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Security service edge (SSE) is an infrastructure modernization project CIOs, Infrastructure and Operations (I&O), and Networking leaders should have firmly on their radar. A new study from Forrester Consulting assesses the potential business value and benefits of Netskope One SSE. The research discovered that all of the top three benefits (which combine to account for 63.5% of the total economic impact of Netskope One SSE) related to network, infrastructure and operations. Specifically, those economic benefits were cost reductions from consolidation, improved availability and more efficient operations.
The Netskope SSE Total Economic ImpactTM (TEI) study was a 2024 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Netskope. Forrester undertook private interviews with fully deployed Netskope customers. The aim of the exercise was to assess the financial and business value impact of the technology investment and build a risk-adjusted financial model based on a “composite organization” to support other companies building a case for their own project. All of the customers involved had more than 1-year of deployment experience with the solution, and had evaluated multiple SSE vendor solutions through proof-of-value (POV) technical evaluations.
What may surprise many is that alongside the many anticipated security advantages (more on that below), the customers analyzed also saw significant additional efficiencies and cost savings that they had not expected, and the majority were experienced beyond the security team. So where exactly did they come from?
- Consolidated network security infrastructure generated 37% of the business value that came with a Netskope One SSE deployment, with $5.4M in cost reductions over three years, or a 10% infrastructure cost savings for the composite company profile created by the consultants to generate the results. The economic impact came as a result of decommissioning legacy data centers, physical equipment, and hardware, including sunsetting legacy DLP tools, SWG technology, firewalls, and related hardware and circuitry. One customer eliminated 30 firewalls and consolidated switching ports from more than 1,800 to fewer than 500. Another customer eliminated remote office/branch office on-premises equipment and migrated to a coffee shop access model. Customers also saved on internal and external labor, equipment management, support, and maintenance.
- Improved network availability, performance, and user productivity drove 16.5% of the business value, with $2.4M in cost reductions over three years. Customers reduced the number of hours during which network services were effectively offline, resulting in a 10% increase in uptime for core network services. This enabled customers to mitigate outages and downtime impact, and reduce latency. One customer’s POV validated a competitive network performance study proving that Netskope clocked lower latencies than other SSE vendors.
- Increased network and security operation effectiveness was responsible for 10% of the business value: $1.5M in cost savings. Operation resources were 30% to 35% more productive, network operations were streamlined (including faster user provisioning), and Netskope customers were able to allocate resources to higher-value data security engineering activities. Customers also reduced engineering labor by more than 75% and decreased the patch SLA from weeks to effectively operate on-demand. Netskope One SSE automated workflows and reduced the administrative burden for critical security processes (including compliance checking, pushing out patch updates, and investigating false positives). This resulted in labor reductions from fewer standing issues and reduced rework, and an 80% reduction in lingering issues for networking and security teams.
The study concluded that the composite organization using Netskope One SSE saw a payback period of less than 6 months, with a 109% ROI over 3 years. They also noted additional reduction in help desk tickets (by 80%) and the mean time to resolve issues dropped by 50%. Given the Netskope One platform provides a cloud-native centralized security infrastructure, customers also noted that it had accelerated the time-to-value for mergers and acquisitions, and improved business agility.
The key challenges for the participating customers before deploying Netskope One SSE (those for which Netskope had been selected to solve) included the following:
- Sprawling, costly, ineffective network security infrastructure
- Business disruptions from latency and outages
- Inefficient network and security operations
- Severe data breaches and data loss
- Poor remote work experience
- Slow time-t