VMware SASE Technical Overview
A Gestalt IT Showcase where Aamer Akhter walked a delegate panel through the technical side of VMware SASE: intelligence, security, access and WAN services across a hybrid enterprise. I sat on the panel with Chris Grundemann, Jody Lemoine and Scott Bollinger.
24 August 2021 · 1 min read
Gestalt IT Showcase, sponsored by VMware. Published 24 August 2021. Presenter: Aamer Akhter, Senior Manager of Product Management at VMware. Panelists: Chris Grundemann, Jody Lemoine, Scott Bollinger and me.
This was the second half of a two-part Gestalt IT Showcase on VMware SASE, and the more technical one. Aamer Akhter came to the VeloCloud business unit at VMware in 2019 after years as a distinguished engineer at Cisco, and he walked the panel through how the service is put together.
What was on the table
VMware positioned its SASE service as a way to deliver intelligence, security, access and WAN services across a hybrid enterprise from one platform, so an organization can change its network at its own pace without leaving gaps in coverage. The panel's job was to push on that: where the VeloCloud SD-WAN heritage shows, how the security functions sit alongside it, and what an operator actually has to do to run it.
For me it was a natural conversation. I had spent the previous five years deploying VeloCloud at WAN Dynamics, and 2021 was the year every one of those customers started asking what SASE meant for the network they already owned. My position then, and in the SASE roundtable earlier that year, was that the value is one security policy that follows the user, and everything else is detail.
The companion session, VMware SASE Vision with Karl Brown, covers the strategy. Gestalt IT's show notes are here.
