AT&T Business and Cisco touted a first for their long-standing relationship, with AT&T being the first North American service provider to offer Cisco’s single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) platform to the carrier’s business customers.

The cloud-based service will offer SD-WAN, secure service edge (SSE) observability, automated security workflows, multicloud connectivity, and network management. It’s being offered by AT&T as a fully managed service and is targeted at enterprises with more robust networked cybersecurity needs.

“This is an incredibly important launch for us,” Joe Petrocelli, VP of communications services at AT&T, told SDxCentral in an interview. “It brings together AT&T's trusted network and the network scale that comes with that, and then Cisco security innovation really to bring together a unified Cisco architecture, or SASE architecture, one that eliminates complexity … and really just strengthens the protection across our customer base, users, devices, and data.”

Petrocelli explained that the Cisco-powered offering is a more robust platform compared with AT&T Business’s Dynamic Defense products. The carrier launched its network-based Dynamic Defense platform last year, which is focused on small- and mid-sized enterprises.

“Dynamic Defense does a great job of [blocking] 97% of malicious activity before it reaches a customer [premises], but there's still what happens when it does get to a customer [premises] and there's still sort of enterprise level, that whole multilayer defense, once you start talking about SD-WAN to provide reliability and zero trust and SSE capabilities,” Petrocelli said. “It's a further market play that just provides a lot more in terms of reliability and security.”

AT&T earlier this year added Palo Alto Networks to its Dynamic Defense portfolio. That service offers malicious IP address blocking, next-generation firewall (NGFX) capabilities, and other advanced security features without the additional cost of installation and equipment.

Senthil Ramakrishnan, AVP of cybersecurity technology at AT&T, explained at that time that the deftly named AT&T Dynamic Defense with Palo Alto Network platform routes traffic first into AT&T’s Dynamic Defense base. Customers that sign up for the Palo Alto Networks components then have that traffic fed via direct connect into the vendor’s cloud.

“The network is extended into [Palo Alto Networks’] cloud rather than bringing [the Palo Alto Networks’] cloud into the network,” Ramakrishnan said.

Cisco’s place in single-vendor SASE

The latest deal also builds on AT&T’s long-standing SASE and Cisco work.

AT&T initially announced its single-vendor SASE push in early 2021, beginning with Fortinet, before later adding work with Palo Alto Networks and Cisco. That initial Cisco work included cloud-based security from Umbrella and identity management services via Duo, with work since done to include some of Cisco’s Meraki hardware into the mix.

Petrocelli added that this single-vendor approach is all about “giving customers that simpler and smarter way to secure the business, no matter where they're doing business.”

The deal is also significant for Cisco, which is looking to expand its presence in the single-vendor SASE space.

Cisco was recently labeled a “challenger” in Gartner’s latest SASE rankings, suggesting the vendor was among the smaller players in the market, with around 500 active SASE platform enterprise customers, according to the analyst firm’s report. That compares to more than 5,000 active customers attached to single-vendor SASE heavyweight Palo Alto Networks.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins recently touted the rapid expansion of Cisco’s SASE offering and expressed optimism for that business unit coming out of the quarter. Some of that was based on Cisco’s latest product update release, which included updates to its Hypershield management platform and its SSE offering that bolsters its SASE component.

“We have 80 new Hypershield customers … largely connected to this new smart switch, so that strategy is working, and … we have 480-plus new SSE customers during the quarter, so that's … really getting good traction,” Robbins said during Cisco’s latest earnings call. “Based on how we see this stuff evolving, I would see the growth rate continuing to improve as we get through the fiscal year this year.”

That growth trajectory could be important moving forward.

Single-vendor SASE platforms tie together SD-WAN and SSE systems from a single provider. This is touted as providing a more uniform and cohesive platform compared to multivendor architectures that can invite more complexity; however, the single-vendor model does remove cost flexibility.

Gartner is predicting that 70% of SD-WAN purchases by 2028 will be part of a single-vendor SASE platform, an increase from 25% this year. The analyst firm also forecasts that 50% of new SASE deployments will be of that single-vendor variety by 2028, compared to just 30% this year.

Dell’Oro Group recently put monetary numbers to that expected growth, reporting that global SASE revenues increased 17% year-over-year during the first quarter, hitting total sales of $2.6 billion for the quarter. The growth is feeding what the analyst firm had previously predicted would be a $17 billion market by 2029.

The most recent Dell’Oro Group report found that single-vendor SASE platform deployments increased 21% year-over-year during the quarter, which the analyst firm tied to enterprises wanting “more straightforward purchasing, tighter policy management, and lower operating costs made possible by tightly integrated next-generation SD-WAN and cloud-security platforms.” This pace vastly outperformed the 3% year-over-year sales increase posted by multivendor SASE platforms.

While new entrants are expected, Dell’Oro Group had previously noted that six SASE vendors collectively controlled 72% of $2.4 billion in segment revenues collected during the third quarter of 2024. Those six vendors include Zscaler, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Broadcom-VMware, Fortinet, and Netskope.

Mauricio Sanchez, director of enterprise security and networking at Dell’Oro Group, previously explained that the top-heavy nature of the SASE market is due to growing segment maturity.

“The SASE market is entering a new maturity phase,” Sanchez wrote. “As enterprises focus on trusted, integrated solutions during economic uncertainty, the largest vendors are capturing a growing share of investments, setting the stage for continued leadership and innovation.”