Order of Adoption Since SASE is something that is generally best implemented over an extended period of time, the order of adoption for the various SASE-related technologies deserves particular consideration. Start with a thorough review of your circumstances, and then build a strategy based on a three- to five- year time horizon leveraging a cross-functional team representing security, networking, compliance, Finance, IT management, and, of course, your Trusted Advisor. The discussions should begin with preferred business outcomes and then drive downward into more specific details to support users, applications, and remote locations leveraging the cloud and wide area networks. To the extent that non-cloud related assets continue to be in use, consider a cloud migration at the soonest practical time. Perhaps your list of vendors can be consolidated in order to reduce complexity and costs. These are just a few of the variables worthy of consideration. As the migration continues over time, conduct ongoing audits to ensure that the desired effects are being achieved. “SASE is a journey; not a destination,” said Masergy’s Rich Korn. “Understand what you need to do and then prioritize and proceed accordingly.” “For some people, SASE will look like it’s just too much, which is one of the reasons you might want to migrate over a period of time,” said Bill Franklin, senior director of Cloud Engineering at AVANT. “Bring in service providers to run a health or gap assessment and look at it from a posture perspective. Detail your network, operations, and the security side, which will include SASE components like secure web gateway and identity access management. At this point we just want a lay of the land to help us understand the gaps and establish priorities.” “The choice of what to prioritize always begins with the question of what’s not working well,” said Cato’s Mark Peay. “What do people complain about? What’s keeping people from being optimally productive? What causes end customers pain? Those are the places you want to start. You can even use hybrid strategies to resolve pain points without having to re-invent the wheel. That’s how cloud- based services get peppered in and layered.” Copyright © 2021 AVANT Communications, Inc. AVANT | SASE 6-12 Report | 17