Manufacturer Expands Adoption of SASE for Seamless Divestiture

Challenge

Large enterprises face a host of technology challenges when divesting part of their business. While divestitures present new business opportunities, they also create new entry points for cyber attackers, new user requirements and new levels of IT support.

When a large manufacturer decided to divest its consumer health business, it presented IT leadership with an opportunity to evaluate their use of secure access service edge (SASE). 

The manufacturer was already using Zscaler, a market-leading SASE solution, for direct internet access (DIA). If the manufacturer could broaden its use of SASE to include the architecture's many security capabilities, it could reduce the number of point products across their IT estate and drive out associated costs.

What's more, if the new consumer health business leveraged SASE, it could establish a strong security posture and deliver satisfying end-user experiences with less subject matter expertise. This would be a huge benefit as the new company's IT department would be significantly smaller than that of the remaining enterprise. 

WWT worked with the manufacturer's CISO and networking and security stakeholders ahead of the divestiture to expand SASE adoption.

Solution

WWT security and management consultants partnered closely with the client to create a SASE strategy based on direct data related to value and cost. Additionally, they demonstrated how the divested business could leverage SASE for cloud workload protection and digital experience monitoring. 

Building a business case for SASE

The first order of business was to help the manufacturer's CISO develop a business case for expanded use of SASE to present to other members of the C-suite. 

WWT consultants interviewed security staff to assess how much time they were spending operating point products that could be replaced by SASE — for example time spent on maintaining the manufacturer's firewall estate, securing cloud workloads and enabling remote access. 

Consultants quantified staff time into operational costs and added them to hardware and licensing costs to arrive at an accurate comparison of limited versus expanded use of SASE. 

Analysis revealed that expanding the use of SASE would be less expensive over time than maintaining point products, both for the divested company and the remaining enterprise.

Selecting the right solution for divestiture 

After learning that SASE made financial sense, the manufacturer wanted to make sure that Zscaler was the best solution for expanded use cases. 

Drawing on our experience performing SASE proofs of concept in our Advanced Technology Center, we were able to help the manufacturer quickly evaluate the capabilities of Zscaler against another leading SASE solution.

While the other solution possessed many capabilities, Zscaler offered better agility and less complexity due to being a unified product, which in turn would lessen business disruption and mitigate risks associated with spin-off activities. 

Defining a path for implementation 

With a financial model that supported expanded use of Zscaler, the client needed to determine what expanded use cases to go after first.

Based on our experience with clients, we suggested starting with user-to-application access leveraging Secure Private Access (ZPA). From there, we suggested cloud workload protection leveraging Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange. 

To assure the client that these offerings would work in their environments, both for the new business and remaining enterprise, WWT engineers conducted platform certification using the capabilities of the Advanced Technology Center. 

This tactical approach not only built confidence in solution implementation but also helped the manufacturer operationalize the divestiture in that it saw how the new business and remaining enterprise could grow their SASE capabilities in tandem.

Looking to the future, we showed the client how Zscaler's security features could help the new business move toward a zero trust security model and the monitoring benefits of Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) for the new business' cloud-first, remote user base.

Results

Since our initial engagements, the manufacturer has successfully divested the new business. The SASE strategy developed by WWT helped reduce the costs and short-term risks associated with divestiture and aided in continuity of IT operations. 

Both the new business and remaining enterprise stand to gain from expanded use of SASE.

Benefits for the divested company 

By fully embracing Zscaler, the new business will be able to:

• Operate with less subject matter expertise due to not having to staff for experts in point solutions.
• Simply and quickly onboard business partners.
• Securely scale access to applications for new customers and employees.
• Move toward a zero trust security model that reduces its attack surface.
• Allow the remaining enterprise to securely access shared applications.

Benefits for the remaining enterprise

By expanding its use of Zscaler, the manufacturer will be able to:

• Reduce its firewall estate.
• Reduce investments in SD-WAN.
• Reduce investments in network assurance solutions.
• Reach net cost avoidance as it relates to the reduction of point solutions and associated maintenance for a total savings of $2.6M.
• Allow the new business to securely access shared applications.

Continuing the SASE journey

Optimizing major architectural shifts such as SASE is a continuous and iterative process. WWT continues to partner with the client so they can expand their use of SASE even further, maximizing their technology investments.