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After SASE convergence, the next step is making networking and security operate as one system: consistent access policy, clear operational ownership, dependable performance, and visibility across users, branches, cloud workloads, and devices. That does not require every organization to buy from one vendor. Gartner expects both single-vendor SASE platforms and explicitly partnered dual-vendor designs to remain viable.
What comes after SASE convergence?
The practical next phase is operational convergence, not another acronym. Network and security teams need to coordinate policy, incident response, changes, and troubleshooting across the same architecture. Organizations should test whether their chosen design applies access rules consistently and provides useful visibility without creating new handoffs between teams.
Gartner’s June 2025 roadmap says cloud computing and hybrid work are driving SASE demand. It directs cybersecurity and infrastructure leaders toward convergence into “one or two explicitly partnered SASE vendor offerings” and retirement of legacy perimeter systems. That is a strategic direction, not a mandate that every organization use the same architecture. Gartner’s SASE roadmap summary
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Gartner projected a 26.0% compound annual growth rate over five years, reaching $28.5 billion by 2028. This is a forecast published in 2025, not a realized result. Gartner’s SASE forecast summary
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Single-vendor or dual-vendor SASE?
There is no universal winner. Gartner’s forecast anticipates both single-vendor platforms and dual-vendor approaches, so the decision should turn on fit, integration quality, and the organization’s operating model—not the assumption that “unified” must mean one supplier.
| Decision area | What to evaluate |
|---|---|
| Integration and policy | Can networking and security policies be administered coherently? Are integrations between suppliers explicit and supported? |
| Operational ownership | Who handles incidents, changes, and troubleshooting when traffic or policy crosses product boundaries? |
| Capability coverage | Does the design cover the sites, users, workloads, and devices the organization actually needs? |
| Resilience and reach | Validate service coverage, failure behavior, latency, and routing in the deployment’s actual geographies. The public sources cited here do not provide a comparative scorecard. |
| Migration | Identify legacy perimeter systems and contracts to retire, and plan staged coexistence. Gartner’s full roadmap includes a migration plan, although that detail is not visible in the public abstract. |
Use a pilot or deployment-specific validation to check how the architecture behaves under normal operation and failure conditions. A broad market forecast cannot tell you which design will perform better in your locations or at your scale.
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How do zero trust and AI change the next phase?
Zero trust: make access policy consistent
Zero trust makes identity- and context-based access an important part of the SASE discussion. The useful question is whether the chosen design can apply the organization’s access requirements consistently across users and workloads. Gartner’s 2025 Enterprise Networking Hype Cycle places universal ZTNA at the security hype peak; that describes Gartner’s assessment of the topic’s position in the cycle, not proof of deployment results. Gartner’s 2025 Enterprise Networking Hype Cycle summary
AI: an emerging operations and security layer
Gartner’s 2025 Hype Cycle summary says AI network fabrics and assistants are delivering impact, while agentic NetOps is attracting new attention. Gartner’s 2026 enterprise trends include preemptive cybersecurity and AI security platforms. These themes may shape future planning, but they do not establish that AI automation is safe without human oversight or that an “AI-native” label produces measurable gains. Gartner’s 2026 strategic technology trends
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Evaluate AI features by the tasks they can perform, the approvals and controls available, the evidence they provide, and how an operator can review or reverse an action. Treat claims of autonomous remediation or improved outcomes as claims to verify, not benefits guaranteed by the category name.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What vendor announcements can—and cannot—show
On June 16, 2026, HPE announced a unified SASE platform built on EdgeConnect, combining SD-WAN with cloud-delivered security in an AI-native console. The announcement illustrates one vendor’s direction; it does not independently establish performance, availability in every market, or comparative advantage. HPE’s June 16, 2026 announcement
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In that announcement, HPE Networking executive vice president, president, and general manager Rami Rahim said: “The success of agentic AI in the enterprise depends on a modern networking foundation built for autonomous workflows, where network performance, reliability, and intelligence determine the effectiveness of the entire AI architecture.” This is a vendor executive’s view, not independent evidence of outcomes.
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- Map the environment. List the users, branches, cloud workloads, devices, existing security controls, and legacy perimeter systems that the design must cover.
- Set operating requirements. Define policy needs, visibility, incident ownership, service coverage, resilience, and performance expectations for the actual deployment geographies.
- Choose an architecture to validate. Compare one supplier with an explicitly partnered two-supplier design against those requirements. Confirm integrations and support responsibilities rather than relying on product labels.
- Test and stage migration. Validate routine traffic, failure behavior, and operational workflows, then plan coexistence and retirement of legacy systems in manageable stages.
- Review AI controls separately. Verify what AI features do, what permissions they need, and how people supervise consequential actions before relying on automation.
Gartner’s 2026 trends also include digital provenance and geopatriation. These broader enterprise themes may inform questions about trust, data location, and geopolitical exposure, but the source does not prescribe them as SASE features. Gartner’s 2026 strategic technology trends
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