like I i'm faculty with ions research.

So we're practitioners we take calls from people who are struggling with different technologies and I hate.

The sassy and ss e calls because inevitably right there they're struggling through this path and they want somebody to sprinkle the fairy dust and give them the magic e button from staples and go oh no no you just need to change this setting or use this vendor do that and there's just no there's just not an easy button for it's.

We have gotten so used to configuring products that we don't architect solutions anymore and I think to to re architect you have well to do sassy you have to re architect.

And it's just a painful process so but I kind of want to loop that back to my the second part of my question which was when is it really not a good fit for an organization when should they just go you know what this is not the right time or architecture for us.

Sure I think that that that.

I think the there are certain use cases where where sassy is not yet probably the right prescription so for example if we look at who is the tail end of adoption it tends to be in manufacturing or industrial or these these arenas where they've got a lot of legacy lot of esoteric lot of proprietary.

And so to me and that is one class of of of outfit the other one is where the traffic and the end points are not conducive right so if if you are.

Not leveraging a lot of sass everything is on prem and in traditional enterprise applications right it's like and and and your your economic factors aren't necessarily a motivating factor because guess what sassy nesting ends come into the picture of the telcos have dropped the pricing and MPLS.

And it's not not as expensive as it was as it once was I think those are the sorts of questions that in soul searching that people should be should be thinking about is like okay where.

Where you know when I was in HP and we were consulting the enterprises we tell them think about where you need to be seven years from now right cuz that's really going back to your comment about about we don't architect exclusions any longer.

That's kind of the conversation that we need to get back to is like where do you need to be in seven years from now because whatever you do the point that a will be in place seven years and is better be taking you in a direction that you like to be to.

And so I think that's that's the you hit on the on the on the perfect approach to this is don't jump in think about where you need to be and if you don't need to be.

If you're not going to be full while or very fast oriented if you're not going to be a lot to.

If you're not going to move away from esoteric legacy types of architectures and strange applications probably sassy is not not yet.

Something that you need to think about you can stay on whatever you are which is probably just a.

You mentioned earlier in the conversation you know contractors and I think one there's one market segment that I have just really not seen adoption other than manufacturing like you mentioned and that's.

Higher ed because there's such a random at least here in the United States or there's I don't know of any university that has like fully issued devices even for their staff there's this weird kind of like.

B I O D but not infrastructure is it priced in a way that makes is it priced and are the privacy controls appropriate for organizations that do have you know sort of a combo contractor or B I O D model to do this or does that not make sense.

So you.

You hit on an interesting area of the market which is higher ed higher ed is is is is a bit strange because it is in many instances a large enterprise.

But then in the ability to spend or the privacy requirements are vastly different and so when I think about the mesh between higher ed and sassy you hit in your own description of higher ed on the two.

Two difficulties first sassy tends to be from a from an expense perspective much more expensive than the classical solution at least for higher ed.

And secondarily that like you said the privacy security controls in many instances are not attuned to what a higher ed environment needs is if you think of a higher ed it tends to be a strange big smash between clamping down and being very open.

It's like first amendment rights in many instances trump the ability to clamp down on certain activities.

Yeah there's there's definitely some words and your wife is a teacher or a lecture somewhere.

She used to be a university professor. She is now in the nonprofit space. Yeah. Okay. So I know we had had some conversations along along the lines before.

Yeah. It's been through that. So Marie, see I feel like we could probably talk to you for another hour. But then you'd have to start charging us so we can afford that. But maybe I'll wrap on this question.

You mentioned that we've been talking a little bit about how it can be like a root canal or pulling teeth or whatever to get on board. So are there common things that you hear that folks run into us problems or are there skill sets that organization want to brush up on before they take a bite out of sassy.

Sure. Well, I think we actually hit it and it was JJ who brought it up, which is, which is before you act plan.

And this is always the case right going back 20 years ago when I was doing it into one X and and Wi-Fi early versions of Wi-Fi.

So would jump into a new technology without really thinking about what does it mean in a bigger picture and make sure that that it niches or I have a path to migrate from where I'm at.

Where I want to be sassy is probably that on steroids because it does require a retransformation about how you not just an technology basis, but then operationally because the operational model is also the needs to change in the care and feeding.

So what I would suggest to people is is rather than speed up, blow down to think about where it is that you need to be.

And also a lot of, I've seen a lot of boutique vendors who provide services to help out enterprises plan this.

So don't be afraid to either go to a pay consultation or the larger community, which we are fortunate versus five years ago when we were in the same state where we still have the same challenges.

I couldn't really point people to either for pay or for communities of people who had gone through that route, you know, to have them describe how to make it a little easier.

So I think the forms like the ones that you're part of JJ are fantastic resources, whether it be at the local regional or national level to be able to help enterprises rearchitect and go on this journey, because at the end of the day, that's what it is.

It's not it is a step function, but it could be made into a journey that takes people from where they're at to where they need to be.

And lastly, what I would say is get spend the time to understand the technology in the vendor landscape, right, because lastly, you want us to on the first date get married to particular vendor.

That's always good advice. All right, and speaking of community, we've got a slack over a pack of pushers.net where you can talk to like five or six thousand networking nerds and ask them questions that happens all the time in our Slack channel, so check it out.

This does wrap up the episode. Maricio, thank you for joining us. If folks want to find you online or do you blog, I know you're writing for Delora, do you do other things where we can folks find you.

Sure, they can find me either. Like I said, Delora, who I work for or LinkedIn, I also do a lot of work there and I'll be at our say next week.

I'm sure I'll run into some people and so if you see me in the hallways somewhere, people can catch me there, but I think LinkedIn is a good way to create that connection.

All right, we'll have the link to your LinkedIn and the show notes that are coming in this podcast. Thanks for being here, Maricio, and thanks to you for joining us for this episode of Pack of Protector.

If you have a topic you want us to cover or you've got a comment, a correction, a question, if you've had some experience rolling out sassy and you want to let us know about it, you can tell us at packuprushers.net slash FU.

The FU's for follow up when we really do love when listeners reach out.

Yeah, it's a good one. And just so you know, Pack of Protector is part of the Pack of Clusher's podcast network that network includes more to the dozen technical podcasts for your professional development on networking security IPv6 DevOps leadership and more.

We've got an industry blog, two weekly newsletters, our community Slack group, a YouTube channel, even an IRC group can find it all packuprushers.net always free, no log in required. Thanks for listening.

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