In a world of relentless digital change, certain parts of the IT estate have felt stubbornly resistant to transformation in the corporate network. Where the cloud revolution has made computing power and storage consumption-based, elastic, and easy to provision, networking has often remained a tangle of legacy infrastructure, expensive refresh cycles, and opaque managed service contracts.
Enter NaaS. Far more than a buzzword or rebranded old-school outsourcing, NaaS is a strategic shift in how organisations think about connectivity. It moves networking firmly into the cloud-era service model - flexible, scalable, and aligned with real business priorities. And, increasingly, NaaS is becoming part of a broader Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework - integrating networking and security as unified, cloud-delivered services.
The arrival of NaaS is a connectivity game changer. For organisations under pressure to support hybrid work, multi-cloud adoption, tighter security postures, and cost control, NaaS isn’t just a technical upgrade; it can be a business transformation lever.
As NaaS becomes an increasingly accessible option, now is the time for organisations to start thinking about whether it’s the right solution - and exploring how NaaS capabilities can form part of a SASE-aligned strategy. Here are seven critical advantages of adopting NaaS.
1. Strategic agility and scalability
Legacy networks can be painfully slow to evolve. Need to open a new branch? Integrate with a partner? Support a growing remote workforce? Traditional network changes can take months, often involving complex procurement cycles, vendor negotiations, and site installations.
NaaS breaks that inertia by letting you consume networking on demand. Providing the ability to implement secure connectivity to new sites or cloud workloads in minutes rather than months, scale access seamlessly for hybrid workers, and support multi-cloud strategies without re-architecting from scratch. When delivered as part of a SASE model, this agility extends to consistent security enforcement and access control - enabling rapid, secure expansion without compromising
governance. For organisations competing in fast-moving markets, this ability to change quickly is essential.
2. Simplified network management
Network teams are famously overworked just keeping the lights on - patching, configuring, renewing licenses, and troubleshooting endless tickets. Too often, strategic improvements get delayed because the operational load is overwhelming.
While many NaaS models are self-serve, there are providers that offer managed services, meaning that much of that burden is handed to the service provider. Tasks like device configuration, maintenance, upgrades, and even security policy enforcement are handled as part of the service. IT teams regain capacity to focus on higher-value work - like improving user experience or enabling new business services - rather than endlessly managing infrastructure.
In a SASE-aligned environment, these management benefits extend beyond networking to unified policy control across users, devices, and data.
3. Improved cost control
Networking has historically been a capital-expenditure-heavy domain: buying and installing expensive hardware every few years in big, lumpy refresh cycles. Over-provisioning to handle peak demand wastes money and under-provisioning risks outages.
NaaS shifts this to an operational-expenditure, consumption-based model. You pay only for what you use, with the flexibility to scale up or down. This can improve budget predictability while avoiding the waste of idle capacity. It also means avoiding big up-front costs that strain capital budgets and limit agility. Similarly, SASE models consolidate multiple networking and security services into a single subscription, further simplifying budget forecasting and reducing overlap.
Of course, financial teams need to understand the nuances here. Some may prefer the predictability of CapEx, while others welcome the flexibility of OpEx. But the important point is that NaaS offers choice and can align costs more tightly with actual business need. I see NaaS as one step toward this broader service-based evolution.
4. Embedded security
Traditional networking often treats security as an add-on: firewall appliances bolted on at sites, third-party providers for VPNs or secure gateways, all needing careful coordination.
This convergence of network and security capabilities is at the heart of the SASE model - bringing together NaaS and security-as-a-service into one unified edge
architecture. Security policies can be defined centrally and enforced consistently everywhere, across users, devices, locations, and clouds. Firewall-as-a-service, secure web gateways, and clientless VPNs can be integrated into a single platform. This approach reduces risk, improves compliance, and avoids the gaps and inconsistencies that come with fragmented, bolt-on security.
5. Unified visibility and control
One of the biggest headaches in traditional networking is fragmented visibility. Each vendor, appliance, or service might have its own portal and logs. Correlating data across them to diagnose issues or enforce policies is cumbersome.
NaaS centralises monitoring and management into a single pane of glass. IT teams gain real-time, end-to-end visibility over the entire network estate, whether it spans offices, remote users, multiple clouds, or partner integrations. SASE then extends this visibility to include security and data flows - offering a unified view across both network performance and policy enforcement. This accelerates troubleshooting as teams can isolate and resolve issues quickly and prove when the network isn’t the root cause. This holistic view also supports proactive management and continuous improvement.
6. Enhanced user experience
Today’s workforce expects seamless, secure access whether they’re at HQ, home, a client site, or halfway across the world. Legacy VPNs and network architectures often struggle to deliver a consistent experience.
A NaaS-delivered SASE model can enable modern, frictionless access, such as clientless VPNs that work transparently in the background, giving users the sense they’re always “on the corporate network” regardless of location. This delivers secure, low-latency access at the edge - closer to users - through zero trust and cloud-based enforcement. For remote and hybrid teams, this is critical not just for productivity but also for retaining talent in an increasingly flexible world.
7. Reduced vendor lock-In
Many organisations are weary of getting trapped in restrictive, long-term contracts with telcos or locked into the tooling of a single cloud provider. NaaS, when combined with a SASE-aligned approach, can act as an integration layer that spans diverse providers.
By centralising policy and control but allowing flexibility in underlying connectivity and cloud services, NaaS and SASE empower organisations to avoid single-vendor dependence. This architectural freedom means businesses can adapt as needs evolve, without fear of contractual or technical handcuffs.
Ultimately, NaaS isn’t just a new way to buy networking. It represents an important step in the evolution toward secure, service-based networking - often realised through SASE frameworks that unify connectivity and security.
As businesses navigate hybrid work, multi-cloud adoption, and relentless competitive pressure, Networking as a Service may well be the strategic building block underpinning the shift toward SASE-enabled, cloud-first networking.
In part two of this series, we’ll dive into what organisations should consider and put in place to adopt NaaS successfully. Stay tuned for actionable insights in part two.
