Netskope as Pure-Play SASE Leader

The key divide in SASE is built versus assembled. Netskope and Zscaler were designed from day one as cloud security subscriptions, where a security team manages web access, SaaS access, private app access, and data loss rules from one control plane. By contrast, incumbents like HPE are stitching together separate assets, Silver Peak for branch networking and Axis for SSE, to catch up with a market that is moving from hardware refreshes to software delivered security.

• Netskope’s product history explains why it is grouped with Zscaler rather than firewall vendors. It started in CASB, expanded into SWG, ZTNA, and FWaaS, and sells the bundle per user to large enterprises, usually landing with one control problem and expanding across more traffic and employees.
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• The scale gap versus incumbents is still real, but the growth pattern favors the pure plays. Netskope reached about $487M ARR at the end of 2023 and about $707M ARR by July 2025, while Zscaler passed $3.0B ARR in fiscal 2025. Both have been growing materially faster than legacy vendors expanding from installed hardware bases.
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• HPE’s own deal logic shows the assembly model clearly. Silver Peak gave it SD-WAN in 2020, and Axis added cloud delivered SSE in 2023 so Aruba could offer a unified SASE stack. That is a sensible way for an incumbent to enter the category, but it also means product integration and go to market simplification are still work in progress.
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Going forward, the market should consolidate around a few platforms that can do both networking and security without forcing customers to manage separate products. Pure plays have the advantage in product coherence and operating simplicity, while incumbents have the advantage in installed base. Netskope’s path is to keep turning cloud visibility and data protection into broader platform share inside large enterprise accounts.