The Evolution of SD-WAN and Converged Networking and Security Principles with Parag Thakore

[music] Parag Thakore: I would say encourage security buyers and security people to also start thinking about performance characteristics and optimization and whether that infrastructure can deliver that for them or not. And they don't need to be experts, it's a very simple question in terms of, "Hey, can I get this high-performance connectivity from this Cloud security that I'm purchasing or that security vendor that I'm looking for?" So I think ease of operations and that high-performance connectivity is something that security should also look at as a criteria when they look at security platforms.

[music] Producer1: Hello and welcome to Security Visionaries. You just heard from today's guest, Parag Thakore, SVP of Borderless WAN at Netskope. As the evolution of business models continues, CIOs need to start thinking about converging the responsibilities of networking and security teams and simplifying the end user journey. Netskope is doing just that by collaborating with SD-WAN leaders to deliver fast, secure, and cost-effective access for branch and remote users. Before we dive into Parag's interview, here's a brief word from our sponsor.

Producer2: The Security Visionaries Podcast is powered by the team at Netskope. At Netskope, we are redefining Cloud, data and network security with a platform that provides optimized access and zero trust security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. To learn more about how Netskope helps customers be ready for anything on their SASE journey, visit netskope.com.

Producer1: Without further ado, please enjoy Episode 21 of Security Visionaries with Parag Thakore, SVP of Borderless WAN at Netskope and your host, Mike Anderson.

Mike Anderson: Welcome to today's episode of the Security Visionaries Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Anderson. I'm the Chief Digital & Information Officer here at Netskope. Today I'm excited to be joined by one of my peers here, Parag Thakore. Parag, how are you doing today?

Parag Thakore: I'm doing great. Thank you Mike and thanks for inviting me.

Mike Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, you joined us almost a year ago from our acquisition of Infiot and you now serve as our senior vice president of our borderless SD-WAN group. Tell us a little bit about your journey and then your journey into Netskope and a little about your background in the networking and security space.

Parag Thakore: Sure, Mike. So my background actually in networking goes back in the Cisco days where there were service providers that I would deal with who would use MPLS networks. And actually, if you look at the MPLS trend, it started more from voice, VOIP. So when data networks and voice networks were converging together, that's where the MPLS market was created and I was a part of that journey creating the ISR Gen 1, ISR Gen 2, which were like branch office routers. And until 2009-2010, MPLS was exploding, which is where everyone was buying MPLS for many-to-many connectivity needs.

Parag Thakore: And suddenly, at that point there was a inflection point where if you look at Cisco, they were acquiring a lot of voice and video endpoint companies and that demands very high video, very high bandwidth for voice and video to run on that. So if you look at our video call, each video stream would be 10 megs and MPLS link would be one and a half megs and it would cost $400 a month. So that's where we started thinking from more of like, "How do we help customers so that it can be more cost-effective for them to run these networks?" Because you can't upgrade your MPLS bandwidth to that extent because that was gonna be really expensive.

Parag Thakore: So I left Cisco at that point and I became the VP of products and also the founding member of a company called VeloCloud Networks, which is one of the market-leading software-defined WAN companies. The word SD-WAN didn't exist. We created that market. Right now it's a pretty big market, people know about it. So from there, what SD-WAN gave is this whole commodity bandwidth, commodity broadband links, and you could run your networks over it rather than MPLS and it gave you that reliability over Internet links and easily manage your branch offices.

Parag Thakore: What it didn't give you and which is where we started Infiot was more about this many-to-many connectivity because what we saw was the enterprise perimeter was expanding. In fact, I remember a conversation where I was presenting SD-WAN and the customer said, "Man, I didn't understand a single word of SD-WAN." And to look into the problem, we said, "Okay." You go out to their factory floor and they point to this big machine and they say, "That's my new branch and inside the branch I have sensors." Or if you look at all of us working from home today, those are extensions of your branch offices or you look at the multicloud environment. So what we noticed is SD-WAN was not designed for this many-to-many world and that's where we got out after the acquisition. VeloCloud got acquired by VMWare. Right after the acquisition we got out and started Infiot and then from there on, Infiot got acquired by Netskope as of last year.

Mike Anderson: That's great. It's been a... And it's an amazing journey. I heard that a lot of the, what we see as the software-defined WAN companies out there today have roots back to that same Cisco team you were on years ago before even founding VeloCloud. So a lot of good talent in that team for sure.

Mike Anderson: So probing in a little bit more, I know we, when we looked at the market obviously from a Netskope standpoint, we've been looking at SASE and for the longest time we were delivering one side of the equation, which was the Cloud security stack and then obviously, as you were looking at the SD-WAN business or the borderless SD-WAN business, that many-to-many, it made a nice coupling to bring together as companies look at the whole "What does a single vendor SASE market look like as we go forward in the future?"

Mike Anderson: So you've been here almost a year now. So talk to me a little bit about your current role at Netskope and what are some of the things that you're really focused on? What are some of the big things you feel like now with this merge of security service edge and SD-WAN, if you think about the SASE architecture, what are the cool things you're working on maybe in that context of that many-to-many you just brought up?

Parag Thakore: Yeah, so I'm the senior vice president for the borderless SD-WAN group, also including SASE