Partnership

Versa and Microsoft Entra Join forces to Deliver Secure Access for the SaaS Era 

Today we are thrilled to announce the native integration of Versa Secure SD-WAN with Microsoft Entra Internet Access. This joint solution delivers a complete SASE architecture that converges identity-driven security with application-aware networking to deliver Zero Trust enforcement, optimized SaaS performance, and seamless management from a unified framework. 

The Growing Reliance on SaaS and Internet Applications 

SaaS and internet applications like Microsoft 365, Teams, and other cloud-native tools power everyday employee and customer collaboration, accessed from branches and remote sites over direct internet links. This creates significant performance demands for latency-sensitive SaaS apps and expands risk as traffic bypasses the old data-center backhauled architecture. Organizations need a way to secure and optimize internet and SaaS applications end to end without impacting performance, while dramatically simplifying management. 

Current Customer Challenges 

Most SD-WANs were capable of steering application traffic across multiple links based on network SLAs, but they lack foundational capabilities like application-aware performance assurance and secure access for SaaS, cloud and internet applications that are often direct internet-bound.  As a result, they often backhaul these application traffic, adding latency and delays that degrades real-time apps performance and create policy silos between networking and security while lacking end-to-end visibility, making troubleshooting slow. Most importantly, they fail to enforce Zero Trust at the branches and in the cloud, creating serious security gaps. The net result is poor performance, compromised security and increased complexity at higher costs.  

Versa + Microsoft Entra: A Unified SASE Solution 

The Versa + Microsoft Entra integration unifies networking and security in a single SASE framework with: 

• Inline conditional access: Enforce Microsoft Entra Conditional Access and adaptive risk policies across SaaS, private, and internet apps with continuous validation for every user, device and application. 

• Secure local breakout: Versa SD-WAN steers traffic directly to Microsoft 365 and other SaaS applications, eliminating the need to backhaul. 

• Optimized performance: First-packet identification combined with dynamic path selection and WAN optimization techniques like Forward Error Correction (FEC), Packet duplication and WAN acceleration to deliver low-latency, high performance access. 

• Unified policy fabric: Combine QoS, traffic steering, and SLA routing with Entra identity/security controls in one place. 

• Granular visibility: Correlate Versa telemetry with Microsoft Entra security logs to provide visibility into best path selection, risk assessment and device posture management. 

• Simplified ops: One unified framework replaces separate SWG, ZTNA, SD-WAN, and identity tools, making troubleshooting and issue resolution faster.  

Simplified Seamless Deployment and Consistent Connectivity 

Versa delivers a complete SASE platform by natively integrating SD-WAN with Microsoft’s SSE solution into a unified SASE framework that simplifies networking and security. This integration enables consistent policy enforcement for networking and security and seamless operations across branch and remote networks, giving enterprises the agility and control they need to securely access SaaS applications.  

Versa has significantly simplified deployment with Microsoft Entra with few easy steps: 

1. Cloud Management System (CMS) Connector easily provides permissions to perform API calls to Microsoft Entra that can be attached to your organization 

2. With automated template workflow, you can now provision Versa SD-WAN to Microsoft site-to-site IPSEC tunnels 

3. Once staged, you can now attach the partner site to site tunnels to the Versa SD-WAN device workflow and re-deploy to provision these tunnels at scale. The connectivity is now established and traffic can be forwarded for all SaaS application access to Microsoft Entra.  

With this integration, customers can easily monitor traffic forwarding and performance both on the Versa Secure SD-WAN and Microsoft Entra console  

Better User Experience with App-Aware SD-WAN Solution 

Versa’s application aware SD-WAN ensures optimized user experiences for Microsoft 365 and other SaaS applications by combining accurate application identification, traffic intelligence based on network and application SLAs and WAN optimization like forward error correction (FEC) and packet duplication.  

Conclusion 

The integration of Versa Secure SD-WAN with Microsoft Entra empowers enterprises to enforce zero trust, optimize user experience, and unify operations with a seamless SASE architecture. To learn more about this integration and how Versa can help deliver a complete SASE solution with Microsoft Entra, read our integration guide or view our video.