• SASE revenue reached $3.5bn in Q2, growing above 20% year on year for a fifth straight quarter
  • SD-WAN strengthened as enterprises selectively replaced ageing branch infrastructure

The fact

Dell'Oro Group said the secure access service edge market reached $3.5bn in the second quarter of 2026, extending year-on-year growth above 20% to a fifth consecutive quarter. SD-WAN strengthened materially as branch modernisation moved higher on enterprise priority lists. Dell'Oro said the activity pointed to selective replacement of ageing or higher-risk infrastructure rather than a simultaneous refresh of entire branch estates.

Security Service Edge remained the larger security component of SASE. Growth in its core functions moderated, while extended services including data security and digital experience management grew faster. Traditional access routers remained under pressure, although replacement of legacy equipment meant the segment performed better than previously expected.

The assessment

The SD-WAN improvement matters because moving security into the cloud has not removed the need to maintain infrastructure at each branch. Sites still need equipment capable of handling their WAN connections, encrypted traffic and changing capacity requirements, and older devices eventually reach support or performance limits.

Dell'Oro's description of a selective refresh is important. Enterprises are not replacing every branch at once. They are upgrading sites where ageing hardware, security exposure or higher throughput requirements make replacement necessary. That can leave SASE subscriptions and branch equipment moving through the same procurement cycle rather than one eliminating the other.

For BTW readers, the quarter shows that cloud-delivered security does not remove the branch refresh cycle; enterprises can still need new SD-WAN infrastructure as capacity, support and security requirements change.

What to watch

Watch whether SD-WAN growth continues beyond the current refresh activity and how it splits between large enterprises and smaller customers. Vendor share and unit shipments would help distinguish equipment replacement from broader deployment growth. Access-router performance will also show how quickly spending continues to move towards SD-WAN and security-converged branch platforms.