Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Reviews

Some of my customers are replacing their legacy solutions with Cisco SD-WAN.

Encryption, which is native to the solution, is a valuable feature. Also, central management, onboarding of devices, QS, and routing applications are all okay.

All of the configurations are based on templates, and we need to spend a lot of time doing the templates. It's good because that means that all of the configurations will be equal in the network. However, we need to spend a lot of time implementing the templates and doing the customizations.

I've worked with this solution for about a year. It's a cloud solution.

It is a stable solution.

It is very scalable.

The technical support was okay.

SD-WAN is very difficult to implement, but nowadays, most solutions are difficult to implement.

On a scale from one to five with one being the most complicated and five being very easy to implement, I'd give Cisco SD-WAN a rating of three.

It is not difficult to maintain.

You should prepare to spend a lot of time with the design and implementation of the solution. The design in the cloud is difficult to do because you need to have all the connectivity in place to reach the cloud. It's very easy to spin up an instance of SD-WAN in the cloud, but the connectivity from on-premises systems to the cloud is sometimes difficult to accomplish because of the security features the customers have in place. It's not easy to establish connectivity from the enterprise network to the cloud.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco SD-WAN at seven. From a network perspective, it's a very good solution, but the security features could be better. It's not easy to manage security using Cisco SD-WAN. It's not clear; the solution is not related to security and is more related to planning and networking.

We use it for network services. We use them as edge network devices, edge network routers, and firewall routers.

We looked at an SD-WAN service and Cisco was a vendor that provided termination of those services. We bought it and it met the specification. Cisco Viptela solution met the specification for our network.

I would recommend better-integrated management. Some of the other vendors have moved to integrated management platforms. Better analytics and operational consoles with a deployment configuration that can work easily across the network. 

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for over five years.

It is pretty good. We have been reasonably happy with it.

The scalability is fine. The issue has not been an issue of technology, it's been one of price. 

It was straightforward.

We had a vendor and it was not hard. We took a while to get the templates, but not that long. 

Cisco SD-WAN is a good product, but as I said earlier, it's not priced competitively. There is nothing wrong with the product, but it is not as good as what you can buy from other vendors for a lower price. It depends because it's bandwidth-based licensing. It depends on how much bandwidth you put through it. Other products on the market do not have any licensing for bandwidth and that is one of its cost issues. 

We will be migrating to a different vendor. I would rate Cisco SD-WAN a six on a scale of one to ten.

Cisco SD-WAN is primarily used in the banking industry in Pakistan for bandwidth development and application control.

Cisco SD-WAN's best features are the development of network links, application control, and bandwidth monitoring.

Cisco SD-WAN's clustering mechanism needs to be improved. If there are more than five milliseconds of latency time between installations of the VM manager, the cluster automatically breaks down.

I've been using Cisco SD-WAN for a year.

Cisco SD-WAN is stable.

Cisco SD-WAN is very easy to scale.

Cisco's technical support is very good, and they're one of the few companies that provide local support. If we face any problem, they respond to and resolve it within three to four hours at most.

Positive

I previously used Forcepoint, but they have no local support, which means we had to wait much longer to get resolutions to our issues. Cisco's knowledge base was also better.

The initial setup wasn't easy, and I would rate the setup experience as two out of five.

In the first phase, our partner implemented the solution, but afterward, we managed it by ourselves.

For 600 links, the license for Cisco SD-WAN costs us US$250k a year. In Pakistan, we have the option to get this solution at a more discounted price.

I would give Cisco SD-WAN a rating of seven out of ten.

Cisco SD-WAN's collaborative features are unique and sustainable. I also like the protocols, which use two SD-WAN.

Some configurations or procedures could be more user-friendly. Adding a bandwidth management feature would make Cisco SD-WAN more scalable and less resource-intensive. 

I've been using Cisco SD-WAN for more than five years.

The scalability could be better. 

Cisco support is good.

We are also using Fortinet. Fortinet SD-WAN is more user-friendly, but Cisco is better overall. 

Setting up Cisco SD-WAN is easy.

Cisco is in the top pricing tier among SD-WAN solutions. 

I rate Cisco SD-WAN eight out of 10. 

Cisco SD-WAN is highly secure.

We had some issues with Cisco SD-WAN but somehow we troubleshot it and things are going well. The issues have not been a large problem.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for approximately 18 months.

When we have had power outages for a few hours we have had no issue with Cisco SD-WAN coming back online and functioning.

The technical support is good from Cisco. When we have a problem we notify Cisco and within a day or two, they will have solved the situation. They are very cooperative.

I am using Cisco SD-WAN for access to the internet.

Cisco SD-WAN could improve the integration with the cloud.

I have used Cisco SD-WAN within the last 12 months.

Cisco SD-WAN is a stable solution.

The scalability of Cisco SD-WAN is good. 

We have approximately 2,000 people using the solution and approximately 25 of them are engineers.

The support from Cisco SD-WAN is good.

The setup of Cisco SD-WAN was easy.

There is a monthly subscription to use this solution.

I rate Cisco SD-WAN a ten out of ten.

We are using Cisco SD-WAN in the public sector and it is deployed in a hybrid infrastructure.

The most valuable features in Cisco SD-WAN are the QoS, AI, and simple interface for users to access.

There should be more security features in the hybrid and on-premise deployments of Cisco SD-WAN. The cloud has most of the security features.

The AI is good, however, they can improve on it. The endpoint flow from the router to the data center needs to have consistency. Cisco doesn't have a solution for all the devices for the customer. We need more support for all kinds of devices.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for approximately four years.

I rate Cisco SD-WAN an eight out of ten.

Cisco SD-WAN is used to establish a wide area network, a WAN for LAN, WiFi, and support.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for approximately 15 years.

Cisco SD-WAN is a highly stable solution.

The scalability of Cisco SD-WAN is great.

The technical support from Cisco SD-WAN is excellent.

Cisco SD-WAN is not as easy to deploy as the Meraki and FortiGate solutions. The zero-touch deployment could be a lot better. The deployment and initial setup are complicated and could be better.

Cisco SD-WAN is more expensive than its competitors.

Cisco SD-WAN is a great solution and definitely worth the investment.

I rate Cisco SD-WAN an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and SD-WAN, Cisco's software-defined wide area network, is one of the products that we work with.

At this point, only one of our clients has implemented this solution. They are a bank that has redundant links in their branches.

The most valuable features are manageability, scalability, and simplicity.

We have had some problems with the licensing model, and it is something that should be improved. Specifically, Cisco has some bugs regarding licensing that they need to resolve.

Cisco's SD-WAN is a stable product.

This is a scalable solution. Our financial client has approximately 200 branches.

This was our first implementation of this solution and we didn't need to contact technical support.

I have used Citrix SD-WAN as well, although I have very little experience with it.

The process is well documented and the installation is easy. In our team, we have four people on the team to implement SD-WAN.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the environment. For controllers, it takes between two and three days to deploy. For individual branches, it depends on the situation.

We have an in-house team of four people for deployment and maintenance.

Overall, this is a good solution and I recommend it. The only complaint I have is that I would like them to resolve the problems with the licensing model.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Typically it's used for connecting the hundreds of branches to multiple data centers and also the headquarters. 

The mean time between the failures is much lower than was before. Also, the man-hours required are fewer. Overall, the user experience is better than before this solution.

The application link selection, I would say, is quite useful. 

The load sharing over the multiple links is great. 

We like the centralized management and aggregation aspects.

Technology-wise, it's decent.

The solution is pretty stable.

You can easily scale the product.

They did a new interface of Cisco SD-WAN. It's good.

They need to improve the licensing, definitely. It needs to be easier to license. It should also be much more affordable for a larger number of customers. This is one of the main issues when working with customers. When you want to offer them the solution, they really do not like the price.

I would love to have better templating. It needs a more user-friendly interface. 

They need to add the features that help to configure and navigate the daily features. 

It's stable enough. They hardened it to their operating system. It's not an issue.

It scales to a very high number, in terms of the hardware branch elements or hubs, or data centers, or even the cloud connection points. Scaling is not really an issue when it comes to Cisco SD-WAN. 

We currently have two customers on the solution. Right now, mostly, it's in the phase of testing to see how it fits the customer environment. They are considering growing in terms of the sizing and migrating all their traditional or legacy network to SD-WAN. 

Technical support is decent from the Cisco side. We have no complaints about their level of service.

We definitely worked with the other vendors, other competitive vendors. All of them have pros and cons. I have not switched from one vendor SD-WAN to Cisco. It's a relatively easy technology, however, it's not that easy to switch from A to B. We've worked with, for example, HPE, Aruba, and Fortinet.

The initial setup is definitely not straightforward. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge to properly run up the system and clean up all the moving parts, and all the elements of the fabric. After that, the operation is easy. Operation is not that hard, however, to get there, the initial startup is not that easy.

The deployment time depends on the scale, however, typically, the controller spins up after one or two weeks. That's not counting the high-level designs or lower-level designs. 

The deployment only needs one or two engineers, and then you might need one person to handle maintenance requirements.

We are the partners, therefore we are the value-added resellers. So what we do, is to help the customers do the implementation.

The ROI is really good. However, it depends on the company. I can't really evaluate the ROI in general. For some, it will be very high, and for some, it'll be very low. It depends on what they do, and what their expenses are.

The costs to use the product are quite high.

That said, I can't speak to the exact licensing arrangements.

The most annoying thing is that you have to pay an annual subscription in order to operate the whole fabric. Regardless, the customer isn't getting the signatures or any updates. It's just for the functionality to continue as it is. It's also very annoying. This is not only for Cisco. It's true for others as well.

A solution we're currently considering right now is Versa.

We are Cisco partners.

It's a decent technology. If a company really wants to go with SD-WAN, Cisco is one of the greatest in this area, definitely. If they have the budget for that allocated, and the operating expenses are allocated for the coming years, then I would suggest going ahead and trying it. There is always an option to go back to the traditional networking when it comes to Cisco. Therefore, if you don't like SD-WAN, you don't have to throw away the hardware. You can keep the legacy or traditional connections. That's one of the benefits of having Cisco SD-WAN.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.