Gartner: 60% of New SD-WAN Purchases Will Be Part of Single-Vendor SASE Offerings by End of 2026

The integration of SD-WAN and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is accelerating at a pace that is reshaping enterprise networking. Gartner projects that by the end of 2026, 60% of new SD-WAN purchases will be part of a single-vendor SASE offering—a dramatic increase from just 15% in 2022. The SASE market is forecasted to exceed $30 billion by the end of the decade, growing at a 26% CAGR between 2025 and 2028.

This convergence is driven by enterprises prioritizing unified network security in response to hybrid work models, extensive cloud migration, and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. SASE is transitioning from merely connecting users to applications to becoming the central control plane for managing an organization's risk, performance, and identity across all environments.

Six key trends are shaping SASE in 2026, according to HPE's networking community: AI-driven SASE that anticipates risks rather than reacting to them; universal Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) as a foundational requirement covering all users, device types, and application patterns; IoT security gap closure through device profiling and segmentation; "coffee shop networking" as a mainstream branch deployment model; consolidation toward fewer integrated platforms; and sovereign SASE with data residency controls.

Cisco made headlines at Cisco Live Amsterdam 2026 by introducing intent-aware inspection of agentic AI interactions within its SASE offering, addressing novel threats from autonomous AI systems. HPE is advancing an AI-native SASE platform that unifies SD-WAN, Security Service Edge (SSE), and Network Access Control (NAC) with AIOps for deep observability.

The competitive landscape continues to shift. Fortinet has emerged as the most widely used SD-WAN solution, with Cisco a close second. Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks' Prisma Access maintain leadership in SASE adoption. Strategic moves in 2025 included HPE's acquisition of Juniper Networks and Arista's purchase of VMware's VeloCloud SD-WAN, reshaping market dynamics heading into 2026.

Challenges remain: many organizations still struggle to deploy a truly unified single-supplier SASE architecture, and personnel skill gaps between networking and security teams continue to slow adoption.