Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now
Investors, including venture capitalists (VCs), are betting $359 million that secure access service edge (SASE) will become a primary consolidator of enterprise security tech stacks.
Cato Network’s oversubscribed Series G round last week demonstrates that investors view SASE as capable of driving significant consolidation across its core and adjacent markets. Now valued at $4.8 billion, Cato recently reported 46% year-over-year (YoY) growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2024, outpacing the SASE market. Cato will use the funding to advance AI-driven security, accelerate innovation across SASE, extended detection and response (XDR), zero trust network access (ZTNA), SD-WAN, and IoT/OT, and strengthen its global reach by scaling partner and customer-facing teams.
Gartner projects the SASE market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%, reaching $28.5 billion by 2028.
The implied, real message is that SASE will do to security stacks what cloud computing did to data centers: Consolidate dozens of point solutions into unified platforms. Gartner’s latest forecast for worldwide SASE shows organizations favoring a dual-vendor approach, shifting from a 4:1 ratio to 2:1 by 2028, another solid signal that consolidation is on the way.
