Network security startup Versa Networks Inc. banked an $84 million late-stage round of funding today that brings its total amount raised to $196 million.

Princeville Capital and RPS Ventures co-led the Series D round, which included the participation of several existing investors, including Sequoia Capital.

Versa Networks is an emerging player in the Secure Access Service Edge market. SASE, as it’s called, is an architecture model that merges networking with security-as-a-service functions, delivering them as a single cloud service. With SASE, organizations can unify their network and security tools into a single management console.

The company reckons there are lots of advantages to doing this. SASE requires little to no hardware, instead relying on the widespread connectivity of the cloud to combine software-defined wide-area networking capabilities with security functions such as firewall-as-a-service, secure web gateways and zero-trust network access. In other words, SASE provides a convenient, agile and cost-effective to scaling up networks with comprehensive security in place.

Versa’s SASE platform, available via the cloud, on-premises or as a blended combination of both, can be used to connect enterprise workers and end users securely and reliably to dozens of different applications, regardless of where those apps are hosted. Customers benefit from being able to control, configure and implement security and access policies for all of their applications through a single interface.

One of the main advantages of Versa’s platform is the wide breadth of SASE services it offers. According to Enterprise Management Associates, it has the most supported SASE functions of all SASE providers it evaluated. Garter Inc. came to a similar conclusion, based on a study of 56 companies that offer SASE services.

The comprehensive functionality offered by Versa’s platform powered rapid growth for the company over the last year, at a time when more companies adopted remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Versa said that it saw worldwide sales to enterprises and channel partner registrations double in the past year, while increasing its staff headcount by 25%.

The company and its backers believe more growth is inevitable, too. It cited another report from Gartner, which has forecast the SASE market to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 42% to reach $11 billion by 2024.

Princeville Capital’s Joaquin Rodriguez Torres said the reason he decided to back Versa is because SASE is rapidly becoming a very high priority for many enterprises, and that the market is “on the cusp of explosive success.”

Versa intends to be a part of that growth, and one of its strategies will be to invest in campaigns to raise awareness of what SASE is and what benefits it can bring. The company will launch its own marketing and sales campaigns, and also support its partners to do the same, it said.

Those efforts will be necessary because, for all of its promise, SASE is not that well understood. Masergey Communications Inc., in its 2021 State of SD-WAN study published last month, found that although 82% of information technology decision-makers were familiar with the term SASE, only 32% actually knew what the technology is and what implications it can have on their business.

Versa also knows there are plenty of competitors who are champing at the bit to be a part of that expected growth. The SASE market is extremely competitive, with rivals such as Cisco Systems Inc., VMware Inc., Zscaler Inc. and Aryaka Networks Inc. all pushing their own alternatives.

Still, Versa Chief Executive Kelly Ahuja said he is confident that his company will be able to outpace its rivals. “This investment means that we are best placed to be at the helm of that rocket ship as SASE becomes the star in businesses’ security and networking arsenal,” he said.

Beyond its marketing initiatives, Versa said it intends to invest heavily in research and development with a view to adding more features to its SASE platform.

Image: Versa Networks