On this episode of The Six Five – On the Road, hosts Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead welcome Abe Ankumah, Head of SD-WAN & SASE, Software-Defined Edge Division, Broadcom, for a conversation on enabling secure, reliable, and ubiquitous connectivity with the Software-Defined Edge.
Their discussion covers:
- The role of SASE and SD-WAN in the Software-Defined Edge and how Broadcom, formerly VMware, is advancing this concept
- Introduction to the new single-vendor SASE solution unveiled at MWC by the SASE and SD-WAN team
- Features and expectations for the new VMware VeloCloud SASE, secured by Symantec.
- Predicted responses from managed service partners towards Broadcom’s single vendor SASE solution
- Highlights from Broadcom’s demonstrations on the show floor at MWC
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Transcript:
Patrick Moorhead: The Six Five is on the road at MWC 2024 here in Barcelona. We’re in the VMware by Broadcom booth. We are talking all things edge, all things network, security, and a lot more. Dan, how’s your show been so far?
Daniel Newman: Yeah, it’s been a great show. It’s a little loud here because the energy is high. We’re in hall three. This is sort of the epicenter I always say of Mobile World Congress, and we’ve kind of talked about this throughout the week, but Pat, it’s great to see that the event is back in full force. And it’s also great to see that the trend line of artificial intelligence being the most important conversation in every event in every part of the planet has maintained it’s position here. Because I got to tell you, Pat, that’s all I’m hearing about here.
Patrick Moorhead: It is. And this show is about edge devices, edge capabilities, edge network and yeah, core network and how carriers and people who depend on carrier services make it happen. And what’s key is securing the edge, but also having a good quality of service for external access. So we’re here to talk SD WAN and SASE with Abe from VMware at Broadcom. Great to see you and welcome to The Six Five first timer. This is great.
Abe Ankumah: Yes, indeed. Thanks for having me.
Patrick Moorhead: Absolutely.
Daniel Newman: Yeah. You heard the setup. I go all AI and Pat brings me back and he’s like, nope, we’re talking about edge. We’re going to talk about software defined network. We’re going to talk about SASE, we’re going to talk about SD WAN. So let’s start there. VMware, now part of Broadcom, has been very focused on software defined edge, and of course SASE, of course, SD WAN. These are both really important parts. Talk a little bit about how all of these things are coming together.
Abe Ankumah: So everything that we’re doing from a software defined edge perspective is all around enabling the increasingly distributed edge, really deliver outcomes. And so it starts with, on the one hand, really allowing our customers who are undergoing all kinds of digital transformation, whether it’s in retail, whether it’s in healthcare, connect these distributed edges to workloads and applications that are also distributed. And so the role that SD WAN and SASE plays within this context is it acts as that intelligent overlay of connecting and securing endpoints and users as they access these applications. And it’s all done by making it software defined. And so if it’s software defined, it drives agility, it drives security, and it makes it very adaptable and programmable.
Patrick Moorhead: I remember five years ago when you had to add a new application to the edge, it was really a bespoke solution. And listen, hardware is great, and flipping CLI for us having switches and some of that is great, but it’s very inflexible. And like you said, actually what I’m about to say is the time to get that implemented is radically shorter with these solutions. And now that security is literally off the rails, we have AI versus AI securing that is vitally important.
So here at the show, you introduced a new single vendor solution. And listen, multi-vendor is great, but there’s huge benefits with single source. Can you talk about the announcement at the show you’ve made?
Abe Ankumah: Yeah, so today we announced VeloCloud, SASE secured by Symantec. And this is a single vendor SASE solution, which brings together an industry leading SD WAN offer with Symantec’s industry defining SSE stack. And so everything that we’re doing is, on the one hand, we’re bringing these two strong pieces of technology together. We’re making it easy for our customers to consume these capabilities, which means how do you secure your increasingly distributed edge when you’re consuming these technologies? How do we make it easy to tie together both the management plan and the data plan, and how do we let our partners, the CSPs who are delivering managed services really bring this to bear? And so on the one hand, it’s a product integration, but equally important is making it easy to consume it. Right? And we’re doing all of this within by bringing these two really unique capabilities together.
Patrick Moorhead: By single vendor. I mean, is it one invoice, is it one system, or is that something you’re looking forward to or is that available now? I mean, is it easy to buy?
Abe Ankumah: So VMware SD WAN is available. All this is source Symantec. What we’ve done is we’ve provided some interfacing and integration between those products, and obviously in terms of how you procure and all of those things, we’ve also made it very easy to do. And so we have customers who are adding the SD WAN piece to the SSE stack. We have customers who are adding the Symantec piece, the SSE stack, and then we have customers who are buying it together for the very first time as well.
Patrick Moorhead: So it felt like the deal just closed and we’re already seeing integration.
Daniel Newman: Yeah. Well, I mean, of course in the background in that period of time when you can’t really talk, there’s always collaboration going on, there was collaboration that existed that predated any M and A talk. Of course. Now having said that, the extensibility is palpable. It is impressive. And I think this has to be part of Hock Tan’s vision of all the companies that’s becoming part of Broadcom software, enterprise software, and now having VMware such a great tool set. But hey, let’s maybe just double click a little bit on the last line of questioning.
You’re here at Mobile World Congress, you have customers rolling through the place, you’re having conversations, you got VeloCloud, you’re starting to talk about it more. What is the expectations that are being set? What are you hearing from them about this offering? Are you getting, I mean, you obviously mentioned you have 60,000, but going portfolio wide and truly adopting this, are you getting a strong signal of demand?
Abe Ankumah: Yeah, so we’ve seen a lot of what we did here and you mentioned the that, hey, we did this very quickly. So we started partnering with Symantec several months ago in terms of having an underlying platform that’s very extensible. And so what our customers and our partners are super excited about is the ability to bring these leading technologies and capabilities together. It’s something that the install base is large, as we talked about. And now to be able to innovate together is something that folks are super excited about.
And talking about AI, part of this is connectivity, part of it is security, but there’s this whole telemetry layer. We collect billions of data points daily. We process billions of data points daily. And one of the things that we’re able to do is actually innovate with all of that in mind, making it easy to day zero, set up these systems, making it easy to set up the day two and support it with a single orchestration framework. It’s something that our customers and our partners are super excited about.
Patrick Moorhead: When can customers buy the new unified service? Is it today?
Abe Ankumah: It’s available today.
Patrick Moorhead: Okay. Okay.
Abe Ankumah: It’s available today.
Daniel Newman: What took so long?
Patrick Moorhead: No, exactly. Have you set a GA date as well?
Abe Ankumah: No, it’s available. The solution is available.
Daniel Newman: Wait a second.
Patrick Moorhead: Typically, if you’re supposed to say a couple months from now or we don’t know yet, we will let you know. No, it’s very impressive. This close after the close date. So customers are obviously super important. They’re the ultimate barometer of your success, but it takes a village to bring this out. And one of the primary routes to market is MSPs or managed services providers. I’m curious, what is their reaction been when it comes to the channel or MSPs? There’s always this, okay, these guys going to go direct on me here. What’s going to happen? What’s the reaction to the value proposition for them to their customers and their monetization opportunity?
Abe Ankumah: So one of the things that partners, MSPs, love about the solution is it’s something that they can package and deliver together with additional services. So whether it’s taking the capabilities and running an MSSP practice, basically doing a managed SOC on top of it, or it’s taking that solution and selling an underlay together with it. And so it’s really about bringing us not just as a product, but as an overall service and delivering professional services alongside it, allowing the customers and advising the end customers to go through digital transformation, leveraging this as a core asset.
Patrick Moorhead: So literally, it sounds like your primary motion are the MSPs. Okay. So it doesn’t get done without the MSPs. That’s great.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, I think that’s a scale thing. I mean, there’s so many customers that are impacted by managing and securing the network perimeter, doing it efficiently. VMware had such a robust and well understood channel, and of course it’s evolving. And that’s going to be a very interesting thing for us as analysts for you as a market leader to be paying attention to. We haven’t, Pat, I started this show off, it’s kind of funny. I started off talking about how it was AI and actually we made it through this conversation largely without talking about it. I didn’t know that was possible.
Patrick Moorhead: I’d be very surprised if the SASE part didn’t have some element of AI, but I know we don’t have to go there. But I’d be very surprised.
Daniel Newman: I was thinking about maybe putting Abe on the spot a little bit and just saying AI is obviously one of the large opportunities for proliferating security, proliferating the management of the edge. As you’re talking to your customers with VelaCloud, is there any real tie together with machine learning and AI as part of the solution? And do you see it evolving that way more and more?
Abe Ankumah: Yeah, so we’ve been doing AI as part of the solution for quite some time.
Daniel Newman: It’s not new.
Abe Ankumah: It’s not new. Now, generative AI is obviously one of the new areas to this, and so the entire SD WAN and SASE offer, when I talk about day zero, day one, day two, there’s an AI layer which makes running the service very proactive. You’ve got a highly distributed environment. You don’t necessarily have an IT team at every given location. When something goes wrong, how do you proactively identify? How do you proactively remediate it? We use AI for that.
Patrick Moorhead: There we go.
Daniel Newman: Yeah. So all right. Final question. Abe, I know you got a lot going on here. This booth is cool. There’s an ambulance behind us. There’s demos all over the place. You can see it’s jam packed with people. In terms of your area of focus, what are you demonstrating here at MWC 2024?
Abe Ankumah: So the ambulance that’s sitting right behind us really encapsulates everything that we’re doing at the edge. Within this ambulance is actually, it’s running an edge native application, right? It’s run an edge native application using video inferencing to drive things like making sure that when this ambulance shows up on the scene of an accident, it has the right amount of supplies and the right stocking levels within it. This ambulance behind that, within that same application, delivers virtual care so that when you’re transporting a patient in trauma to a center, if you need a specialist to join by video, you can do that.
Now, how do you allow a specialist to join by video when the ambulance is racing down the freeway? You need secure, reliable connectivity. And so within this ambulance, we also have our SD-WAN solution actually providing, think about this as a branch on wheels, right? It’s literally a hospital on wheels as we described it. And so it comes with the connectivity, it comes with the security through SD WAN and SASE offer. And then the final third piece is resilient connectivity. And so this ambulance within the SD WAN solution is also providing a dual 5G connection that provides failover as an example. And so this ambulance right here really encapsulates everything that we’re talking about within the software defined edge, which is easy to provision, secure, and programmable.
Patrick Moorhead: I totally did not expect that. I mean, we didn’t get briefed on the ambulance, but that’s impressive.
Daniel Newman: Yeah. Well it’s always great when a company starts to tie all the threads together and does it in a way. Now of course, you’ll see the static demos. They’re part of every booth at every event on the planet. Look, I mean when you’re walking down the hall and you see 50 static demos and you see an ambulance, you’re thinking, that probably is more interesting if I’m going to go spend a few minutes and of course, hopefully it’s not carrying anybody out that had too much wine here, too much wine in tapas here in Barcelona.
Patrick Moorhead: Did they give you a ride around the block in it at all?
Abe Ankumah: Not yet.
Patrick Moorhead: Okay. I’d ask you that. You’re paying for this, so I would definitely sign up for that trip.
Daniel Newman: That’s great. Hey, I want to thank you so much for sitting down with us here at MWC.
Abe Ankumah: Thank you for having me.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, let’s have you back. I look forward to hearing how this, the market adoption and all that new solutions, but it sounds like they’re off to a great start.
Patrick Moorhead: Oh, it is, and I’m really excited. This is the first integration between the two companies that I’ve covered. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. This is exciting stuff.
Daniel Newman: You Broadcom software. VMware. You got Symantec in there, they’re pulling everything together.
Patrick Moorhead: Oh I know.
Daniel Newman: All right, Abe, we’ll catch you later. All right, everybody hit that subscribe button. Join Patrick and I for all of our coverage here at MWC 2024 and of course all The Six Five events coverage and more. But for this episode, for Patrick Moorhead and myself, it’s time to say goodbye. We’ll see you all later.
Patrick Moorhead: Thanks.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
