net present value (NPV) of $4.33 million and an ROI of 246 percent. Prior to using Cato, the interviewees noted how their organizations struggled with managing security and network services, with dedicated teams for VPN, internet, WAN, etc., said Forrester. Managing those systems was time-consuming and costly, requiring individually managed updates at each site on the network. After the investment in Cato, the interviewees managed the unified enterprise-wide network and security oversight from a single dashboard. Key results from the investment include reduced costs associated with maintenance allowing resources to be redirected to more value-adding activities such as system optimization, faster deployment of new sites and onboarding of new acquisitions and reduced costs from retiring legacy systems. The composite organization is headquarters in the United States, with 20 additional sites in the U.S., 15 sites in Europe, and five in the Asia Pacific region. Additionally, the composite maintains four data centers (two on-premises and two cloud-based) in the U.S.; three data centers (one on-premises and two cloud-based) in Europe, and two cloud-based data centers in Asia Pacific. There are 1,500 remote users in Year 1, growing to a total of 61 offices and 2,100 remote users by Year 3. The brunt of the positive return comes via reduced operation and maintenance costs. The composite organization was able to redirect 10 full-time data engineers (FTEs) dedicated to operations and maintenance to more value-adding activities in Year 1. By Year 3, the organization avoids needing 12 more FTEs who would have had to manage the previous solution. The average fully loaded annual compensation for a full-time data engineer is $148,500. “With our previous system, every time they released a firmware update, we had to go one by one to all the routers around the company and push the update to it. Afterwards, [we’d] make sure it’s back up and running because sometimes it causes issues,” said one IT team manager interviewed by Forrester. “There was a lot of work involved for each device, and it was quarterly at a minimum. With Cato, because it’s a hosted solution, it’s all in one place. Our time to maintain and update the system and everything was reduced to almost nothing.” All of the interviewees continued to expand the number of sites deployed on Cato, and all reported that the reduced time to configure was an important benefit. According to the director of technology for an advisory, tax and assurance organization – assuming his network and security had the gear they needed to deploy – what was once a 20-hour investment per site “now is probably less than an hour.” Forrester estimates that the existing solutions, on average, required network engineers approximately 40 hours to complete a deployment. The average fully loaded compensation for a data engineer is $74 per hour. Further cost containment came from the ability to retire expensive systems and hardware in favor of SASE components. Commonly retired systems included traditional edge routers, perimeter next-generation firewall (NGFW) appliances, intrusion detection system (IDS), intrusion protection system (IPS), and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) systems that can cost as much as $1,100 per site per month. “We don’t need to go invest in those other solutions because the Cato transport with the intelligence and the security layer does everything we need it to do,” said one responding director or technology. “I think the biggest cost saving was the internet lines, the T1 voice lines,” added an IT team manager. “We disconnected all of those because we don’t need [them] anymore. It’s about $1,100 per site times 80 a month.” For WAN executives who have spent the last two years investing in the resources to keep up with office shutdowns, digital transformations and shifts to the edge, these stories of saving money through SASE surely must sound like music to their ears. o CORE COMMUNICATIONS Which of these infrastructure initiatives will your company implement in 2022? Network management and monitoring 69% Cloud-based network management 67% Complete WAN refresh 61% SD-WAN 56% SASE 48% Source: Aryaka Total Benefits, Composite Organization, Cato SASE Cloud Benefit Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Present Value Reduced operation and maintenance cost $1,410,750 $1,551,825 $1,692,900 $4,655,475 $3,836,901 Reduced time to configure $0 $27,702 $27,702 $55,404 $43,707 Savings from retired systems $769,500 $894,900 $1,020,300 $2,684,700 $2,205,699 Total benefits (risk-adjusted) $2,180,250 $2,474,427 $2,740,902 $7,395,579 $6,086,307 Source: Forrester, Cato Networks 38 CHANNELV ISION | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2022
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