What happened
Lumen Technologies (LUMN -4.04%), to put it politely, has not been a stellar performer on the stock market recently. Its investors have to count S&P 500 index-beating days as big victories, then. That's what happened on Thursday, when it finished the day flat versus the S&P's 0.6% decline. This followed the latest piece of news from the telecom company.
So what
This morning, Lumen announced that it has drafted a new partner to help bolster its secure access service edge (SASE) offerings. This partner is SASE equipment vendor Versa Networks, which will become a member of what Lumen terms its "partner ecosystem" in the category.
Simultaneously, the specialty tech company is also expanding its suite of SASE products and services by rolling out a new capability, rapid threat defense. According to the company, this technology blocks harmful traffic before it hits the client's IT environment. This capability is provided by its in-house threat intelligence unit, Black Lotus Labs, and is available within Lumen's SASE platform.
SASE is a service that bundles wide area network (WAN) capability and security measures into a cloud-computing solution hooked directly into a device or network, as opposed to a data center.
The company quoted its senior director of SASE product management, Darren Wolner, as saying, "We have global IP visibility, unique threat intelligence, and vast experience in networking, cloud, and managed services, which makes us the perfect partner for organizations looking for a single provider to enable their digital transformation."
Now what
Lumen did not provide any estimates as to how these latest SASE moves might affect its fundamentals. It's clear that it wants to concentrate on this popular segment, hence the cautious investor optimism.
