Jim: A best of breed approach to security has many adherence, but with an important caveat. Any best of breed solution must have robust integration features, and that's where complexity can rear its head. Secure access Service Edge, or sass e technologies aimed to optimize security by moving the solutions closer to users and devices. Cloud and Edge Technologies. Hi everybody, and welcome.

My name's Jim Malone. I'm a senior contributing editor for CIO Marketing Services, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this webcast, sponsored by Command Link and Versa Networks. In our session today, our expert practitioners will explore the latest sassy trends and you'll discover how this partnership can streamline security for today's distributed organizations. Our guests will offer tips and perspectives for deploying and managing SE in detail, some best practices for success. We have a great session lined up, so let's meet our speakers. First, a big welcome to Rob McBride. Rob, the Senior Director for Sales Engineering with First and Networks. Hey Rob. Welcome. Thanks so much for being with us. Tell us a little bit about your role at Versa Networks.

Rob: Thanks Jim. Um, as you mentioned, you know, I'm Rob McBride. I'm the senior director of, uh, system engineering over here at Versa Networks. And the broad characteristics of my goal or my, my, my role if you'll, is I'm responsible for, um, facilitating a lot of the go-to-market actions relative to a lot of our partners. Most notably, uh, one of them of course being command link and managing a, a team across the North America that is focused on partnering. With these key partners of ours to drive, uh, their, help them drive their managed services associated with Versa oriented solutions.

Jim: Excellent. Thanks so much, Rob. Delight, you could be with us and looking forward to our discussion today. Now let's say hello to Mason Miles Mason's Chief Revenue Officer with Command Link. Hey Mason, welcome. Nice to see you. Thanks for being with us. Tell us a little bit about your work at Command.

Mason: It's great to be with you both. And Command Link as a global network service provider is also an IT service management software firm. And I'll start with something that we hear from enterprise CIOs every day, which is. We don't have a network problem. We have a complexity problem in that they might have 10 to 20 plus different disparate connectivity and internet service providers, they've in 2026, have deployed sdwan, sometimes multiple iterations. They're layering in security stacks. They're having separate monitoring tools that are often disconnected from their ITSM. And you know, fragmented support is the norm across these different services and and systems. And when something breaks. No one per person or team owns the entire outcome. And the problem that we're talking about here is why COMMAND exists. So what we do is we unify global connectivity and network services SD-WAN security and, and, uh, ZTNA capabilities into and also land services switching wifi into a proprietary cloud native agentic AI platform.

Where we're inventory management, um, is, is a standard feature. We're monitoring all services for uptime and performance with robust AI and analytics wrapped around that, you know, deep custom alerting around incidents and everything is backed by dedicated engineering pods and security analysts for eyes on glass. And so really the, the, this conversation excites me because our longstanding partnership with Versa. Allows us to bring best in class secure SD-WAN and SASS E to the globe, while also unifying that into our software and and unified operating model. So customers aren't just getting technology from Command Link or Versa technology. In this case, they're getting simplicity, support, expertise, and measurable performance along the way. Excellent.

Jim: Thanks so much, Mason. We are looking forward to diving into this, this really important topic. But before we do just a quick housekeeping item for our viewers, and that is check out that resources list that you see on your player. You'll find items there that you can download. You'll really deep dive and find out more beyond our conversation today to really help you on your security journey. So do take advantage of that. You'll also discover. How to get in our sponsor there. And we do encourage you to reach out as well. So do take advantage there. And finally, a big thanks to our sponsor, command Link and for Versa network, for being with us today and making today's event possible. So I wanna start with a, just a kind of a broad overview question. Each of you talked a little bit about your organizations, but Rob Mason, tell us. Especially kind of through the lens of how you work together.

Jim: So Mason, if you wanna, uh, start there a little bit more about the partnership.

Mason: Yeah. I said a little bit before, but what I'm, what I love about this partnership is Versa gives us an enterprise grade feature, rich. Uh, you know, base of ingredients that then we can go into a customer design discussion and have every knob to be able to build every knob and every feature to be able to build the outcome that the customer's looking for. Uh, it is a, uh, like I said, no concessions feature rich platform that allows us to, you know, operate within in a customer that might complex, but also go. Even the largest of the world's enterprises. And, uh, it is really a, a partnership that's been very effective for both Command Link and our business practice, but has benefit benefited our customer base in the many thousands of locations deployed. Excellent. And, and Rob, we'd love to hear more about Versa Networks and with regard to the partnership as well. Yeah, absolutely. So you lot know. Some of the integral benefits or kind of the, the value and solution capabilities that Command Link can kind of offer to their customer base. And from our perspective, from our own kind of high level mission statement really is kind of three words, uh, connect, secure, and simplify. And what that, uh, means is from a platform perspective, from us as a software, um, uh, technology vendor, is we provide a singular universal. Connect their users, secure those users and simplify the overall experience, and that's incorporates. Plethora of technologies effectively, right. So as I mentioned that we're a platform focused on SASS e services. Very specifically.

We view ourselves and we market ourselves as a universal sassy vendor. And what that primarily means is we're driving the idea around converged networking and security into a common solution that drives pervasive security across the entire edge. Through a highly intelligent, um, networking connectivity fabric, that really drives the principle around how do I connect users? How do I secure those users, and how do I overall simplify the experience, not only for key partners like Command Link that drive a managed offering. Not only from a connectivity, networking, and security angle, but a lot more holistic things that they're driving to the partner, I mean, to their customer base.

If you'll, but be able to drive that simplicity of experience for the actual end user, of the end customer of people like our managed partner like Command Link that are bringing these services to market. So to kind of in summary. Universal Sass e vendor that brings converged networking and security that has security pervasive from the edge, and an effort to actually drive not only visibility and context, but ultimately at the end of the day, connect users, secure those users and simplify the overall experience for not only the customer, but also for our key partners like.

Thanks, Rob. Yeah, that's so important considering, uh, as Mason mentioned, you don't have a network problem, you have a complexity problem, so it's good to hear that front and center. We know through our audience surveys at CIO, that's a, it's an evergreen, you know, longstanding concern for it. Legal, so glad we're taking it on today. We're about sass E Rob, the term has been around for a while, but it's helpful to hear, you know, through your lens and through the lens of Command link, what exactly do you mean by sass? E? What is SASS from your perspective?

So I'll, I'll make a small joke first. Right. So SASS E is basically a acronym. A lot of other A together. Right. Um, and so on a serious note, um, SE as you opened up the call is around secure Access Services Edge. And you know, the fundamental definition around that is around how do I have a singular solution? That converges networking and security that provides zero trust network access principles across the entire edge, focused on not only SaaS oriented applications, but also enterprise private applications, but have that all driven and unified as a common solution with a common set of security posture, as well as intelligent network services and connectivity.

So all those kind of principles really kind of define sassy, but in a, in a simpler definition, you know, outside of the kind of, uh, you know, good or poor joke I made with respect to the aggregation of acronyms, right? It's really around consolidation or convergence of network insecurity being viewed as a common solution, but primarily for way we're looking at it now, it's really around how do I drive a high degree of zero trust network access kind of principles. Basically across my network to control what my network is doing and secure that network based off of identity and application and privilege access. Thanks so much, Mason. From a business and architecture standpoint, what types of bandwidth, mixed policies and redundancy actually makes a sassy deployment successful at scale?

And that's important at scale. Yeah, the ne the network is the conduit of business today, and it's more important, uh, to enterprise than ever before. And enterprises honestly have a lot to un a lot of value to unlock in this space where, you know, today they're buying two, maybe sometimes three, internet connections, network connections per location. Uh, they'll have some data center and hyperscaler private connectivity mixed in. But it's often done in a fragmented way through vendor stacking, or it's through a legacy service provider that's not gonna be able to future proof a customer, especially with the innovation wave the AI will bring.

And so what Command Link does is we, we build from the ground up and. With a focus on true resiliency and also, uh, cost effectiveness, uh, where we will deploy a primary connection, a completely redu, you know, redundant, uh, secondary connection. And these days, often a non-terrestrial wireless, uh, you know, 5G starlink, Leo, et cetera, tertiary connection where. Every connection is diverse in its delivery method last mile, and also in the IP backbone. And so what we're talking about doing here is eliminating single points of failure. We're diverse across, you know, infrastructure that allows for the power of, of SD-WAN routing to take effect.

And the, the benefit is a much better performing networks, especially when compared to single backbone MPLS networks, uh, that are quite expensive these days, especially with surcharges. Uh, USF is continuing to rise and because we work with thousands of private providers across the globe. We're not tied to one provider or one, one network, uh, we're able to rightsize bandwidth SLA needs and costs budget, you know, per each location. And so whether we're talking about a micro branch, a regional office, a data center, or a a multi-thousand person campus, we're able to right size based on, you know, those, those metrics. And the best thing about it is. It's a, a trifecta of benefit. You know, we're talking about a better performing network, more resiliency, uh, and co meaningful cost savings at the same time.

Yeah, that's so, so key, especially when you think about, you know, the whole point is better business outcomes, you know, that we're working towards, so that, that's important. Um, both of you mentioned, I think, uh, it previously, uh, the idea of partial sass, e partial sass e adoption. So Rob, this is, uh, something many enterprises. Pieces of sass e over time, but what are the real world tradeoffs between partial sassy and full sass e and when does that fragmentation start to create risk or hidden costs or inefficiencies? Sure. Um, you know, I, I guess it's, it's, it's kind of hard to kind of define in the sense really what partial sass e is, right? We have a lot of ways of looking at it, right?

For us, uh, from a Versa context. So just looking at it from that point of view. We view ourselves as whole SAS because the solution, which is a unified solution, provides all the components from the the connectivity layer, which is the SD-WAN piece, which, you know, obviously inherits a lot of value, A lot of things Mason just mentioned with respects to what they're doing from a circuit perspective, cost benefit right sizing, but then driving that to something intelligent. Remote access control, right? Which is around all of us, obviously from us, we're working from home. How do we actually control those users to then the SaaS application control?

But all of that, from our perspective, is a common solution. It's one solution. So it's kind of full. Whether you use it in piece parts or not is, you know, kind of the point of this question you asked me. So when we look at partial sass sassy, it's really around, you know, I, I'll put it to an analogy. Do I want to close my door? Have some form of level of enforcement and security to that door, or do I wanna just partially clip it open and kind of hope something else doesn't kind of come in right? With respect to my overall idea from an enterprise, how am I looking to control? My users, the applications that they're accessing so I can protect the business and reduce my risk.

Do I want the door closed and open with a lot of control or do I leave it partially open? And so that kind of touches your, your kind of trade off, right? And when we look at the different permutations of this, right? So to to where part of where your questions going, a customer could potentially utilize vendor a for maybe a remote access component of the solution. Vendor B, potentially for their maybe SaaS application control, right? From a CSB angle, um, and a different kind of a vendor from an SD-WAN perspective, well, they may be having pieces of all these kind of solution components and pillars from a SaaS angle. They're obviously separate and kind of partial because.

They don't necessarily, they aren't integrated, they aren't sharing, sharing intelligence. Um, there's an integration, um, cost, right? When we look at technical debt that now the enterprise has to, has to care for. And a lot of this, of course gets, um, you know, there's a, a lot of these things that can be cared for when we look at looking at, at, at partners like Command Link to kind of manage this for the customer, but you end up having a lot of loss of kind of continuity right around. Was was Rob Remote? Was Rob in the office? What was Rob doing on what he was what on his laptop for his particular application? And how am I controlling that?

When I start looking at things in the piece and part perspective, when I look at things from a full angle, more specifically from a unified context, I'm able to provide that. Like for example, with Bura, being able to provide that from. Remote, so outside in and inside out, and being able to have that level of continuity of intelligence and observability. Um, being able to provide unification or uniformity associated to the type of identity oriented policies to the specific applications that the enterprise ultimately wants to control.

So. In the other angle of it is when we look at trade-offs and things of that nature, from a partial to a full, I would argue full drive simplicity, partial drives complexity because I now need to care for how do I get certain things that aren't the same or, or a comment from a solution perspective to be able to. Function together in a uniform fashion. So I'm able to really look at my overall enterprise and be able to drive kind of a common security posture, no matter where you are, who you are and what you're accessing. Yeah, that makes sense.

Uh, when we think about, we've mentioned legacy a couple of times, but when we think about kind of traditional, uh, security component, security posture, log analysis, and sim, you know, security information, event management. Those are well established ideas for security. And I wanted to ask you, Mason, how do log analysis and SIM integration, how do they help the SASS e platform to make more intelligent decisions around things like traffic prioritization, bandwidth usage, et cetera? Yeah, I'm gonna answer this in the context of what Command Links, platformization strategy, strategy does with our software platform. Um. You know, SASE is more than just, you know, infrastructure. It's, it's becoming intelligent and, and actionable.

And I think when you, when you are able to integrate log analysis into a SIEM or sim, you know, we're able to correlate data, uh, across network performance and security telemetry in real time. So specifically, you know, we're looking at not just packets, but user behavior, uh, application risk. Uh, anomaly detection and performance metrics, you know, all, all simultaneously. And with, with command link in our M-D-R-X-D-R and NDR capabilities, it's fed directly into a single pane of glass visibility layer. So let's talk about an example.

We had a customer a, a couple weeks ago where our security was able to identify a threat was missed by a, a customer's primary MDR vendor. Uh, we immediately set an alert to the customer. Our security operations center kicked into action to identify the vulnerability. We're also managing the customer sass, E and SD-WAN services. So we were able to have our SOC communicating with our NOC and drive a vulnerability from identification alert to resolution in about 43 minutes. And you know, the customer was kept up to date along the way and.

I think the idea here is we're we're having the ability to give a customer 24 7 eyes on glass with, with the ability to respond in those types of events. And that closed loop operating model is, you know, we're able to dynamically or, or quickly adjust policy if needed, uh, and isolate risk and provide performance, uh, you know, in, in near real time. So, and this is without having to manage across multiple vendors and different teams and. So again, what Command Link's platform delivers is, is Intel intelligent con control plane with real operational execution with support back behind that. You know, one thing I, if you don't mind, yes.

One thing I wanted to add to that, right. So he touched on a lot of like, obviously very, very key points, right? So it, it's, if I can't see it, I can't do anything about it. Okay. And if I can see it. What's the level of strength or level of kind of automation or enforcement capabilities I can have in order to remediate, right? And so you gave a perfect example from, from, from this customer angle and, you know, uh, on our side, you know, to kind of help feed that like that. That's going back to the previous question, right? When you start looking at things partially from assassin angle, right? That potentially be provided to, you know, platforms like Command link ca that's gonna kind of drive this level of remediation, right?

And at the end of the day, like our CEO says, how do I get a customer to the meantime, the innocence, right? How do we get them innocent again? And the longer it takes for me to do that, right? It's, it's not, it's not good on all parties. And so, kind of just going back to your previous question, to me, kind of, kind of trying to tie it in a little bit, right? This is also kind of the trade offs. If I don't full, kind of full blown solution that's able to actually take the actions platform. I'm not able to drive a faster point of either recovery or remediation or enforcement or, um, enhance security posture that the customer needs as a result of a vulnerability detection.

And so when you look at ourselves kind of tying into to, uh, command links platform, right? It being more unified, it helps. Expedite or helps feed some of the intelligence and some of the capabilities, right? At least for where we play in their overall solution, right? From SD-WAN and other componentry, right? To be able to take that reaction, right, and also be able to feed them points of observability and and information so they have more context awareness around what is the vulnerability, who it was, where did it come from, and how do, so it's a very key point, right? This whole idea around visibility is, again, if I can't see it, I can't.

How complete am I in order to be able to drive an action? Right? It's, it's kind of like the basic principles of it. So if, if I'm a, um, audience member watching our, uh, discussion today and thinking about the status quo at all in different organizations, of course everyone's different, but, you know, legacy networks or maybe they've adopted partial sassy, like we just talked about. What. Uh, typically would drive someone in that position to move, you know, from legacy or partial sass toward full sas. Does it take an incident or a breach or come from the board or, and or what holds them back from taking that step? Start with you, Rob. Um, you know, it's an interesting question in a sense, right?

So. All this happened, A few. It started happening like a few years over. We, we kind of level set, we know this acronym, sas e, secure access services edge from a, from an architectural kind of blueprint, right. Was a few years ago. And that was around the time that, you know, the world was, was dealing with something pretty serious. Right. And a lot of us were working from home. And that trigger there kind of identified this um, driver, which was I suddenly have people who are no longer in the castle. Right. Now they're outside the castle, so how do I identify them and how do I control them so that me as a business, I'm not? More further exposed because now they're in a, they're in a, they're at home. I don't have control of what they're doing at home in a sense. And so this was one of the first fundamental principles and drivers to either go partial or full for a customer, which was the, the realization that legacy oriented approaches to provide connectivity, remote access services for people who were, uh, remote wasn't.

Structured in such a way to ensure there was very tight level controls as that, that they had at the office. Okay. And so that was one of the first drivers. And we've been seeing this. This is still going, going right. I still talk to customers. Right. I know Mason's still talking to customers. We're moving off a more kind of. Legacy, VPN, full blown network access when I kind of connect, right? And it's just really kind of getting the private application resource, um, attainment. And there's really no controls to identify, you know, you really don't have the privilege to get to this little asset, so how am I blocking you? And so that's what drives the first into.

What is SASS e gonna do for me? Well, SASS E is gonna drive that point of identity and things of that nature. And that's a lot of conversations we have with customers to get them off. You know, your traditional legacy remote access services, um, or Raz is sometimes we kind of call it right? Legacy vpn. Now, the other part that then drives that is as, as you know in me even talking with various different customers too as well, is they start realizing they don't have a point of control for now us gonna cloud oriented applications. So the first kind of thing, the driver for some was around outside in control, which exploded. Right. Now. How do I actually drive more tighter controls as if they were back in the office, but outside of the office? And then of course, now here, even on this, with, with us together, right, we're, we're utilizing a more cloud oriented application. And so business is looking at that and saying, well.

Now because I have this level of hybrid kind of workforce, how do I ensure tighter controls around those enterprise applications that I'm using from the cloud? How do I control Rob when he is accessing SharePoint in order to protect, uh, the business? And I don't want myself as Rob because of my privilege. I shouldn't be uploading, say, PII data, right? Or I shouldn't be able to download this and things of that nature, right? And so these were things like Cs, B and other and, and DLP comes with consideration, right? Which is other components and foundations. And so as businesses begin kind of. I don't wanna use the word mature, but I'll say mature, right? They begin to mature into this idea around I need better identity driven controls on an app level basis.

Then becomes the driver where they start looking for a solution that's gonna help drive that for them, and then the other driver. Then as they begin to look at peace parts, they begin to realize, this is hard for me. I gotta manage this, I gotta manage that. I gotta manage this, I gotta manage this. I gotta, I have to have smart people that know about CASB. I have to have really smart people that know about DLP, right? I need to have networking smart people, security smart people. And it becomes a little bit complex in that context, right? And so one of the drivers then is, well, what if I make it more unified? Look at a vendor like Versa that can make it as a common solution. So things then get driven simplest, uh, from a more simple perspective, right?

Everything's common dashboard, unified framework, unified policy, unified visibility, right? Our key tenets and ultimately the value that we bring to the market. And so those are kind of drivers as we look from legacy to partial to looking at unified, right? And then the last part of this is, is what actually stops them, right? So, you know, your common things. As we know, customers deal with budget and other things that are kind of happening, right? But I'll go back to what I said before. Sometimes customers realize this is too hard for me. I can't do this. So, how do I do this?

Now I know I need to do this. So whether it's, it's a trigger because, you know, uh, uh, a, a, a prospect I talked to in the last few weeks, right, had basically a vulnerability similar to what Mason happened, right? Which then triggered them to identify, we need to look at how we're actually doing this, right? In the context of. We aren't controlling it by per user, per app, and then containing a zone. So where, where, where, uh, kind of the blast radius is when we think about it from security angle. And so this was a trigger for them to start looking at it from a sassy angle, but then they're realizing I don't have the staff to do this. And so that, that's a trigger that holds 'em back.

But this is actually where the value from, from command link conversa comes in. 'cause then we say, Hey, I got a great partner over here that's super smart. Services that might. I have a partner here that can do that for you and drive a lot of other value. So don't use this idea around, I can't do it as a blocker. And that's the conversation we actually end up having with customers. Right. And I know that's kind of what Mason also talks to his customers on. Right. Don't do it as hard, I can do it for you.

And you know, that's a lot of the, the things that kind of hold some customer back. Right? And so it's, it's really around this kind of joint engagement and working with partners like, like Command Lake in order to help them understand it's okay. We have experts in the industry that not only know us, that can care for the level of value we're talking to on the technology level, but that can also bring a lot of other value and simplicity so it can't hold you back so you can actually solve this problem. What. I'll build, I'll build on that. So it, it's interesting the last, you know, handful of years how conversations have evolved. Uh, you know, customers know that they need to go to a unified platform these days.

And, you know, Gartner stated for. Multiple years in a row that that enterprise is going to more and more of a management strategy with a, a trusted partner has been the trend. And so picking the right partner is, is critical. Again, I, I, I mentioned, you know, availability of technical resource within a, you know, minutes when needed. Uh, that's something that that command leak commits to with a 10 minute SLA.

But I think the idea is whether it's a customer that's ready to go to a full SAS e deployment. Um, I'm gonna say still in two, 2026, that the majority of our customers are more of a technology roadmap discussion, where we identify in, you know, phase one and then future phases to, to get them to where they wanna be. And we, we can, we can do anything in between those two things as well. Every, every deployment is customized and so, you know, helping customers with, with expert design, engineering and consulting in a roadmap is definitely, uh. I think the most common type of deployment that Command, command link is doing this year.

That makes sense too. I wanted to, um, kind of pick up Mason with, you know, once an enterprise has committed full sass e they're deployed. What are some of the challenges, the day-to-day operations that you see folks, uh, approach you with once they've made the decision and kind of taken the plunge?

I mean, I'm gonna say it again. Enterprises struggle in, in picking partners that have effective management response, 10 SLAs. You know, for example, change management. Taking days is actually a very common feedback point from IT leadership with our prospective customers. But I'm actually gonna answer with, with the idea that. Um, post-deployment, it's operational fragmentation, and again, it's, they've deployed sd-wan. They have multiple security tools. Uh, they, they, these days, larger enterprise have seen visibility in some kind of security stack, but again, it's separate dashboards, separate vendors. A lot of times within the IT team, it's separate teams.

So when there's an issue, is it a carrier issue? Is it a policy misconfiguration? Is it a, a security event, like my example before? And so time is lost across all of these different tools, vendors and, and IT teams with coordinating, researching rather than, uh, you know, resolving the issue and finger pointing becomes a commonality. And so, you know, a unified SAS e platform is obviously a, you know, a. Must have for enterprises in 2026. But I'm, but command link's taking that further with, you know, simp simplifying everything from bandwidth, uh, security telemetry, uh, seam visibility with actionable context. And, you know, a 24 7 staff command pod team of engineers for no support and a 24 7 security operations center for keeping eyes on glass. And so.

What we're delivering is faster root cause analysis and, uh, you know, automated or, or fast policy adjustments when needed. And it's one partner with command link that's gonna own performance and security end to end. Uh, so it's not just about care feeding of a network when choosing a SASS e managed service provider. It's, you know, is this company gonna be able to future proof me with the AI wave that, that of innovation that's happening, and also deliver operational simplicity. We're chatting with Rob McBride with Versa Networks, Mason Miles with our sponsor, command Lake. Gentlemen, we have a few more minutes and before we go, I feel, uh, obligated to ask an AI related question because it is so important. We mentioned it a couple times in our discussion.

I wanna start with, we view Rob, and maybe I'll frame it, uh, this way. Are there one or two AI use cases with, uh, with regards to network security, which is what we're talking about, that's getting you really excited for the future? Yeah, actually, I guess the first one is to make it so that, uh, the guy that you're talking to right now is actually an AI bot, so I can actually go do other stuff. But that, that, that, aside from a joke, um, you know, it, it's, uh, you know, from an ai there's, there's a lot of exciting things that are happening, right?

And so when we look at a security angle that, that. You know, I guess excite is one word to use. Um, and some of the things that we're actually driving to kind of address at the end of the day, it's use cases. The enterprise is one, right? So using AI to either do, um, you know, code, uh, code development using AI to develop some sort of content, doing analysis and other things of that nature. Enterprise is a very concern with respects to the intellectual property and how that's being shared. They're very much concerned about protection of the large, uh, their LLMs. Where is that data being hosted?

They're very much concerned. In regards to whether Rob is utilizing Claude on a personal note and sharing personal information, uh, the company information on top of that and things of that nature. So there's a lot of touch points when we think about ai when we look at it from the user context, right? We think about most, most notably things like GPT, right? But there's a lot of things on the enterprise front where they're building LLMs in order to help facilitate other larger grander kind of use cases on their part.

And so when I look at it from my bura angle. There's excite us about this is the ability within the unified framework to be able to carry the Zero Trust network access principles to basically do things like Gen AI firewall. People from doing this, helping businesses solve that problem to kind of protect their intellectual property, right? Being able to ensure they have a point of confidence with specs to their data governance.

Those are big things that they kind of excite us when we start looking at the overall SASS e framework and what we can bring to the table. The other part is actually what we want to use AI for our own sales for, which is in regards to, um, obviously making it simpler for partners like Command Link to even be able to do operations. Right, so development of our own LLMs, our own GPTs, in order to help facilitate operational simplicity and excellence in streamlining that to utilizing AI and other tools to then drive more behavioral kind of analysis and predictability associated to future trending, right?

Whether it's around user behavior to network behavior, which again. And brings value to a partner like Command. 'cause they're gonna take that and feed that into their own LLMs and their own ai. That, that I'm, I'm sure that, that Mason wants to talk to. Right. So, but the most exciting thing from us as far as what we bring to the table is really being able to help an enterprise, being able to protect. And have confidence in their data governance and then utilization of these new technologies through the use of our unified SASS e platform. Right?

So there's Gena firewall protection, um, DLP for for AI or Gen ai, um, and some of the other tools that we're doing with respects to identification and observability, to let a customer know kind of who is doing any of this and then be able to put protective controls to prevent them or allow them and, and Mesa what does that look like from the command link perspective? Same. Same question.

Yeah. Command link as an, as a managed network service provider is an industry that has immediately jumped on board the use of AI and marketing. But the reality is, is that there's, the roadmap is, uh, really not that dynamic. Uh, command link invested a, a, a. Significant amount to hire a team of data scientists, organize all of our data within our backend command league platform into time series vector and relational databases. And that's allowing us to, to deploy, uh, AI and agent AI extensively throughout different platforms.

So things, things like being able to provide, uh, network and security leadership with, uh, location and service. Health scoring performance and security scoring. We're able to, we actually have an agentic, uh, AI agent who is engaging vendors. So we're talking about when there's a, a network event, we're going from, uh, recognizing that with monitoring to an omnichannel incident alerting or an API to the.

To the customer's ITSM, like ServiceNow, we're validating power with, uh, PA managed PDU or an API to the power grid. We're, uh, correlating that across other services in the area to see if it's a re, uh, a, a regional outage, and then using AI and an agent to actually engage the vendor.

With the goal of getting a timestamp on a ticket with that underlying vendor, if not resolved through that process as fast as possible. So that's just a hint of, of the AI roadmap that we've deployed. And I'm gonna strongly encourage every IT leadership leader that's listening to ask any prospective service provider that you're thinking about partnering again, with three year terms being the norm.

What are you doing to future proof my business? If I were to partner with you in 2026? What is, what is in place from a data management and an AI strategy today? And if they don't have a good answer, uh, run away. Obviously we'd love to hear from you.

Excellent. That, uh, brings us to the end of our time, but before we go, I wanted to give Robin Mason just one final, uh, shot key takeaways for our audience before we sign off. And, uh, Rob, let's start with you. Um, key takeaway. Um, you know, I'm hoping that, you know, through today's engagement that you were able to learn and identify that, um, not only does Versa have some very strong partners like Command Link that can help basically you move forward, but from a Versa angle.

Um, we are a unified SASS e platform that ultimately at the end of the day, from a mission perspective, is making it. We want to ensure that you can connect, protect, and simplify how your users are connecting. And so that touches on things from Zt, NA. So whether client oriented or clientless to SaaS application control from our inline or out-of-band, CASB solutions to our SD-WAN and intelligent services that we can drive there, as well as various different kind of, um, advanced networking insights that we do from our analytic and AI driven, um, logging platform.

But more importantly, all this is driven as a unified platform, um, to again, simplify how you connect and protect your users. And most notably, of course, and most importantly, is that. We, we rely and we actually value the services from partners like Command Link that can actually do this for you and actually drive a lot of other higher level services. So we provide the security, we provide the plumbing and right. We provide the technology and services in order for you to have a much more intelligent, structured, and protected business.

And then partners like Command Link come in in order to actually drive a lot of other value. Push that ensure that that actually is operational, um, functional and actually you're getting the level of response and, uh, change control and other, other points of value. Of course you've heard from Mason through today, um, that are actually put there. But again, unified, universal, sassy vendor driven to try to help you connect, protect, and simplify your users through a solution that provides zero trust, network access from LAN to wan, to cloud to remote user, all offered as a unified solution. So much Rob Mason, your final thoughts for our viewers today?

I'll leave everyone with this. Uh, a, a SASS e deployment is not just a technology shift, it's an operational shift. Uh, and in many ways, AI again, is gonna be more transformative than ever, and these things need to be considered. Uh, you know, right now, in 2026, I'm gonna say that, that the wave of innovation is gonna be more transformative than even the S to sd-wan. Uh, transition was a decade ago. You know, again, most enterprises are, are challenged, not because they, they lack tools, but because the tools are not unified.

You know, connectivity is separate from, uh, from routing and security. And security is separate from visibility and monitoring tools and sometimes the ITSM platform within the customer's ecosystem and accountability. Uh, unfortunately our industry has one of the lowest CS stat ratings of any, any industry. So. Uh, and support is fragmented as a result, and so SASS e delivers the most value when the foundation is architected and supported effectively, and when it's backed by, uh, real SLAs and a unified operating model that.

Has ready access to smart network and security expertise again with, you know, when needed 24 7. And that's where I love this Versa Command Link partnership. They're providing us the, you know, the secure global networking architecture. We're providing the design, engineering, you know, tier three engineer, no support model, uh, security analyst with eyes on glass 24 7 carrier aggregation. Uh, and the ability to, to watch, uh, you know, log and, and seam feeding into actionable reporting with 24 7 operational, you know, excellence behind that.

And when those pieces come together. You know, the customers gonna gain resiliency, uh, security improvement, intelligence and visibility. Uh, and, and especially when consider considered on a TCO basis. And the, the, the sum of that is simplicity. And simplicity is a competitive advantage. It has a lot of responsibility today, and let's be honest, in 2026, it needs simplicity now more than ever. Exactly. Unfortunately brings us to the end of our session. So much more to talk about, but excellent job.

Thank you so much, Rob McBride Versa Networks Mason Link. Expertise. Lots of great insights, and of course, thanks to everybody who tuned in. Now, if you have, uh, sass e on your radar, if you're looking to upgrade your network security, if you wanna learn more about anything that we've talked about today, take check out that resources list you see on your player. Great information there that you can download and spend some time with. You'll also discover how to get in touch. And Versa Networks through that resources list. So do take advantage there. Reach out, find out more. Continue your SASS e journey or accelerate your Sass journey.

So check out that resources list and with that for command link Versa Networks and CIO Jim Malone saying thanks everybody for.