Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Axiata Group Berhad (“Axiata” or “the Group”), a mobile telecommunications and digital conglomerate in ASEAN and South Asia, today announced its partnership with Versa Networks to deliver Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) technology for rapidly digitalising Asian enterprises.

As a Versa Networks ACE Partner, Axiata Enterprise – the Group’s B2B unit – will collaborate with Axiata’s operating companies, Celcom in Malaysia and XL Axiata in Indonesia, to roll out comprehensive suites of Versa SASE solutions covering Networking, Security, and Cloud Access integration for enterprise customers in the respective markets.

This latest partnership complements the expansion of Axiata’s existing enterprise offerings in areas of Managed Connectivity, Smart Services, Cloud, and Cyber Security. It also affirms Axiata’s focus on building best-in-class partnerships to develop and provide cutting-edge solutions across its footprint, whilst also enhancing its talent and capabilities.

Axiata Enterprise’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Gopi Kurup, said, “Enterprises embarking on their digital transformation want to become more flexible, efficient, and location-independent, as they embrace to new ways of working. With increasing connectivity, integration and security are critical to ensure uninterrupted business access. The Versa SASE innovation integrates security, networking, SD-WAN, and analytics to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable enterprise-wide networking and security. This is done via adoption of a cloud-type gateway which can efficiently distribute and seamlessly offload between the private office network and the Internet to access other cloud services.”

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Versa Networks is the recognized secure access service edge (SASE) leader. Versa began delivering SASE services more than five years ago, and uniquely provides contextual security based on user, role, device, application, location, security posture of the device, and content. As the leader in SASE, the fastest growing security and networking category, and executing on SASE services for years, Versa is the only solution proven to deliver the industry’s leading and differentiated architecture for high performance and security.

Versa SASE delivers tightly integrated services via the cloud, on-premises, or a blended combination of both. Versa SASE includes Secure SD-WAN, Next-Generation Firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN), Edge Compute Protection, Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), and more. These services provide businesses comprehensive protection and enable Enterprises to level up by creating a flexible, secure and agile networks. This solution will be complementary to Managed Connectivity solutions offered by Celcom in Malaysia and XL Axiata in Indonesia.

“This partnership with Versa Networks further cements Axiata Enterprise’s proposition to empower organisations across the region seeking to raise their digitalisation game. Our combined strengths in technology, capabilities and reach across emerging Asia markets positions us as the right transformation partner to Enterprises that are looking to adopt cloud-based applications and data to accelerate in the post-pandemic recovery phase,” Dr Gopi said.

Working with XL Axiata Business Solutions and Hypernet, PT. Kredit Biro Indonesia Jaya (KBIJ), a leading credit rating and reporting agency in Indonesia, is amongst the early adopters of the SASE solution. Tasked with providing mission critical decision-making support to banking institutions, micro-finance organisations and companies offering credit conforming to the Indonesian Monetary Authority (OJK)’s security requirements and tight deadlines, KBIJ found the solution to be technically superior to those of competitors whilst also delivering full support on the deployment and executing on time.

"Axiata, one of the leading telecommunications groups in Asia, continuously provides world-class communication services based on the most advanced technology available," said Tony Fallows, Vice President, Versa Networks. "Versa is excited to be working with Axiata to expand Versa SASE further into the ASEAN and South Asia markets. Axiata, Celcom, and XL Axiata will soon be able to deliver Versa’s industry-leading fully integrated and feature-complete SASE to support digitalisation in the regional markets.”