NTT partners with Palo Alto to use AIOps to manage SASE

A new offering from IT services provider NTT combines Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SASE product with NTT’s managed network services and AIOps infrastructure.

SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is attracting attention for its potential to improve security while reducing network complexity. It combines SD-WAN with security services, including Secure Web Access Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), in a single, cloud-delivered Service model.

More and more companies looking to simplify SASE deployment are turning to managed service providers as an alternative to purchasing SASE services directly from the vendor and configuring and implementing them themselves.

Benefits of using MSP for SASE include having a single source for setup and management, access to skills you may not have in-house, and a flexible financing model.

Amit Dhingra, executive vice president of network services at NTT, said that through the NTT-Palo Alto partnership, companies can now get their SASE and hosting services in one place. This includes hardware, software, SaaS services, networking, security and connectivity, as well as consulting and technical support.

“This is a market-first SASE solution that is fully managed with full lifecycle services,” he said. “Previously, they needed to purchase the SASE solution separately from the hosting service.”

Omdia analyst Brian Washburn said that as an MSP, NTT brings its system integration capabilities, equipment service capabilities and global influence. “They do a lot of complex product and platform development,” he said.

In particular, NTT can build highly automated platforms and can help deploy, install, configure, operate and maintain hardware and software. “That’s what sets NTT apart,” Washburn said. “They have a complete set of capabilities, plus integrated services.”

For its part, Palo Alto offers a complete SASE services stack — it was one of nine vendors included in Gartner’s single-vendor SASE report released last fall.

But what makes Palo Alto so attractive to enterprises isn’t just the fact that it offers the full SASE stack, Omdia’s Washburn said.

“SASE has a lot of different parts,” Washburn said. “But Palo Alto is very flexible with licensing. A business might already have a few SASE components but want to get two or three more. Palo Alto is easy to do business with – they will come in and license just those components to you This needs to be done and done on a flexible basis, which is not difficult or painful for businesses.”

According to NTT, the new products are designed to help businesses address current digital transformation challenges and enable more flexible ways of working. Enterprises are also expected to save money because they can reduce the number of vendors, tools and technology stacks required to support their business.

The platform’s AIOps and automation capabilities also have the potential to help improve operational efficiency and security outcomes.

For example, NTT’s Dhingra said accelerated fault isolation through event correlation powered by AI and machine learning reduces the operational overhead of resolving complex performance issues.

Strictly speaking, AIOps is not part of SASE. But combining networking and security into a single platform creates a plethora of event logs and activity reports.

“This can become very onerous, requiring a lot of logic and a log aggregator—for example, a solution like Splunk—in order to present it to threat analysis and human consumption,” said John Carey, managing director of the technology practice at AArete, a Global management consulting firm.

This is where AI starts to add value, he said. “You can apply more sophisticated [analytical] models,” Carey said. “It also reduces the human oversight capabilities required in very large enterprise organizations.”

Carey added that AI tools sitting on top of the SASE platform can call upon automation to monitor isolated areas of the network for threats and respond to external attacks. They can maintain the integrity of security, “and ultimately support the ability to ramp up or down certain infrastructure tools and capabilities.”

According to a recent survey conducted by Foundry (formerly IDG Communications) and Comcast Business, 41% of IT decision-makers say AI is already part of their network operations, and an additional 47% are actively discussing how and where to power AI. Their network implements artificial intelligence.