How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty

Saving money is a top priority for many organizations, particularly during periods of economic uncertainty. Today, security, networking, and IT teams are faced with reduced headcount, shrinking budgets, and the very real need to do more with less.

Yesterday’s hub-and-spoke networks and castle-and-moat security models were adequate when users, applications, and data all resided onsite in the corporate office or data center. With today’s hybrid workplace, increasingly distributed data, and the shift to the cloud and SaaS, organizations need a new approach to security–one that increases security posture, reduces cost, and supports economic efficiency. To achieve this, businesses are turning to a zero-trust architecture, specifically the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange.

This is the second installment in our two-part blog series highlighting the ways in which Zscaler helps organizations overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures to deliver superior economic value. Part one demonstrated how Zscaler helps businesses drive efficiency and reduce spend by optimizing technology costs, enhancing user productivity, and increasing security posture. In this installment, we’ll explore how Zscaler helps organizations capture additional economic value through increasing operational efficiency, reducing carbon footprint, and streamlining mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

Increasing operational efficiency

The shift to cloud and hybrid work has left organizations that utilize a perimeter-based security model that leverages firewalls and VPNs with a number of significant costs and challenges related to complexity and operational inefficiency. Fortunately, the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange provides a comprehensive, cloud-delivered platform of services that delivers direct-to-cloud connectivity and consolidates point solutions, eliminating up to 90% of organizations’ point product security appliances to save time when it comes to maintenance and managing disjointed dashboards, according to a study by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

As an example, Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation (CSC) achieved a 90% reduction in infrastructure complexities and a 30% reduction in management overhead by implementing the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange. Baker & Baker dramatically reduced their administrative and overhead costs by over 70%. By embracing a zero-trust architecture with Zscaler, our customers can free up to 74% of an admin’s time to focus on more strategic projects.

Decreasing carbon footprint

Securing the hybrid workforce essentially requires extending that hub-and-spoke network and all the firewalls, VPNs, and point product security appliances to every user and location. That means adding more appliances. Not only does this increase CapEx, but it also increases energy consumption as well. Keeping the appliances running and powering the high-powered cooling systems required to prevent them from overheating increases the enterprise’s carbon footprint and utility costs.

The Zero Trust Exchange delivers comprehensive security as a service through Zscaler’s multi-tenant cloud, which is composed of 150 points of presence powered by 100% renewable energy. The 90% reduction in appliances mentioned previously means organizations can reduce their power consumption and carbon footprint. In fact, by using the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, the average Zscaler customer enhances power usage effectiveness (PUE) by 50%, ultimately helping the average customer achieve an ROI of 139%.

Streamlining M&A

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can provide a source of dramatic growth and value for businesses. But, the success of a merger or acquisition is inherently tied to IT integration. Traditional IT integration approaches require tying together the two networks to enable access to applications and resources by both parties. This process is fraught with complexity that often results in missed timelines and unforeseen costs. These factors contribute to the reality that 70% of mergers and acquisitions never achieve their expected deal value.

Unlike traditional network and security approaches, the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange decouples security and connectivity from network access. Because users get direct-to-app connectivity and don’t have to connect to the network as a whole, organizations can forgo network integration entirely during M&A. This accelerates value creation timelines, enabling organizations to speed up time-to-value by 50% and save as much as 40% on one-time and recurring IT costs associated with M&A.

Learn from businesses like yours

Discover more ways Zscaler provides superior economic value by reading Part 1 of this blog series. Explore real-life success stories of customers who used the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange to capture real economic value in our ebook. It highlights several customers on their journey with Zscaler to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust.