SD‑WAN, SASE And Midmarket IT: 5 Network Convergence Lessons From Scale Computing’s Adaptiv Acquisition

The deal underscores why vendors are pushing managed, platform‑based SD‑WAN and SASE networking—and why midmarket IT leaders may want to slow down before consolidating network, security, and edge services under one vendor.

Scale Computing, a provider of edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, last week announced its acquisition of Adaptiv Networks, a provider of SD-WAN and SASE solutions.

The deal integrates Scale’s managed network solutions with Adaptiv’s SD-WAN capabilities, which include network performance optimization and orchestration across distributed environments, Scale said in a news release.

While Scale emphasizes that converging these products will ease the complexity of managing multi-site networks, some midmarket IT leaders may have questions about vendor-lock-ins, potential single point of failure, and how much IT control they may want to give to a third-party.

MES Computing posed several questions to Scale Computing via email as to what implications its latest acquisition has for the state of networking in the midmarket organizations.

5 Converged Networking Considerations For Midmarket IT Leaders

As Edge, Networking, And Security Continue To Converge, What’s At Risk?

The acquisition demonstrates that edge, networking, and security are converging into a single managed stack, reducing management complexities.

But is that a safe setup?

For already staff-lean midmarket IT departments, promises of management simplicity are enticing.

Yet it is not a stretch to consider that converged services like compute, networking and security can amplify risk. Outages, misconfigurations, and unsuccessful updates can cause a negative impact across many layers of an infrastructure when services are converged.

However, DeWayne Mangan, senior vice president, technology operations at Scale Computing, said that converged services can make an infrastructure more resilient.

“Convergence,” Mangan said in an email to MES Computing, “does not create a single point of failure — if anything, it makes high availability easier to deliver.”

Here’s how he further broke it down:

“What’s centralized is management and visibility, not execution. Policies, monitoring, and orchestration can be unified, while workloads and connectivity remain distributed with built-in redundancy and failover. That architectural distinction is critical.”

For midmarket IT teams, converged platforms “reduce misconfiguration, eliminate silos, and simplify operations,” Mangan said.

Midmarket takeaway: Determine which services should remain “traditional,” standalone versus converged: Would converging add management complexity? Can your organization risk downtimes if multiple network services fail in case of a vendor outage?

Vendors Double Down On Managed Networking Models. What Are The Trade-Offs?

Managed networking is increasingly positioned as optimal for IT departments with limited resources. Indeed, managed networks can reduce hands-on configuration and day‑to‑day operational tasks.

However, managed networking also introduces some challenges. “The integration of diverse technologies” can lead to “potential 'territorial disputes' among security managers,” according to one report from MarketScale. Convergence can also lead to “overly complex systems,” MarketScale’s report asserts.

Subscribing to managed networking providers means giving up some control of IT to a vendor.

But Mangan said that having to manage “fragmented systems that don’t integrate well is the bigger risk to the midmarket.

“When designed correctly, convergence increases resiliency while lowering hardware spend and operational complexity,” he said.

Midmarket takeaway: Understand thoroughly how much network control a managed provider would have over your organization’s network and where accountability for disruptions begins and ends.

Distributed Locations Are Now A Primary Design – And Bring New Pain Points

In its press release, Scale Computing highlights use cases across restaurants, retail, and other distributed industries, and stresses the need for applications to be available “everywhere work happens” with always-on visibility and connectivity.

For many midmarket organizations, multi-site operations are the norm, not the exception—and infrastructure decisions are increasingly being made with distributed delivery, remote access, and edge deployment as default requirements.

While distributed networks are inevitable given hybrid, globalized work environments and resilience needs, managing multi-sites can be a resource pain in the neck for midmarket IT.

Mangan agrees that distributed environments can pose a challenge running hundreds of sites consistently without hundreds of IT staff.

“Most midsized organizations don’t have on-site technical expertise at every location. That creates real issues around configuration drift, inconsistent security policies, limited visibility, and the cost of truck rolls to fix problems that should be handled remotely,” he said.

Then there’s the issue with which many IT leaders are familiar: getting a critical legacy system integrated with newer, converged systems.

Many legacy solutions “lack integrated APIs and centralized configuration management tools, which increases the likelihood that environments will slowly diverge over time. The ability to enforce global standards while accommodating controlled local exceptions is essential in distributed environments,” Mangan said.

At the end of the day, distributed organizations need infrastructure that can be deployed once, managed centrally, and trusted to operate securely and consistently everywhere work happens,” he added.

Midmarket takeaway: IT leaders should be on guard over configuration drift, inconsistent security policies, limited visibility, and legacy system integration issues when managing distributed networks.

Vendor Lock-In

Midmarket IT leaders are increasingly being offered bundled, platform-based networking that combines several services under one vendor relationship.

That vendor lock-in is not something to take lightly, especially with critical services. In a 2022 paper, Gartner cautioned that single‑vendor SASE offerings, for example, may not be best‑of‑breed across all functions, forcing tradeoffs in capability or depth.

Vendor lock-in raises other concerns around TCO, security, and deployment complexity, according to Menlo Security.

Midmarket takeaway: When considering converged SASE, SD-WAN solutions, make sure you understand the security posture of the SASE provider, and the process of switching to another provider.

Making The Case For ROI

Do bundle services offer any savings over multi-vendor options?

“You’re adding capabilities, so there is incremental investment. But when SD-WAN and SASE are deployed together as part of an integrated platform, you eliminate multiple deployment cycles, reduce integration overhead, and accelerate time to value,” Mangan said.

Still, bundled platforms can make it harder for IT leaders to determine which services are truly driving value.

Midmarket takeaway: IT leaders may want to consider reevaluating ROI when it comes to these bundled, managed services. Instead of a bottom-line “is it saving us money?” mentality, perhaps value is better reflected by improvements in resilience, scalability, and other operational KPIs.