The COVID-19 pandemic and its implications have accelerated the digital transformation journey for many organizations. In the last decade, organizations across the globe have been undergoing a radical shift in the way they operate, thanks to rapid adoption of cloud and online collaboration, infrastructure automation and the availability of cost effective, high performance wide area network (WAN) connectivity, such as broadband and 4G/5G. As enterprises move their workloads to the cloud and cloud-based architectures, they expect lower cost, higher performance, improved agility, and enhanced user experience as well as security. 

The pandemic simply sped up this process for organizations. While 2020 became the year of accelerated digital transformation, it also underscored the need for organizations to be both secure and agile. The sudden shift in work dynamics like work-from-home or hybrid work models put the spotlight  on managing and securing networks. 

The shifting of devices, services, users, applications and data beyond the enterprise perimeter have reinforced the need for secure access for employees working from home. Enabling this secure remote workforce is the key to support business continuity. 

And as the  cloud becomes essential to run businesses, organizations are now re-working their network to cope with complexities of legacy wide area networks (WAN) and enable connectivity between users, data, and applications residing in the cloud. 

Secure access service edge (SASE): On the right path to networking

Traditional network approaches and technologies no longer provide the levels of security and access control that digital organizations need. The growing adoption of public cloud has placed software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) in the spotlight. 

Simply put, SD-WAN is a software-based approach to building and managing networks that connect geographically dispersed offices with the software-defined networking (SDN) principle of separating the control plane and data plane for the WAN. 

Organizations leverage SD-WAN to securely connect branch offices to their corporate networks using Internet or technologies like 4G/5G that connect from anywhere. This replaces the need for traditional and expensive Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connections, dedicated firewalls physically at the branch, or proprietary hardware. However, the challenge is that SD-WAN leverages a networking overlay or an SD-WAN fabric that doesn’t include a complete security and access control solution that organizations need to protect and defend their networks in a cloud environment.

This is where secure access service edge (SASE) comes in; a service model that provides the right path for organizations to modernize their enterprise for security, enabling speed, growth, while reducing their  costs. SASE is the convergence of WAN with network security services like secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), firewall as a service (FWaaS), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) into a single, cloud-delivered service model.

Wipro’s Managed SASE with #WANFreedom SD-WAN, powered by Palo Alto Networks

Wipro has been relentlessly pursuing the delivery of managed next gen SD-WAN transformation services. Wipro helps customers secure their connectivity to multiple clouds, optimize their application experiences and accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Wipro’s managed Network services solution, #WANFreedom, provides comprehensive lifecycle services, spanning consulting, planning and design, implementation, and managed services. 

Wipro’s as-a-service model powered by an integrated automation platform creates a cognitive digital networking infrastructure, which is secure and dynamic and has the flexibility to access multi-cloud services. It also supports new applications in its digital transformation journey with reduced overhead. 

The managed services model allows Wipro to deliver optimal cost-effectiveness and reliability to its customers by re-architecting their WAN, enabling support across distributed applications in a hybrid multi-cloud environment, monitoring, maintaining, and managing services continuously. This drastically improves application performance resulting in increased business productivity, agility and reduced costs for IT.

Wipro Managed SASE delivered with #WANFreedom SD-WAN, is powered by Palo Alto Networks Prisma® SD-WAN the  industry’s first next-generation SD-WAN solution, seamlessly integrated with Prisma® Access, the most comprehensive cloud-delivered security platform that protects the security organization’s traffic, applications, and users across all locations. This integration enables organizations to transform their networking and security infrastructure while realizing unprecedented ROI.

This SASE solution consolidates all of the networking and security capabilities organizations need into a single cloud-delivered platform, transforming network security and allowing organizations to enable flexible remote workforces. It provides complete security for all application traffic while ensuring an exceptional user experience.

SD-WAN coupled with security services are essential for today’s digital enterprises to accelerate their transformation journey and stay ahead of the competition. Secure networking solution by Wipro and Palo Alto as Managed SASE Platform is critical for remote work and multi cloud adoption. Wipro’s services and Palo Alto’s technology innovation are the right fit for purpose platform for customer IT Landscape to enhance application experience for users.”  Said Apurba Dutta , General Manager and Global Head for Wipro Network and Infra Security Practice.

Paving the way for a secure future

Through our partnership with Palo Alto Networks, we will continue to enable organizations to embrace digital and network  transformation with SASE. We aim to offer a clear strategy and bring the capabilities to help our mutual customers overcome their challenges in the wake of the current pandemic and a radically changed digital landscape. 

Wipro can help you drive digital transformation with security optimization. Looking for more information? Reach out to us at  ask.cis@wipro.com

About the Author

Apurba Dutta

General Manager and Global Head for Wipro Network and Infra Security Practice

Apurba has over two decades of IT experience, helping customers across the globe in transformation solutions. He has managed business units – P&L, Sales, Delivery -- working with ecosystem partners to modernize the core and help enterprises create digital foundations. In his current role, he works closely with internal and external stakeholders, advisors and analysts, and helps customers fast-track to future by adopting different commercial models (As a Service), innovative solutions, IPs, and network /security platforms.