Traditional hub-and-spoke network architectures were designed for an era when users, applications, and data resided primarily within enterprise perimeters. Today's reality is fundamentally different. Remote workers require secure access to cloud applications and data center resources. Branch offices need direct internet breakout for SaaS applications. IoT and OT devices must be integrated securely. This distributed model exposes critical limitations in legacy approaches including backhauling traffic through centralised data centers (creating latency and poor user experience), maintaining disparate point solutions for security functions (increasing complexity and creating security gaps), and lacking visibility into encrypted traffic and cloud application usage

SASE addresses these challenges through afundamentally different architectural approach. By converging networking and security at the cloud edge, SASE delivers traffic inspection and policy enforcement at the point closest to the user, ensuring optimal performance while maintaining comprehensive security. Identity becomes the new perimeter with Zero Trust principles replacing network location as the basis for access decisions. The cloud-native delivery model provides elastic scalability, global reach, and consumption-based economics that align with business needs. This unified platform eliminates the complexity of managing multiple point solutions while providing comprehensive visibility across all users, devices, and applications.

Organisations implementing SASE reportsignificant improvements across multiple dimensions. Network performance improves dramatically with latency reductions of 50-75% for remote users accessing cloud applications. Security posture strengthens through consistent policy enforcement, reduced attack surface, and elimination of security blind spots. Operational costs decrease by 30-40% through infrastructure consolidation and reduced management complexity. IT teams become more agile with the ability to provision new locations or scale capacity in minutes rather than weeks. Perhaps most importantly, the user experience improves substantially as employees gain fast, secure access to applications regardless of their location or device.