According to the latest numbers crunched by Dell’Oro Group, it’s the third quarter running that SASE has picked up speed, mostly thanks to enterprises binning their dusty access routers in favour of flashier, AI-ready setups. These setups blend SD-WAN with Security Service Edge in an attempt to future-proof branch networking without falling flat on security.

Dell’Oro Group enterprise security and networking senior director Mauricio Sanchez said: “With SASE revenue climbing 22 percent Y/Y in 2Q 2025, enterprises are clearly prioritizing AI-ready branch strategies. SD-WAN’s 27 percent rise and SSE’s 19 percent gain show both the networking and security SASE engines driving this re-acceleration.”

He added that vendors flogging SD-WAN and SSE control 84 per cent of the revenue, a sign that buyers want the lot in one box.

Cisco is laughing all the way to the bank after a 52 per cent annual rise in SD-WAN revenue, thanks to punters dumping legacy ISR access routers for Catalyst 8k and Meraki gear. It holds the top spot by revenue share.

Palo Alto Networks is gaining fast though, jumping into second place with a monstrous 73 per cent surge. That comes off the back of SD-WAN software sales actually working for once. Over on the security side, SSE pulled in 19 per cent growth, with Palo Alto up 35 per cent and Netskope not far behind with a 29 per cent bump.

Access routers, meanwhile, are heading for the skip with a 15 per cent revenue drop. But when you bolt them together with SD-WAN, the broader “branch networking” segment still managed a 13 per cent climb, marking the first time it’s seen double-digit growth since the third quarter of 2023.