There is a strategic mistake that a vast majority of IT leaders are making right now. It's a mistake that seems logical on the surface but is quietly undermining security, stalling innovation, and creating a ticking time bomb of technical debt. The mistake is clinging to the "best-of-breed" trap: the belief that the best outcome is achieved by assembling the best individual products.

It sounds sensible. A firewall from the market-leading vendor, a VPN system from another specialist, and a security tool from a third. But this approach is a direct path to a complex, disjointed, and expensive IT setup. It's a strategy that has proven fatal before.

Back in 2007, Nokia dominated 49% of the mobile market by perfecting individual components. Then the iPhone arrived and changed everything by introducing an integrated platform. Right now, the exact same pattern is unfolding in the world of networking and security. In this article, we'll reveal why 'best-of-breed' is an outdated strategy and how you can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Shift Your Perspective: From Point Solutions to Platform Thinking

Why were Nokia phones so popular in the mid 00s? Because they were the epitome of the “best-of-breed” philosophy. Nokia offered the best camera, the most reliable phone feature and the finest music player. Each component was optimized to perfection within its own narrow domain.

But then an iPhone arrived and turned the whole industry upside down. Instead of being best at one thing, it introduced a unified platform that provided a completely new and cohesive user experience. The value lay not in the individual parts, but in the intelligent integration of them.

The same fundamental shift is happening right now in the IT world, just on a much larger scale. Where we used to think in silos — “we buy the best firewall plus the best VPN plus the best endpoint security” — we are now moving towards a new standard: “we buy one integrated platform that handles it all and creates greater value through coherence and synergy”.

History's Repeating Pattern

This is not the first time we have seen such a transformation. The transition from traditional physical data centers to cloud platforms like AWS and Azure is a perfect example of how integrated solutions outcompeted separate legacy solutions. Instead of buying servers, storage systems and networking equipment separately, companies could suddenly get it all as a unified, flexible service.

The same pattern repeated itself as the software industry moved from CD installations to SaaS platforms such as Salesforce and Office 365. The media industry saw it with the shift from DVD collections to streaming services like Netflix. Each time, the platform wins over the fragmented solutions. Not necessarily because the individual components are technically superior, but because the overall experience is transformational and creates a value that separate systems can never match.

Pro-tip platform:
Next time a vendor presents a solution to you, don't ask, “Is this the best firewall on the market?”. Instead, ask, “How does this solution integrate with the rest of our infrastructure and what overall value does it create for the business?”

The Hidden Cost of the 'Best-of-Breed' Trap

Here's an uncomfortable truth that's rarely discussed openly in the IT industry: Most IT departments have fallen into exactly the same trap as Nokia. You've probably invested significant sums in the best firewall from vendor A, the best SD-WAN system from vendor B, the best endpoint security from vendor C, and the best remote-access solution from vendor D.

On paper, it seems like a sensible strategy. Each component is chosen because it is a leader in its field. But in practice, this fragmented approach creates a “Nokia syndrome” in your infrastructure. Just as Nokia had the best single parts but lost out to an iPhone's integrated platform, many companies are now experiencing the negative consequences of a disjointed infrastructure.

The practical challenges are both serious and far-reaching. Security gaps between systems systematically arise because each integration presents a potential vulnerability. When five different security solutions have to exchange critical data, who is in charge when something goes wrong? Who owns the problem and how do you track the source of the error in a complex patchwork of suppliers?

Troubleshooting quickly develops into a nightmare. Imagine a scenario where an employee in Paris cannot access Office 365. Is this due to an error in the firewall configuration? Is the problem in the SD-WAN system? Is the VPN tunnel not working optimally? Or is it an endpoint policy that blocks access? Your IT team can spend days identifying the cause and coordinating between different vendors to find a solution.

Innovation is stalling. If you want to implement modern zero-trust security principles, it requires extensive coordination between all your suppliers. Each party needs to update its system, test the integration and hope that it all works together. The process is not only time-consuming; it is also fraught with risk.

COVID-19 as a Brutal Wake-Up Call

Before the pandemic, this fragmented model could work roughly. About 80% of employees worked from the office, and the systems were optimized for this predictable reality.

But then COVID-19 hit, and overnight the division of labor was turned upside down. Suddenly, remote employees were supposed to have the same secure and efficient access as those in the office, but the existing legacy solutions couldn't keep up at all. Each solution had to be configured separately, policies had to be updated manually across platforms, and security became an inevitable compromise.

Platform-based solutions, by contrast, scaled effortlessly. Because safety and performance follow the user -- not the location -- these systems could adapt to the new reality without extensive reconfigurations. The irony is that the more best-of-breed solutions an organization acquires, the poorer the overall user experience and operational efficiency. That's the Nokia paradox in a nutshell.

SASE: The Solution to the 'Best-of-Breed' Trap

To fully understand the transformation we are in the midst of, we must return to the analogy of Nokia and an iPhone. Nokia's strategy was to combine the best single parts. An iPhone's strategy was to create an integrated platform where the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts.

SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) represents the iPhone moment for networking and security. Where the old approach was to stack the best firewall on top of the best VPN and best endpoint security, SASE offers a unified cloud platform that delivers all the features as an integrated service.

What Exactly is SASE?

In 2019, analytics firm Gartner introduced the term SASE to describe the biggest technological upheaval in the networking industry in decades. Gartner's definition reads: “SASE combines networking and security capabilities into one cloud-native platform delivered as a service.”

But what does this mean in practice? It marks a fundamental shift from hardware to software, where everything is delivered from the cloud rather than from physical boxes in your data center. It is also a shift from location-based to identity-based security, where security follows the user like a digital shadow wherever they are. And it's a transformation from simple point-to-point connections to a globally optimized network where traffic is intelligently routed across the globe.

The Four Pillars that Define a True SASE Platform

A true SASE platform is built on four basic principles:

1. Identity-Centered Security: Policies are based on who the user is, not where they are. A marketer has the same secure access to Salesforce (or any other system), whether she works from the office in Aarhus or a café in Amsterdam.
2. Cloud-native architecture: The system is built from the ground up to the cloud. It can scale from 10 to 10,000 users without compromising performance.
3. Support for all “edges”: The platform works equally for office workers, remote workers, cloud applications and IoT devices. The same policies and the same user experience apply everywhere.
4. Global reach with consistent performance: Users experience the same speed, security and stability whether they are in Copenhagen or Singapore, thanks to a global (and private) backbone network.

Pro-tip platform:
SASE is not just another technology. It's a fundamental change in how we think about networking and security—in the same way that AWS changed how businesses think about computing power and storage.

Why Timing is Everything: The Platform Adoption Cycle

If we're being completely honest, you really only have three options for dealing with this transformation, and your choice will have far-reaching consequences for your organization.

thee early adopters, acting in the next 12 months, will gain a clear competitive advantage. They get access to the latest features, the full attention of suppliers and a lower total cost because they avoid the technical debt created by outdated systems. The challenge is that it takes courage to think new, and there are fewer case studies to lean on.

thee mainstream adopters, waiting until the period 2026-2028, will have access to a mature market with many success stories and established best practices. But they will gain no competitive advantage, because at that point all their competitors are embarking on the same journey. Prices will be higher and there will be longer waits with suppliers.

thee Laggards, which waits until after 2028, will be forced to switch under the worst possible commercial conditions. They will have suffered from a competitive backlog for years, be locked into expensive maintenance contracts on outdated equipment and have difficulty retaining talented IT staff.

The question is not, whether SASE is coming. The question is whether your organization will be one of those to gain from the transformation, or one of those that will be forced to keep up under worse terms.

From Complexity to Simplicity: How to Make the Shift in Practice

A platform transformation may sound like a big mouthful, but the reality with Itavis and Cato Networks is the exact opposite. Switching to a SASE platform isn't about a lengthy and complex implementation -- it's about achieving instant simplicity.

Itavis has over 20 years of experience guiding Danish companies through technological change. We've seen how fragmented solutions create unnecessary work, and we know that the biggest benefit of a platform like Cato lies in the time you save from day one. Our partnership with Cato Networks — the vendor that built the world's first and most mature SASE platform — is your guarantee of a proven and robust solution.

Our role is not to sell you yet another technical solution. Our role is to remove complexity from your everyday life. Deployment is incredibly fast and many of our customers are fully operational across locations and users in a matter of weeks, not months.

Simplicity with Noticeable Results

Companies transitioning to a unified SASE platform are experiencing significant and measurable improvements that go far beyond traditional IT. Based on analytics from unbiased parties such as Forrester and data from Cato Networks' customers, we typically see the following results:

• Up to 229% ROI over three years: An analysis from Forrester Consulting shows that the overall financial gain from switching to Cato Networks is significant, driven primarily by reduced network costs, fewer security solutions and a drastically lower administrative burden.
• 50% reduction in annual security expenses: By bringing together features such as firewall, VPN, and threat detection in one platform, the need to maintain and renew licenses on multiple separate systems is eliminated.
• Deployment in weeks, not months: Unlike rolling out traditional legacy loos that can take months, new locations and users can be connected to the Cato platform in a matter of days or weeks, providing unprecedented agility.
• 90% less time on operation and fire extinguishing: The biggest and most immediate ROI comes from the time your IT team saves. Instead of spending hours troubleshooting a patchwork of solutions, the team can now focus on strategic initiatives that create value for the business.

Pro-tip platform:
The real value of a platform transformation is not measured in the technologies you buy, but in the complexity you remove. Think of it as the time and resources that are released when your team no longer has to act as fire extinguishers for a myriad of systems.

Your Choice: Nokia or iPhone?

Here are the questions you should ask yourself and your organization — and be honest about the answers.

Reflect on these questions as a stress test: Is your infrastructure robust enough not to end up in a sea of technical debt when the market moves on?

• Map your current onboarding of a new location:
  ‍How many hours and manual steps go into configuring firewall, VPN, and endpoint security separately, and which automatable workflows can significantly reduce this time?‍

• Identify security gaps and risks in fragmented solutions:
  How often do vulnerabilities or misconfigurations occur when firewall, EDR, SIEM, and cloud gateway do not share real-time telemetry, and how can a unified platform close these gaps?‍

• Examine your integration architecture:
  ‍How do you share logs and threat data between the different modules, and to what extent does your setup support context-based decisions (identity + device status + network data) without manual customizations?‍

• Evaluate policy rollout agility:
  ‍How long does it take to define, test and deploy a new zero-trust or segmentation policy globally, and how do you manage rollback in case of unforeseen failures to avoid downtime?

A Final Nokia Reality Check

Nokia's management was not blind. They knew full well that the smartphone revolution was coming. Their fatal mistake was believing that they had time to adapt gradually. They underestimated the speed and depth of change. The danger of disruption is not that it comes like lightning from a clear sky. It's that it looks manageable, right up until it's suddenly inevitable.

The bottom line:
The Nokia moment is here. The question is not whether the platform revolution will affect Danish IT — it is whether you will become one of the early adopters who will gain from the change, or one of the laggards who will be forced to keep up with worse conditions.

Platform thinking is the future. And the future starts now.