Bitglass Boasts SASE Blitz With Fortinet, Other SD-WAN Vendors

Cloud security vendor Bitglass today announced a blitz of integrations with SD-WAN vendors Aruba, 128 Technology, Fortinet, and Silver Peak. Cloud security vendor Bitglass today announced a blitz of integrations with SD-WAN vendors Aruba, 128 Technology, Fortinet, and Silver Peak. The integrations are part of Bitglass’ overarching secure access service edge (SASE) strategy. Over the past year SD-WAN and security vendors alike have vied to buy up competing vendors to solidify their own SASE software stacks. Palo Alto Networks bought CloudGenix, Fortinet snapped up Opaq, and VMware gobbled up Nyansa. Bitglass, however, has taken a slightly different approach. Rather than trying to build or buy an SD-WAN, the company has focused on developing a comprehensive security suite and partnering with existing vendors to fill the networking gap in its SASE offering. “Organizations pursuing SASE want flexibility and the ability to lean upon their best-of-breed solutions that they already have in place. For that reason, Bitglass has made the strategic decision to build a dynamic platform which can integrate with any SD-WAN vendor’s offering,” explained Kevin Sheu, SVP of marketing at Bitglass, in an email to SDxCentral. “For organizations that have already built out their wide area networks, we don’t want to require them to rip up and replace their existing tools.” Today’s announcement marks the latest batch of these integrations, which the company claims will allow it to address a larger overall market. The integrations take advantage of AWS Transit Gateway Connect. The platform simplifies what was previously a manual operation for the provisioning of AWS VPC via VPN and replaces that framework with natively integrated SD-WAN appliances and services. The platform essentially acts as a go-between for the SD-WAN platform and Bitglass’ cloud-based security suite. “Bitglass can now integrate with any SD-WAN solution that integrates with AWS Transit Gateway Connect,” Sheu said. “This gives us the operating advantage to quickly add support for a large set of SD-WAN solutions.” Once the integration is implemented, all branch traffic destined for the web, the cloud, or even select on-premises resources are automatically routed through Bitglass’ SASE points of presence, of which the company has about 200. Bitglass isn’t the only security vendor working with SD-WAN partners on SASE. Zscaler, Forcepoint, Check Point, and Netskope have all adopted similar strategies. Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry said there’s no reason for his company to provide an SD-WAN. “We believe that the notion that SASE means networking and security coming together is a misinterpretation of it,” he said during the company’s Zenith Live event. And according to Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, who co-authored the original report on SASE, while there are certain efficiencies to providing a full-stack platform, there is no reason that a security company couldn’t partner to build out a SASE architecture. The caveat being that the integration need to be achieved using a single pass architecture, it can’t just be service chained in sequence. But while it’s possible, and in many cases desirable, to built out a SASE architecture using SD-WAN from one vendor and cloud security from another, Mauricio Sanchez, research director at Dell’Oro Group, points out that the vendors can offer a fully converged SASE platform are like to have a leg up on the competition in the long run. “Vendors who are able to provide everything under the same umbrella are likely to stand out,” he said, adding that SASE is still an emerging market and that some enterprises may prefer a multi-vendor SASE offering.”