Exclusive: Aryaka reveals future of SASE and global expansion

The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) market is filled with solutions that often fall into two common pitfalls - fragmented architectures and reliance on the public internet.

Aryaka CEO Shailesh Shukla believes the company is uniquely positioned to overcome these challenges with its Unified SASE as a Service.

"What makes us different is that Aryaka built Unified SASE as a Service from the ground up," he said. "We offer a fully converged, cloud-first platform that seamlessly integrates networking, security, and observability - no silos, no vendor sprawl."

Unlike many competitors, Aryaka owns and operates a global private backbone, ensuring high-performance connectivity and security without relying on the public internet. This infrastructure provides predictable performance and eliminates common security blind spots.

"Most SASE vendors don't control the underlying network, relying instead on third-party carriers," Shukla explained. "This creates unpredictable performance, security gaps, and a lack of accountability."

Aryaka's single-pass architecture, OnePASS, ensures uniform policy enforcement and seamless application access, addressing the shortcomings of multi-pass systems, which often introduce latency and degrade user experience. To further enhance performance, Aryaka has introduced dynamic points of presence (PoPs) in AWS and Google Cloud regions.

"The ability to deliver high performance with end-to-end security enforcement is important today, but it will become even more critical with GenAI deployments," Shukla added. "These workloads demand high network performance and create new security risks."

AI at the Core of Aryaka's Vision

Since joining Aryaka, Shukla has placed artificial intelligence (AI) at the core of the company's operations. According to him, AI is not merely a feature but an essential enabler of smarter, faster, and more autonomous networking and security solutions.

"We're embedding AI in two key ways," he said. "First, we optimise and protect customer GenAI implementations. Last summer, we introduced AI>Perform to ensure that GenAI workloads perform well across the network."

In the latter half of 2024, Aryaka plans to launch AI>Secure, designed to enhance access control and protect organisations from knowledge and data leakage associated with GenAI applications.

"The second way we're using AI is to make our own platform smarter," Shukla explained.

"We launched AI>Observe in February, which uses hundreds of AI models to provide real-time visibility into network security risks."

Beyond security, AI-driven automation is helping Aryaka enhance traffic optimisation, reduce downtime through network self-healing, and streamline compliance and troubleshooting processes. AI-powered automation is also being used to improve as-a-service operations.

"We're not just supporting AI-driven enterprises - we're using AI to revolutionise how networks are managed and secured," he said.

AI's Impact on Network Infrastructure

With AI workloads generating massive amounts of data and requiring low latency, traditional networks struggle to keep up. Aryaka addresses these challenges by providing customers with a high-performance private network backbone that offers an alternative to congested internet-based solutions.

"AI workloads are extremely data-intensive, chatty, and require low latency," Shukla said.

"Aryaka's private network backbone gives customers an alternative to public internet congestion."

AI>Perform ensures that AI workloads receive priority optimization based on policy, helping enterprises avoid bottlenecks that could hinder operations.

"AI-driven enterprises can't afford bottlenecks - Aryaka ensures they don't have to deal with them," he added.

Business Impact: CEO, CFO, CIO, and CISO Perspectives

Aryaka's solution provides measurable benefits to key enterprise stakeholders. For CEOs, the focus is on enabling growth without complexity.

"Our service enables faster global expansion and agility," Shukla said.

For CFOs, the emphasis is on cost reduction. Aryaka eliminates expensive MPLS circuits, reduces vendor sprawl, and lowers total cost of ownership by up to 25%.

"Enterprises see 113% ROI with payback in under six months," he explained. "Eliminating legacy networking costs and moving to a cloud-based model significantly reduces IT overhead."

CIOs benefit from simplified IT operations through a single, integrated networking and security platform. This consolidation reduces the burden of managing multiple teams and mitigates siloed working issues.

For CISOs, Aryaka's zero-trust security enforcement, AI-driven threat detection, and compliance-ready infrastructure strengthen enterprise security.

"It's not just about cost savings - it's about making businesses more secure, agile, and competitive," Shukla added.

Expanding Global Go-to-Market Investments

Aryaka recently announced a major expansion of its global go-to-market (GTM) investment, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. This includes new partnerships and leadership appointments to drive business growth.

"We've hired Nitin Ahuja as VP and GM for Asia Pacific," Shukla noted.

"He brings extensive experience from companies like Imperva, VMware, HPE, and Microsoft."

Additionally, Aryaka has partnered with Nippon Information and Communication (NI+C) in Japan and ASV Platforms in Australia to expand its reach in these regions. The company has also hired Nick Alagna as Vice President of Global Channels and added William Ho as a strategic advisor for Asia Pacific.

"This announcement is just the beginning of our investment in new partnerships and routes to market," said Chris Ranalli, Chief Revenue Officer at Aryaka. "With the hiring of Nick, Nitin, and others, we are building a world-class team."

Aryaka's commitment to global expansion also includes new GTM executives in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, ensuring that the company continues to meet the rising demand for Unified SASE solutions worldwide.

Long-Term Vision: AI-Powered Networking

Looking ahead, Aryaka envisions a future where networking and security are fully converged, AI-powered, and dynamically scalable to meet enterprise demands. This vision includes delivering high-performance connectivity for GenAI applications without added complexity.

"We're excited by the potential of AI inside our platform to automate performance and security," Shukla said.

"AI will eliminate manual interventions, maximise performance, and improve threat detection."

Reflecting on Aryaka's evolution, Shukla noted that the industry has made significant strides towards realising a unified SASE model.

"If you'd asked me this question five years ago, when people were just starting to talk about SASE, I would probably have described Unified SASE as a Service," he said.

"Back then, secure, high-performance networking was the ideal state we were all trying to reach. Today, it's up and running."