Palo Alto Networks has introduced an edition of its Prisma SASE solution for managed service providers.
The new offering layers a cloud-based multitenant management portal with granular role-based access controls atop a solution originally meant for corporate IT departments, resulting in a tool MSPs can use to provide secure access service edge (SASE) solutions to both enterprise end users and SMBs, according to Anand Oswal, Palo Alto’s senior vice president of network security.
“Many of the smaller customers are buying managed offerings,” he says. “We’re now enabling the MSP to have a differentiated SASE offering.”
MSP-focused features in the new Prisma SASE release beyond multitenancy include an open API framework for linking the system to backend management platforms and tools for defining and assigning customized SASE service offerings. Integration with a variety of identity and access management systems, including Microsoft Active Directory and Azure Active Directory, lets channel pros tap into existing user records rather than create and maintain duplicates.
According to Oswal, those and other features aim to make SASE services a more practical option for a set of users most security vendors have treated as “an afterthought” until now. “Managed service providers have struggled to deliver SASE services at scale,” he says. Prisma SASE for MSPs is designed to overcome that barrier by providing multitenant tools for automation and cost management.
Introduced last September, Prisma SASE combines functionality from Palo Alto’s Prisma Access and Prisma SD-WAN products. The MSP edition, which is the vendor’s first multitenant SASE product, arrives at a time when hybrid workforces split between home and the office have become an enduring part of the IT landscape.
Indeed, 78% of U.S. end users who currently work from home all or most of the time would like to continue doing so after the coronavirus pandemic has receded from view, according to data published earlier this month by the Pew Research Center. Associated demand for secure work-from-anywhere connectivity, Gartner predicts, will drive global sales of SASE solutions up at a 36% CAGR through 2025.
Numbers like those have inspired other vendors to add SASE solutions suitable for use by SMBs, including both Aruba and Aryaka last December.
