Aryaka CMO Shashi Kiran says one reason the company has updated its SASE and SD-WAN service is to achieve an 'overarching goal of simplicity' and provide more choices for enterprises trying to balance their networking and security needs for a more distributed workforce.

Kelsey Ziser, Senior Editor

December 9, 2021

4 Min Read
Aryaka sizes up managed SASE, SD-WAN services

Aryaka is taking a stab at simplifying SASE service delivery with a revamp of its managed SASE and SD-WAN service options.

Part of the reasoning behind that simplicity strategy is to help Aryaka's partners get a better grip on what SASE is all about and the help it brings to the table.

Gartner coined the term "SASE," for Secure Access Service Edge, in 2019 to describe the convergence of networking and security services. While vendors and service providers have flocked to the term, many enterprises are still left scratching their heads.

"Even with our biggest clients, there's a lot of confusion around what SASE is and what it consists of," Ed Fox, CTO of MetTel, told Light Reading in a podcast earlier this year.

On this episode of The Light Reading Podcast, Ed Fox, CTO of MetTel, discusses challenges in extending SD-WAN services to home networks, and whether SASE makes sense to enterprise customers

In a recent survey by SASE provider Versa, only about a third of enterprises were able to accurately define SASE. "That was a big surprise for us, the lack of understanding of what the definition of SASE was," Versa Networks CMO Mike Wood told Light Reading. "But, then as we asked questions about what they were deploying and implementing, it turns out that they were bringing together a lot of these services and rolling them out, but didn't necessarily realize that they were adopting SASE."

Aryaka re-brands SASE and SD-WAN services

Perhaps this lingering unfamiliarity with SASE on the part of enterprises is why Aryaka launched a re-branding of its SASE stack. Aryaka CMO Shashi Kiran says one reason the company has updated its SASE and SD-WAN service is to achieve an "overarching goal of simplicity" and provide more choices for enterprises trying to balance the networking and security needs of a more distributed workforce.

The SASE provider has launched "EZ" and "Pro" product lines for its new managed SASE and SD-WAN offerings, which use the new Aryaka FlexCore – a L3 Internet core network built on Aryaka's private PoPs – as the underlying architecture.

"We're bringing a new layer 3 private core that fits into exactly the same architecture and connects to the same PoPs" as Aryaka's existing layer 2 core, says Kiran. "It gives customers an opportunity to leverage it for sites that are more cost-driven, versus performance-driven."

Aryaka is also launching "AppAssure" to provide "deep packet inspection and a very granular degree of visualization" of customers' applications; both AppAssure and FlexCore are free for Aryaka's current customers.

Aryaka Prime EZ is a managed SASE service built on the L3 private core and cloud-based security services from Aryaka's acquisition of Secucloud. It includes a secure web gateway, firewall as-a-service and web filtering capabilities for small and mid-sized enterprises. Kiran says Aryaka plans to add additional security features to Prime EZ in the future.

Aryaka's SD-WAN services are now under the "SmartConnect Pro" and SmartConnect EZ" brands. Kiran says the SmartConnect Pro managed SD-WAN is best for enterprises prioritizing application and network performance, and utilizes Aryaka's L2 private core network and is for mid-to-large enterprises. The EZ version favors cost-conscious organizations, uses the L3 private core, and is geared toward small-to-mid-sized enterprises. Kiran likens the "EZ" versions as Silver Tier services and "Pro" to Gold Level lifecycle services.

Managed SASE and SD-WAN in all sizes

Aryaka is also attempting to simplify the process of pricing, packaging, quoting and deploying SD-WAN and SASE services with "T-shirt" pricing models – customers can choose small, medium, medium-plus, large or XL consumption models to select the amount of bandwidth and site licenses for their deployments.

Figure 1: Aryaka's customers can choose SASE and SD-WAN services based on T-shirt sizes. (Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash) Aryaka's customers can choose SASE and SD-WAN services based on T-shirt sizes.
(Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash)

"We're bringing in radical simplification with T-shirt prices … to make it easier to quote for our partners, and to track and manage [services]," says Kiran.

Aryaka SmartConnect EZ and SmartConnect Pro will be generally available in early 2022.

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Kelsey Ziser

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Kelsey is a senior editor at Light Reading, co-host of the Light Reading podcast, and host of the "What's the story?" podcast.

Her interest in the telecom world started with a PR position at Connect2 Communications, which led to a communications role at the FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid research lab at N.C. State University. There, she orchestrated their webinar program across college campuses and covered research projects such as the center's smart solid-state transformer.

Kelsey enjoys reading four (or 12) books at once, watching movies about space travel, crafting and (hoarding) houseplants.

Kelsey is based in Raleigh, N.C.

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like