Traders, together with enterprise capitalists (VCs), are betting $359 million that safe entry service edge (SASE) will develop into a major consolidator of enterprise safety tech stacks.
Cato Community’s oversubscribed Collection G spherical final week demonstrates that buyers view SASE as able to driving important consolidation throughout its core and adjoining markets. Now valued at $4.8 billion, Cato just lately reported 46% year-over-year (YoY) progress in annual recurring income (ARR) for 2024, outpacing the SASE market. Cato will use the funding to advance AI-driven safety, speed up innovation throughout SASE, prolonged detection and response (XDR), zero belief community entry (ZTNA), SD-WAN, and IoT/OT, and strengthen its international attain by scaling accomplice and customer-facing groups.
Gartner tasks the SASE market will develop at a compound annual progress fee (CAGR) of 26%, reaching $28.5 billion by 2028.
The implied, actual message is that SASE will do to safety stacks what cloud computing did to knowledge facilities: Consolidate dozens of level options into unified platforms. Gartner’s newest forecast for worldwide SASE reveals organizations favoring a dual-vendor method, shifting from a 4:1 ratio to 2:1 by 2028, one other stable sign that consolidation is on the way in which.
Cashing in on consolidation
Consolidating tech stacks as a progress technique just isn’t a brand new method in cybersecurity, or in broader enterprise software program. Cloud-native utility safety platform (CNAPP) and XDR platforms have relied on promoting consolidation for years. Traders main Cato’s newest spherical are basing their funding thesis on the confirmed dynamic that CISOs are at all times on the lookout for methods to cut back the variety of apps to enhance visibility and decrease upkeep prices.
VentureBeat typically hears from CISOs that complexity is likely one of the biggest enemies of safety. Software sprawl is killing the flexibility to attain step-wise effectivity positive aspects. Whereas CISOs need better simplicity and are prepared to drive better consolidation, many have inherited inordinately advanced and high-cost legacy expertise stacks, full with a big base of instruments and purposes for managing networks and safety concurrently.
Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks chairman and CEO, acknowledged the affect of consolidations, saying just lately: “Clients are literally onto it. They need consolidation as a result of they’re present process three of the most important transformations ever: A community safety transformation and a cloud transformation, and lots of of them are unaware … they’re about to undergo a safety operations heart transformation.”
A current examine by IBM in collaboration with Palo Alto Networks discovered that the common group has 83 totally different safety options from 29 distributors. Nearly all of executives (52%) say complexity is the most important obstacle to safety operations, and it may well value as much as 5% of income. Misconfigurations are frequent, making it tough and time-consuming to troubleshoot safety gaps. Consolidating cybersecurity merchandise reduces complexity, streamlines the variety of apps and improves total effectivity.
In the case of capitalizing on consolidation in a given market, timing is essential. Adversaries are well-known for mining legacy CVEs and launching residing off the land (LOTL) assaults by utilizing customary instruments to breach and penetrate networks. Multivendor safety architectures typically have gaps that IT and safety groups are unaware of till an intrusion try or breach happens because of the complexity of multicloud, proprietary app, and platform integrations.
Enterprises lose the flexibility to guard the proliferating variety of ephemeral identities, together with Kubernetes containers and machine and human identities, as each endpoint and gadget is assigned. Closing the gaps in infrastructure, app, cloud, identification and community safety fuels consolidation.
What CISOs are saying
Steward Well being CISO Esmond Kane advises: “Perceive that — at its core — SASE is zero belief. We’re speaking about identification, authentication, entry management and privilege. Begin there after which construct out.”
Legacy community architectures are famend for poor person experiences and huge safety gaps. In line with Hughes’ 2025 State of Safe Community Entry Report, 45% of senior IT and safety leaders undertake SASE to consolidate SD-WAN and safety right into a unified platform. Nearly all of organizations, 75%, are pursuing vendor consolidation, up from 29% simply three years in the past. CISOs imagine consolidating their tech stacks will assist them keep away from lacking threats (57%) and scale back the necessity to discover certified safety specialists (56%).
“SASE is an existential risk to all appliance-based community safety firms,” Shlomo Kramer, Cato’s CEO, advised VentureBeat. “The overwhelming majority of the market goes to be refactored from home equipment to cloud service, which implies SASE [is going to be] 80% of the market.”
A basic architectural transformation is driving that shift. SASE converges historically siloed networking and safety capabilities right into a single, cloud-native service edge. It combines SD-WAN with crucial safety capabilities, together with safe internet gateway (SWG), cloud entry safety dealer (CASB) and ZTNA to implement coverage and shield knowledge no matter the place customers or workloads reside.
Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant for single-vendor SASE positions Cato Networks, Palo Alto Networks, and Netskope as Leaders, reflecting their maturity, unified platforms and suitability for enterprise-wide deployments.
Why vendor consolidation is reshaping enterprise safety technique
Single-vendor SASE has develop into a strategic consideration for safety and infrastructure leaders. In line with Gartner, 65% of latest SD-WAN purchases will probably be a part of a single-vendor SASE deployment by 2027, up from 20% in 2024. This projected progress displays a broader shift towards unified platforms that scale back coverage fragmentation and enhance visibility throughout customers, gadgets and purposes.
In its Magic Quadrant for Single Vendor SASE, Gartner recognized Cato Networks, Palo Alto Networks and Netskope as market leaders primarily based on their differentiated approaches to convergence, person expertise and enterprise-scale deployment fashions.
Cato’s Kramer advised VentureBeat: “There’s a brief window the place firms can keep away from being caught with fragmented architectures. The attackers are shifting sooner than integration groups. That’s the reason convergence wins.”
Numbers again Kramer’s warning. AI-enabled assaults are more and more exploiting the 200-millisecond gaps between software handoffs in multivendor stacks. Each unmanaged connection turns into a threat floor.
SASE leaders in contrast
Cato Networks: The Cato SASE Cloud platform combines SD-WAN, safety service edge (SSE), ZTNA, CASB, and firewall capabilities in a unified structure. Gartner highlights Cato’s “above-average buyer expertise in comparison with different distributors” and notes its “single, simple UI” as a key energy. The report notes that particular capabilities, together with SaaS visibility and on-premises firewalling, are nonetheless maturing. Gartner additionally notes that pricing might differ relying on bandwidth necessities, which might affect the overall value, significantly regarding deployment scale. Following its Collection G and 46% ARR progress, Cato has emerged as probably the most investor-validated pure-play within the house.
Palo Alto Networks: PANW “has robust safety and networking options, delivered by way of a unified platform,” and advantages from “a confirmed observe file on this market, and a large put in base of consumers,” Gartner notes. Nevertheless, the corporate’s providing is pricey in comparison with a lot of the different distributors. Additionally they flag that the brand new Strata Cloud Supervisor is much less intuitive than its earlier UI.
Netskope: Gartner cites the seller’s “robust function breadth and depth for each networking and safety,” together with a “robust buyer expertise” and “a robust geographic technique” because of localization and knowledge sovereignty help. On the identical time, the evaluation highlights operational complexity, noting that “directors should use a number of consoles to entry the complete performance of the platform.” Gartner additionally says that Netskope lacks expertise in comparison with different distributors.
Evaluating the main SASE distributors
| Vendor | Platform design | Ease of use | AI automation maturity | Pricing readability | Safety scope | Splendid match |
| Cato Networks | Totally unified, cloud-native | Glorious | Advancing quickly | Predictable and clear | Finish-to-end native stack | Midmarket and enterprise simplicity seekers |
| Palo Alto Prisma | Safety-first integration | Reasonable | Mature for safety ops | Larger TCO | Robust next-generation firewall (NGFW) and ZTNA | Enterprises already utilizing Palo NGFW |
| Netskope | Infrastructure management | Reasonable | Bettering steadily | Clear and structured | Robust CASB and knowledge loss prevention (DLP) | Regulated industries and compliance-driven |
SASE consolidation alerts enterprise safety’s architectural shift
The SASE consolidation wave reveals how enterprises are essentially rethinking safety structure. With AI assaults exploiting integration gaps immediately, single-vendor SASE has develop into important for each safety and operational effectivity.
The reasoning is simple. Each vendor handoff creates vulnerability. Every integration provides latency. Safety leaders know that unified platforms can assist get rid of these dangers whereas enabling enterprise velocity.
CISOs are more and more demanding a single console, a single agent and unified insurance policies. Multivendor complexity is now a aggressive legal responsibility. SASE consolidation delivers what issues most with fewer distributors, stronger safety and execution at market velocity.
