What Enterprises Really Want from SASE Consolidation

A new survey by Futuriom shows 92% of enterprises want SASE consolidation, and security, simplicity, and sovereignty matter more than cost.

It’s been seven years since the term Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) was first coined by Gartner analysts, and a new survey report from Futuriom makes clear that the future of networking and security described in that seminal Gartner report is now accepted wisdom. As Futuriom puts it, the relevant question is no longer whether the consolidation of security and networking capabilities on SASE platforms will happen, but how. For its just-released 2026 SASE Platform Evolution market trends report, Futuriom surveyed 144 IT, security, and networking directors and CxO’s about their SASE strategies. One of the findings: 92% said their organizations are looking to consolidate cybersecurity functions through a single-vendor or platform-oriented SASE strategy. Only 2% said they weren’t.

Below I walk through a few of the findings in the report that I found particularly striking.

It’s not all about the money

Cost is often assumed to drive consolidation. The survey says otherwise, and it says so twice. Cost appears in two separate questions, and in both it trails several other priorities, a clear indication that savings are not the overriding goal as organizations pursue SASE.

First, when asked about the benefits of consolidating security and networking tools, respondents ranked lower total cost of ownership (TCO) fifth, at 41%. Four benefits came ahead of it:

• Improved security visibility and analytics (69%). Fragmented tools produce fragmented views. A unified platform lets teams see users, applications, threats, and traffic in one place, which is the foundation for detecting and stopping attacks.
• Reduced operational complexity (58%). Every additional product brings its own console, update cycle, and learning curve. Fewer moving parts means fewer things to break.
• Improved user experience and performance (44%). When traffic is inspected once rather than handed between separate products, users feel the difference.
• Simplified policy management (42%). Defining a policy once and applying it everywhere reduces errors and closes gaps.

Second, when asked about the outcomes they want from SASE over the next one to three years, respondents again put effectiveness ahead of economics. Improved security effectiveness leads at 63%, followed by simplified IT and security operations (57%) and faster incident response (51%). Lower operational costs comes in fourth, at 40%.

Taken together, the two results tell the same story: organizations see consolidation primarily as a security and operations strategy. Savings are certainly welcome, but they are not the main event.

The operational pain SASE is meant to solve is real

The survey’s list of current operational challenges reads like a description of the problems SASE was created to address. The most common is managing multiple consoles (44%), followed by performance troubleshooting complexity (42%), inconsistent policies across tools (38%), and vendor interoperability issues (34%). Alert overload, difficulty correlating telemetry, and slow incident-response workflows were each cited by 33%.

The underlying cause is plain in the numbers: nearly seven in 10 respondents use four or more management consoles for SASE, SSE, and network security, and 66% work with four or more vendors. Add the skills shortage, which 87.5% say is a major or moderate driver of their interest in consolidation, and the appeal of a simpler operational layer becomes obvious.

Consolidation has its challenges

Enthusiasm for platforms does not mean respondents don’t have concerns. Migration complexity is the top concern, cited by 51%. The cost of transition (44%), performance limitations (44%), and vendor lock-in (40%) follow closely. Others worry about outages or a larger blast radius (38%), loss of best-of-breed functionality (36%), compliance or regulatory issues (28%), and reduced negotiating leverage (23%).

Notably, internal organizational resistance ranks last at 12.5%. So any hesitation is not cultural; it is about execution. Enterprises want to see that a platform can be adopted without disruption, that it will perform at scale, and that it will not sacrifice depth for breadth. It is also worth noting that 82% say multivendor visibility and operations remain a key part of their strategy. For most, consolidation means fewer, better-integrated vendors, not a perfectly uniform environment overnight.

What else success looks like

Beyond the top outcomes, respondents look to SASE for automation and AI adoption (39%), better end-user experience (38%), improved compliance and governance (34%), and faster branch and remote-site deployment (33%). Tellingly, consolidated vendor relationships ranks last, at just 17%. Reducing the vendor count is a means, not an end. What organizations want is a stronger security posture and a network that is easier to run.

Sovereignty moves to the mainstream

Perhaps the most surprising result concerns digital sovereignty. 88% of respondents rate it “critical” or “very important” to their SASE implementation, and not a single respondent called it unimportant.

A few years ago, sovereignty was largely a concern for governments and heavily regulated industries. Its prominence today reflects how quickly worries about control and compliance have escalated in the current geopolitical environment. Shifting trade relationships, expanding data-protection rules, and questions about which jurisdictions can reach data held by cloud providers have made the location of data, traffic inspection, and security infrastructure a board-level issue. For SASE, that means organizations increasingly want a say in where their services run, whether in a provider’s cloud, their own data centers, or both.

What it means for leaders

The Futuriom findings paint a consistent picture. Enterprises are ready to consolidate, but they are doing it to see more, operate more simply, and respond faster, not simply to cut costs. They are realistic about migration and lock-in risks, and they increasingly expect control over where their data and security services reside.

For leaders evaluating SASE platforms, the survey suggests a practical checklist: Does the platform deliver unified visibility and consistent policy? Can it be adopted without a disruptive rip-and-replace? And does it provide deployment choices that support sovereignty requirements?

Download a complimentary copy of the full 2026 SASE Platform Evolution report to explore all of the survey results.