Also, AWS and Azure will have their own NGFW-like services, meaning you can ditch your on-premise NGFW entirely, and use inexpensive routers. Moreover, services like Zscaler will make more sense, than a big iron box of wires.
https://securityboulevard.com/2018/04/the-ngfw-is-dead/
This is an April article on Next Generation Fire Walls. It is a neutral article written by no one with a sales agenda or beef. Sinply, like many of us here, an interest in the topic. The article goes on to discuss what we already know, and that is cloud is taking over everytihng.
Reading through Zscaler’s 10K, there are no competitors like Zscaler, at least accoridng to Zsclaler in regard to being cloud only.
As you read through this article, Zscaler is also the only one. Azure and AWS will develop their own cloud NGFW, but that should probably not affect Zscaler all that much, anymore than it affects other companies that compete with the clouds but are specialized.
Certainly NGFWs will create links to the cloud, and be part of the cloud, but the appliances will always exist. How can they not absent cannibalizng their business models or dramatically raising their prices for cloud? Perhaps the legacy installed base will slowly melt away and thus enabling the continual upselling of appliances to a large but slowly shrinking base, while also moving into the cloud only offering (which of course would interfere with the marketing message).
Hard to read too much into it, how competitors will deal with something like Zscaler. I don’t know. All I do know is that they will have to and this article supports the supposition that Zscaler is first mover and unique in how it does it. Blue Coat’s complete and rather rapid busines failure (not long after Zymantec spend a few billion to buy it and installed Blue Coat’s CEO as Symantec’s CEO - while selling off their storage software product Veritas for even more money than what Blue Coat cost) either means that Symantec ruined a great product (the only other product in the leader square other than Zscaler) or the day of the appliance (that Blue Coat was famous for, and was the leader in being a hybrid) has come and gone. I cannot say which.
Either way, we know Zscaler is for real given the large companies that have come on board. That Zsclaer is the first mover in the providing cloud only security that no longer requires a corporate perimeter or appliances, but we do not know if the market will move its way or if Zscaler will be a nice niche or simply bought out.
Of course the way of Palo Alto is what we would most like to see. Given how many companies that Palo Alto services, it is going to be a long time before Zscaler’s all cloud model becomes the predominant model, perhaps a very long time. But all that is required that it keep growing and taking marketshare systematically.
Interesting discussion on understanding Zscaler better.
Tinker