VMware is harking back to the past for the launch of its new SASE offering at Mobile World Congress 2024.
The company has unveiled VMware VeloCloud SASE, a single-vendor SASE solution bringing together VeloCloud SD-WAN, and Symantec SSE.
VMware acquired VeloCloud back in 2017, and originally phased out the company’s branding some years later, but has now brought it back as it launches a new SASE product.
VeloCloud SASE return
Revealing the news in a pre-brief ahead of MWC 2024, Abe Ankumah, Broadcom’s Head of SD-WAN, Software-Defined Edge Division, noted that the launch would help allow customers to modernize their underlying infrastructure whilst also monetizing new services.
He added that VMware’s approach to the software-designed edge has to focus on enabling a right-size infrastructure (in terms of shrinking the tech stack), zero-touch orchestration (as edge locations are increasingly distributed, and not always constantly online), and network programmability (looking at a need to be agile and flexible where needed).
Ankumah added that the motivation behind re-introducing the VeloCloud brand came because a lot of its customers and partners still refer to VMware existing offerings as VeloCloud, despite the brand being previously hidden away.
“The customer is always right – so we’re going to reflect that, and bring back the brand,” he laughed.
“The number of new use cases we’re able to open up…bears the full-strength of everything we’re doing in the software-defined edge,” he added.
