A Sample Vendor of 5 ICT Technologies
Recently, Gartner published the Hype Cycle for ICT in China, 2023¹, in which Sangfor was named as a Sample Vendor for five technologies: SASE, Cloud Security in China, Hybrid Cloud in China, AIOps in China, and SD-WAN.
This Hype Cycle evaluated 25 of the most hyped Information and Communication Technology (ICT) technologies in the Chinese market based on their Benefit Rating, Market Penetration, and Maturity. The report states, "To confront economic uncertainty, Chinese enterprises must prioritize IT cost optimization, composable application and infrastructure modernization. CIOs should use this Hype Cycle to identify technologies to help manage IT rationalization and seize digital business opportunities."
Sangfor has been recognized as a Sample Vendor in the Hype Cycle for ICT in China for seven consecutive years. We believe this is a testament to the continuous excellence of our products and advanced technological capabilities as a leading cybersecurity, cloud computing, and IT infrastructure provider in China and globally.
In the following section, we explore the technologies for which Sangfor has been recognized as a Sample Vendor, including insight from Gartner as well as our strengths in these domains.
AIOps in China
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
According to the Hype Cycle, AIOps has Business Impact on productivity "By reducing alert fatigue through identification and correlation of related events so that operators can focus on fewer, more critical events."
Artificial intelligence is vital in optimizing operation and maintenance efficiency in the face of increasingly complex infrastructure and application operations. Sangfor has been at the forefront of implementing cutting-edge technologies like AI and big data, along with emerging IT operations management (ITOM) concepts, into our cloud computing services. We have developed "SkyOps," an AI Operations platform that simplifies operation and maintenance tasks and makes them accessible to everyone.
SkyOps covers the entire lifecycle of cloud operation and maintenance. It incorporates critical capabilities like monitoring IDC network quality, predicting software and hardware failures, identifying sub-health risks, forecasting cloud resource usage, conducting end-to-end root cause analysis, and correlating alerts.
SkyOps has extensive applications in various scenarios, including hyper-convergence, virtual desktop infrastructure, private cloud, managed cloud, and edge computing. With over 1,000+ core metrics collected from tens of thousands of server nodes and millions of samples, it boasts an impressive 7 to 30-day fault prediction accuracy of over 90% and the ability to locate and trace issues within minutes. As a result, it significantly reduces MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) and dramatically enhances operational efficiency.
SD-WAN
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: More than 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sangfor Secure SD-WAN combines Sangfor’s expertise in both security and cloud computing. It offers both local security protection and the flexibility to subscribe to SASE cloud-based security capabilities, ensuring the security of branch endpoints and business operations.
Regarding networking options, Sangfor Secure SD-WAN can simultaneously connect to the internet, dedicated lines, 4G/5G, and other hybrid networks. This enables enterprises to intelligently route applications and optimize network paths, ensuring continuous and reliable business operations. On the operational management front, Sangfor Secure SD-WAN supports unified management of all network devices and provides visualized operations, assisting enterprises in building a more secure and cost-effective WAN that rivals dedicated line access while maintaining lower deployment and maintenance costs.
The Hype Cycle recommends that "Select SD-WAN providers and ask their roadmap to support SASE services, which is one of the requirements to shortlist SD-WAN providers."
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
The Hype Cycle rated five technologies with the highest "Transformational" Benefit Rating, including Generative AI, National Data Exchange, and SASE.
Built upon the SASE model, Sangfor Access Secure is a robust cloud security service platform that seamlessly integrates SD-WAN with a comprehensive security product stack. This platform is efficiently deployed through Points of Presence (POPs) nodes, delivering highly flexible, stable, and secure networking services to users.
We officially launched our SASE solution in 2020, becoming one of the first to implement SASE in China. Sangfor Access Secure has continued evolving to address the increasing demands on branch IT infrastructure. In 2022, we introduced an innovative "networking + security + hosting" approach, built on a fully cloud-native architecture. Moreover, we unveiled the "Multi-Branch Secure Networking Solution," designed to meet users' needs for agile networking, integrated security, and worry-free hosting.
Sangfor has successfully deployed many POPs across the Asia Pacific, ensuring an impressive 99.99% high availability rate. Our comprehensive security and networking services have benefitted over 6,000 users across diverse industries, including finance, education, telecommunications, internet, and retail.
Hybrid Cloud in China
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
In terms of Business Impact, the Hype Cycle notes that "Hybrid cloud enables enterprises to leverage public cloud for cloud-burst workloads, speed-to-market and innovation, and to keep data in-house due to security, compliance, and latency concerns. Businesses can develop and run digital business on hybrid cloud to grow revenue, while maintaining compliance."
Hybrid cloud architectures generally suffer from a variety of challenges, including management difficulties due to non-standardized interfaces between clouds, disjointed online and on-premises business networks, and fragmented security implementation. To address these challenges, Sangfor has developed a Hybrid Cloud solution based on a fully consistent private and managed cloud architecture based on Sangfor HCI. This architecture ensures unified resource management and deep integration of capabilities, accommodating various data centers and business models. It helps users establish a cohesive cloud solution for both online and on-premises operations, providing a solid IT foundation for digital transformation across industries.
- Homogeneous Infrastructure: The underlying architecture remains consistent, allowing applications and data to load balance and migrate between private and managed clouds for optimal performance and availability.
- Seamless Experience: Within this hybrid cloud environment with a uniform architecture, users can effortlessly use multiple cloud services as if they were accessing a single resource pool.
- Robust Security: Both online and on-premises environments can employ the same security policies, technologies, and architecture, forming a unified security system.
Cloud Security in China
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: More than 50% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Regarding the importance of Cloud Security, the Hype Cycle highlights that "The increasing cloud adoption in China introduces challenges for those tasked with protecting enterprises’ critical digital business and assets in the cloud." Gartner emphasizes that "Effective and manageable cloud security plays a vital role in helping enterprises use the cloud securely and compliantly."
Sangfor Cloud Security Resource Pool is a software-defined cloud security capability platform. It supports both integrated software + hardware delivery and cloud-integrated security delivery. The solution offers full-stack cloud security capabilities from detection, defense, and response to overall security operations.
With the Cloud Security Resource Pool platform, users can subscribe to various security capabilities, including next-generation firewall, cloud infrastructure security, zero-trust access, cloud-based threat detection, database auditing, and application delivery. Additionally, Sangfor cloud security services can be extended to support public cloud environments, resulting in a comprehensive hybrid cloud security solution to ensure the security and stability of hybrid cloud businesses.
Our Commitment to You
As a leading provider of enterprise-level cybersecurity, cloud computing, and IT infrastructure, Sangfor strives to be the cornerstone of digital transformation for organizations across all industries, Making Digital Transformation Simpler and Secure. Moving forward, we will uphold our commitment to continuous innovation, striving to deliver an even more convenient and worry-free digital experience for you.
Sources
Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for ICT in China, 2023, By Kevin Ji, Owen Chen, Milly Xiang, Published 13 July 2023
Disclaimer
GARTNER and HYPE CYCLE are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
