Netify Research

Are There Scalable and Affordable SASE Providers for Multinational Organisations?

Written by Harry Yelland. Fact checked by Robert Sturt, Managing Director, Netify. Published 17 July 2026.

Yes - a number of SASE providers can support multinational organisations, including those with users, branches, data centres and cloud workloads spread across multiple regions. That said, scalability can't be judged by the number of advertised points of presence alone, and affordability can't be judged by a per-user licence sitting in isolation either. Buyers should be comparing all manner of capabilities and how these have a direct (or indirect) impact on business operations, such as regional service availability, latency, security functions, SD-WAN capability, data processing locations, support coverage, implementation services and, ultimately, the total cost of actually running the service over time.

Netify's SASE RFP Builderconverts these requirements into a structured vendor shortlist, inviting suitable providers to submit proposals that can be compared against one another, rather than leaving multinational buyers to work through marketing claims provider by provider on their own. We'd recommend that you follow the below rules when approaching any SASE RFP:

• Scalable being the usable coverage and operational support in every country you actually operate in, not just the maximum count of places available on a map.
• Affordable being the lowest suitable total cost (when considering all factors), not the lowest headline licence figure.
• A vendor-neutral RFP is, in practice, the safest way to compare providers on equal terms with no inherent bias.

What makes a SASE provider scalable across multiple countries?

Scalability breaks down into three separate categories:

• Geographic reach,
• Technical capacity,
• Operational support.

A provider can score well on one and fairly poorly on another, which is exactly why a headline location count is useful evidence but never the whole answer on its own.

Geographic scalability

Geographic scalability is whether a provider has suitable access and processing locations near an organisation's users, branches, cloud regions and applications. A large network footprint is useful evidence of investment, but the raw number isn't especially meaningful on its own, because different vendors use the word "location" to describe different things.

For example, Palo Alto Networks' documentation states that Prisma Access offers a local experience in more than 100 locations worldwide, mapping each location to a specific security compute location for performance and latency reasons, later distinguishing between compute locations, user locations, explicit proxy locations and other service-specific location types. In our opinion, this is exactly the level of detail buyers need to verify for their own required countries, rather than taking it on trust from a single summary figure.

On the other hand, Netskope describes its NewEdge infrastructure as comprising more than 120 data centres across more than 80 regions, with security services delivered through its own private cloud rather than shared public cloud capacity and Cloudflare's network page states that their infrastructure runs from 337 cities across more than 100 countries, built to connect users, offices, cloud environments and infrastructure through a single network.

Unlike the Palo Alto Networks documentation, these figures are somewhat vague and aren't directly comparable to each other, and each term can all mean rather different things depending who's using it, and a provider that leads on one measure may quietly lag on another that matters considerably more for a specific buyer's actual footprint.

In short, global SASE coverage means a provider can deliver every required function, locally, in every country the buyer operates in - not just an entry on a location list.

Technical scalability

Technical scalability covers the operational mechanics sitting behind the network map:

• Number of remote users the platform can support without performance degradation
• Number of branches and sites
• Volume of internet and private application traffic
• Public-cloud connectivity
• Data-centre connectivity
• SD-WAN integration
• Capacity for traffic growth
• High availability
• Application performance
• Policy scale
• Logging and reporting volumes

Operational scalability

Operational scalability determines whether all that technical capacity is actually usable day to day, which is where a lot of platforms quietly fall down:

• 24-hour support across time zones
• Regional implementation resources
• Language coverage
• Incident escalation
• Change management
• Local access sourcing
• Managed NOC and SOC services
• Consistent policy administration

A globally distributed SASE platform is only scalable when its network, security controls, support model and commercial structure can all expand together.

What does "affordable SASE" mean for a global enterprise?

We'd strongly argue that affordable SASE shouldn't be used to refer to the cheapest advertised licence, and with good reason. SASE platforms are priced through combinations of users, devices, branch sites, bandwidth, security modules, SD-WAN appliances, cloud access, support tiers, managed services, implementation services and contract term, so a low per-user rate can quite easily hide a much higher total cost once the rest of that list gets added in.

Independent tracking of SASE and Zero Trust commercial models, including TeleGeography's ongoing research into how providers actually structure their charges, finds that vendors mix per-user, per-site, bandwidth-based and modular licensing approaches rather than converging on any one comparable standard and that variation is the whole reason simple price comparisons are unreliable, unless the same scope, the same users, the same sites and the same modules are being quoted on both sides.

The principal total-cost components buyers should ask providers to itemise are:

• Platform subscriptions
• SD-WAN hardware or edge devices
• Branch connectivity
• Deployment and migration
• Security add-ons
• Premium support
• Managed service
• Logging and data retention
• Integration with identity, SIEM and endpoint tools
• Contractual minimums and future growth

It's worth separating out four things that tend to get treated as one and the same:

• Low acquisition cost,
• Low operating cost,
• Low total cost of ownership,
• Good commercial value.

A platform with a cheap headline licence but expensive implementation, thin support and costly add-ons can end up as the most expensive option on the shortlist once the contract's actually signed. Affordable SASE is the lowest total cost of meeting the organisation's security, performance, coverage and support requirements, not the lowest advertised licence price.

Which types of SASE provider should multinational buyers consider?

Rather than ranking named vendors, it's more useful for multinational buyers to think in terms of four provider categories, because the right category depends on what an organisation already owns and what it actually wants a supplier to manage.

1. Unified SASE platform providers

These vendors deliver networking and security functions through a single, more integrated platform and control plane. Potential advantages include consistent policies, fewer integrations, simplified operations and one contractual framework to deal with.

Worth asking: was the platform built as one architecture from the ground up, or assembled through acquisition over time? Are all functions actually available in every required region? Is SD-WAN included, or supplied separately? For example, Cisco's SASE design guidance describes its own objective as providing secure, scalable access while simplifying management and supporting distributed users, devices and applications.

2. Security-led SSE providers with networking integrations

Some organisations prefer a security-led platform combined with an existing SD-WAN or network supplier, and there's nothing wrong with that. This can suit buyers that already have a WAN strategy in place, want stronger SWG, CASB, ZTNA or data-protection capability specifically, or simply need to retain existing network investments they've already made. Microsoft's SASE ecosystem documentation, for example, recognises integration, coexistence, connectivity and service partnerships as valid deployment models rather than insisting on a single-vendor stack.

3. Network-led managed SASE providers

Managed SASE, in this sense, means the provider runs day-to-day operation of the network and security stack, not just the licence. These providers combine global connectivity, SD-WAN, security and operational management under one contract. This tends to suit multinationals that don't want to be managing multiple carriers themselves, organisations that need local circuits, businesses that want a single operational service desk to call, and enterprises replacing MPLS across several countries at once.

4. Composable or phased SASE platforms

Some buyers, understandably, don't want a sudden global migration shift and would rather move over to SASE in stages. A composable approach lets an organisation implement ZTNA first, secure web access first, SD-WAN first, data protection first, or run a regional rollout that expands gradually over time instead.

The correct category depends on what the organisation already owns, what it wants to replace, and which responsibilities it expects the provider to actually manage. For named provider research, see Netify's existing managed-SASE comparison; for a structured evaluation against your own requirements, use the SASE RFP Builder.

The 10 requirements that determine whether a SASE provider is suitable

Public product pages can't answer organisation-specific questions. These ten requirements are what actually separate a global SASE service from a product that merely has international availability on paper.

These requirements allow buyers to distinguish a global SASE service from a product that merely has international availability.

Why multinational organisations should run a SASE RFP

A SASE RFP is a structured requirement document that asks every provider the same questions, so responses can be compared like for like. Public product information simply can't resolve organisation-specific questions, so a structured requirement is the only reliable way to compare providers on equal terms.

It can't tell a buyer whether a service is available in every required country, whether the required functions run locally rather than being backhauled elsewhere, whether connectivity is included in the licence, whether the managed service is global, whether quoted prices include implementation and support, whether the provider can actually meet sovereignty requirements, or whether every proposal in a shortlist is even based on identical assumptions to begin with.

An RFP solves this by creating a common scope, so every provider is required to answer the same questions against the same requirement. Rather than a static Word document, it works more like a workflow:

1. Define countries, users, sites, applications and security requirements.
2. Establish mandatory and scored criteria.
3. Match the requirement to suitable providers.
4. Invite providers to respond.
5. Collect structured technical and commercial answers.
6. Compare bids using the same scoring method.
7. Shortlist providers for demonstrations or proof of concept.

For multinational buyers, the most reliable way to identify a scalable and affordable SASE provider is to issue the same structured requirement to multiple qualified providers and compare their responses on coverage, capability, service and total cost.

How Netify helps shortlist scalable and affordable SASE providers

Netify's SASE RFP Builder is built for organisations that need considerably more than a generic vendor list. It converts business, geographic, networking and security requirements into a structured procurement project, and buyers can create a shortlist, invite appropriate providers, collect comparable bids and evaluate the responses through the Netify Marketplace.

In practice, that means Netify can help an organisation define its multinational requirements, select the relevant countries and site types, identify suitable SASE and managed-service providers, build an initial shortlist, create a structured RFI or RFP, publish anonymously or invite selected providers directly, gather comparable responses, compare technical and commercial proposals side by side, arrange demonstrations and proofs of concept, and fold in WAN and connectivity requirements where that's relevant too.

Comparison: What to ask and why it matters

Frequently asked questions