Broadcom is swinging into the competitive single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) market with technologies from its two acquisitions, VMware and Symantec. The vendor rebranded VMware’s SD-WAN as VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN and integrated it with Symantec's security service edge (SSE) capabilities to create the new SASE solution.

“We're bringing to bear our industry-leading SD-WAN solution for branch connectivity. We're bringing to bear a newly released SD-access solution that provides end-user connectivity with a client footprint that supports both remote access and IoT connectivity. And [we're] securing that through the Symantec SSE capabilities that are globally distributed and deployed across various points of presence,” Abe Ankumah, head of SD-WAN and the software-defined edge division at Broadcom, said during a press pre-briefing ahead of Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024.

The single-vendor solution, dubbed VMware VeloCloud SASE, secured by Symantec, integrates the data plane for managing user traffic, whether it's from an end-user device through the VMware VeloCloud SD-Access Client or a branch connected via an SD-WAN overlay network, and then offers security capabilities through Symantec's SSE stack. It offers easy provisioning, zero-touch deployment and common policy frameworks to support and connect users and devices to applications and data across various environments, including private and public cloud and data centers, Ankumah added.

Analysts had predicted this SASE consolidation before the completion of Broadcom’s $69 billion VMware acquisition. “Broadcom could choose VMware (SD-WAN) and combine it with Symantec to go after the single-vendor opportunity,” Mauricio Sanchez, senior research director for the enterprise networking and security market at Dell’Oro, told SDxCentral in an earlier interview last year.

Sanchez then also noted the SSE and security capability overlap between Symantec and VMware's Carbon Black.

Following the Broadcom acquisition, Carbon Black last December announced its break from VMware, operating as an autonomous business unit within Broadcom. Now, Broadcom is looking to divest the Carbon Black security business.

Broadcom’s latest single-vendor VeloCloud SASE announcement didn’t mention any capabilities from Carbon Black.

Before joining Broadcom, VMware had already offered a single-vendor SASE solution.

In a market research report on SASE, SD-WAN and SSE for Q3 2023, Dell’Oro Group identified VMware as one of the vendors that offer single-vendor SASE, which includes both SD-WAN and SSE.

VMware also was one of the eight vendors that made Gartner’s first-ever Magic Quadrant for single-vendor SASE. The analysis firm identified VMware as a Niche Player. Forrester also put VMware SASE into the strong performer category in its zero-trust edge/SASE solution Wave report for the third quarter of 2023.

On the other hand, Broadcom’s Symantec multivendor SASE and SSE portfolio include components such as secure web gateway (SWG), data loss prevention (DLP), cloud access security broker (cloud access security broker (CASB)), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), SSL inspection and web isolation.

Broadcom has been working with third-party SD-WAN service providers for its SASE solution. Despite the introduction of its own single-vendor SASE solution, Ankumah noted the company will continue the SD-WAN and SSE partnerships with Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and others to “continue to offer customers flexibility and choice.”

Broadcom is re-introducing the VeloCloud brand. The new VeloCloud SASE is part of its VeloCloud portfolio, which also includes the VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN and VMware VeloCloud SD-Access products.

VMware acquired SD-WAN vendor VeloCloud in 2018, which expanded VMware’s network virtualization (NV) offerings from the data center to a whole WAN.

“The motivation for reintroducing the VeloCloud brand really has been driven by the fact that … that brand is well known, it's well regarded, and frankly, a lot of our customers and partners continue to refer to the SD-WAN solution from VMware as VeloCloud,” Ankumah said.

“The customer is right, the customer's always right. And so we're returning to leveraging that brand, given the brand equity and familiarity that our customers and partners have,” he added.