Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Reviews

If I have to give a neutral view of all the SD-WAN platforms that I have known so far, Cisco is good in routing.

The solution does not offer WAN optimization.

We have found that their SD-WAN has a lot of scope for improvement.

For example, they can probably look at their security stack. They can look at including some features like WAN optimizing, which is currently not there as a part of their in-built SD-WAN features. That could make their device a full-fledged SD-WAN with a single stack or a single device, solving many problems. It would mean once a customer goes for a Cisco SD-WAN, he doesn't have to look at a second device in his ecosystem.

Cisco has got integration challenges.

The solution lacks advanced security features.

Besides a WAN optimizer, I would like to see if they can do something about the security, and maybe they could have in-built security features such as a firewall.

The cost could be better. Cisco is not great for the SMB market. These are price-sensitive customers and they typically will not go ahead with Cisco, unless and until they are a global organization and they have their entire ecosystem deployed on Cisco. Otherwise, Cisco is struggling to connect with these players as their pricing is high. They need to have better technology at a more competitive price.

The organization that I work for, basically, we have deployed it in our lab. We do testing of multiple OEMs. It's been more than two years, that we have been using Cisco SD-WAN.

I have experience with a variety of different solutions. I also have worked with
Versa, Fortinet and FatPipe.

The initial setup could be more straightforward. A solution such as FatPipe, for example, has a very easy setup. In that case, when it comes to the GUI, in four, five clicks, the entire network gets established.

The solution needs to be priced more competitively. SMBs won't even look at Cisco as they already know it will be too expensive. 

I've worked with other solutions and therefore have evaluated them a bit.

For example, FatPipe has an easier initial setup. The GUI is very simple, and the platform is highly, highly advanced, even as compared to your Cisco, Versa, or Fortinet options. 

What I see in Fortinet is more for firewall extensions, with some software-defined controls. While the functionalities of WAN Optimization, functionalities of a seamless failover are not there. There are some potential technologies that FatPipe has, that are not there in any of these OEMs. On top of that, it's a very simple to use technology for many customers. A lot of our customers have also given this feedback that technically Cisco, Fortinet, et cetera, might be big names, however, FatPipe technically is superior technology today, when it comes to SD-WAN. In terms of FatPipe, they have a single device that has routing, switching, load balancing, WAN optimizer, and FatPipe does full WAN optimization. 

Cisco also claims to do WAN Ops. Fortinet also claims to do WAN optimization. What I have found is that Versa doesn't have that feature at all. Versa needs to come up with WAN optimization feature in order to catch up.

Cisco does a basic sliding window and PCP, UDP, which is a basic level of WAN optimization, whereas FatPipe does sliding window TCP, UDP, caching, comparison, data application - all seven or eight techniques are possible.

We're both customers and resellers. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using at this time. I don't know the version number off-hand. 

Cisco is no doubt a great company in the routing area. Nobody can beat them or nobody can even come close to them. That said, to be very honest, in the SD Wan space, they are struggling. There are a lot of cases where Cisco is technically disqualified when it comes to pure SD-WAN. SD-WAN is the game of FatPipe. FatPipe is the one who invented this technology, and they have delivered SD-WAN since 2002. This company has more than 20 years of experience, from what I understand. Whenever you use these two technologies, you actually get to know that FatPipe in comparison to Cisco is so seamless, extremely seamless. 

Cisco doesn't have advanced security features. Cisco doesn't really do WAN Ops. It does packet duplicates. Technically, both do packet duplicates. If they have failover traffic from a primary to secondary link, they will duplicate the packet. Otherwise, there cannot be a seamless failover. FatPipe has patented technology that doesn't do packet duplication. That's the reason they save 50% of Enterprise bandwidth while doing a failover. On top of that, FatPipe is the only SD-WAN. If at all there is a video on the voice system that is going on in any of this other technology, it is bound to fail. If there is a glitch in the primary link, or the primary link is failing, FatPipe is the only technology that is able to hold everything down. The user will not even know that the primary link has gone down. That is why it's extremely unique and extremely compelling technology. It is something that no other OEM in the world has. Even Cisco can't touch it.

In general, I'd rate Cisco at a seven out of ten.

I have a partner in a manufacturing company that wants to reduce the use of the MPLS when using the internet. I proposed they use Meraki for the SD-WAN hub and since they only wanted to use a few WAN links I suggested the Cisco SD-WAN for their domain, main protection, and the internet for the backup of all the transitions that do not need critical time.

I have found the performance and the Zero-Touch provisioning helpful which makes it easier for us to develop.

The solution could be more secure. Security is always a priority for us.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

I have found this solution stable.

The solution is scalable.

One of my client's organizations has approximately 5,000 users using the solution.

The solution is easy to implement and maintain. 

If we already agreed on the design and conditions with the customer the installation can take approximately two hours to implement the hub. For the SD-WAN it can take less than one hour and if we use the VPP it is even quicker.

There is no license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

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

When I was working at BT Telecom, we used Cisco SD-WAN for IP telephony.

In my current position in this company, we use this solution to classify network traffic and send the IP packets to the appropriate link.

I have found the solution's main features are its ability to be customized, network traffic classification, and has a wide range of features that can be set.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

The solution is stable.

I have found the solution scalable. We have approximately 10 clients.

I was satisfied with the technical support.

The installation is not easy. If you have experience and it is not your first time doing the installation, it can be easier. Additionally, there are a lot of different parameters to set and you have to know exactly what the parameters do. From this perspective, it is not easy. There are a lot of possibilities to do fine-tuning with the SD-WAN settings.

If you were to set all the parameters all at once it would take a lot of time. It is best to fine-tune them over time. This is not a negative factor, having more options allows flexibility.

I would recommend a system integration company that has the knowledge of how to operate the system to do the implementation.

The price of the solution is the only negative factor, it is much more expensive compared with the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution.

I have evaluated Cisco Meraki SD-WAN.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Cisco SD-WAN a ten out of ten.

Our retail clients use this solution to connect their branches.

With this SD-WAN solution, all we have to do is configure the VM network. The older reconfiguration could take months or even years because we needed to check, verify, test — this was very hectic. I would say that this solution allows businesses to avoid any unnecessary lengthy network changes. At the same time, necessary network changes can be done quickly and easily.

This solution comes with comprehensive technical support. 

Cisco should focus more on making products that are convenient for users. Sadly, I think they are more interested in making money rather than making reliable products. 

The Cisco way of thinking is to create umbrella-like solutions. I would prefer it if this solution was separate from the entire monstrous Cisco portfolio, without additional marketing and other unnecessary features. Still, so far it has been working well. Plus, the support is great. The only drawback is that it's an expensive solution. 

I have been selling Cisco SD-WAN for two years.

For standard use, it's pretty stable. If you want to use this solution to manage traffic, then it depends on the release. Cisco has several patches for a variety of problems. Still, they can't guarantee that there won't' be any bugs. 

This solution is pretty scalable. 

Cisco's technical support is great. 

The initial setup is complex. Setting up the controllers and the certification center is difficult. 

In the Russian market where we operate, this solution is expensive. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. 

If you're interested in using this solution, first ask yourself how often do you need to change your network configuration? If you rarely have to switch, then you don't need SD-WAN.

We are resellers and integrators.

It's a complete solution with many security features.

It integrates well with other Cisco solutions.

Customers require features that are secure for endpoints, on-premises, and for the cloud.

We could provision Cisco Umbrella to respond to the security requirements.

They need to make provisions in the platform cloud with tools. In the cloud environment, it is very easy to enable the solution with Umbrella.

They should configure to provision other devices and many endpoints to deploy the SD-WAN with security.

I would like a feature included for the prevention and inspection of data to implement. 

I have been working with Cisco SD-WAN for three years.

We are using the Viptela version.

We had issues with the stability only one time when we integrated Viptella SD-WAN with Cisco Umbrella. After reading all of the documentation, we have not had any issues with the stability.

Cisco SD-WAN is scalable.

Cisco technical support is very good. They are responsive to my questions and send me all of the information needed.

They respond quickly.

We are also using Meraki.

Meraki is more suited to small companies, whereas Cisco is more for larger enterprise companies.

We have a hybrid deployment. We have clients who prefer the cloud and others who want an on-premises deployment.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy.

The time for deployment depends on the size of the company and its requirements. There are many factors. It can take two months to six months to complete.

We have a team of five people. One project manager, two specialist engineers, and two basic engineers, who maintain this solution.

Cisco is more expensive than FortiGate.

We also evaluated Fortinet FortiGate for our clients. For customers, it is mainly a decision based on pricing and technical options.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. Technical support is very strong and provides high-level assistance. They have knowledgeable technicians with engineers present.

Overall, it's a very good solution.

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN a nine out of ten. 

We implemented and currently support some clients using Cisco SD-WAN.

Essentially, everything is moving to the cloud. There is a big shift from the traditional network operator-based infrastructure to a fully cloud-native kind of infrastructure for companies. People don't want to deal with so many providers. The network provider, the cybersecurity provider, another company managing the routers and firewalls, et cetera. Everything is moving to the cloud to simplify things. The shift to SD-WAN is motivated by business reasons. It allows for cutting costs. Traditional networking forms for data centers are simply too expensive, too slow, and very time-consuming to maintain.

Today with the SASE architecture, it's very easy to immediately deploy the cloud to have one subscription for one set of services. With one subscription, you have full access to a dedicated network that is much faster than the traditional MNTL networks that traditional data centers are using. Plus, you have integrated cybersecurity and a fully dedicated private backbone that is essentially spreading across the globe. People don't want to delegate to British telecom off to Verizon anymore, handing their network into another company managing the security into another company managing the networking infrastructure. With SD-WAN, especially with solutions based on the SASE framework, they pay one subscription fee each month, and one single company is managing everything. 

In terms of technology, we are completely agnostic. In many cases, we deal with Cisco simply due to the fact that the client already has a Cisco implementation. Most of the clients started their corporate deployment 10 or 15 years ago, and therefore there are legacy systems. Some of them are built on Cisco and we found that their systems are already implemented. 

I evaluate new technologies continuously each month and we deploy, as I told you, across geographies in multiple companies. Cisco is definitely cutting edge, absolutely cutting edge in terms of robustness on the capability of the network to be very stable with very low delay. It is a proven, tried, and tested technology. It is very reliable software. It is rock solid and very stable with respect to delivering top-performance networking functions. 

It is very stable with very good firmware. In terms of traditional functionality, it's unbeatable as an offer. I would say 10 plus as a vote in terms of traditional networking.

There is much room for improvement on the cybersecurity side. For most of the clients, it is unacceptable nowadays to have too many people involved in managing the corporate network, and many clients like to see providers that can deliver a unified solution that integrates together with the network functionalities and the cybersecurity functionalities as they go hand in hand, especially in a regulated industry such as in banking, insurance, or healthcare. All governmental infrastructure must be compliant with very specific guidelines and requirements. It's not always it is possible to meet them with out-of-the-box products. You need to integrate on the top. If Cisco can work more in creating a true SASE solution known simply as an SD-WAN solution, that will be magic. That will be perfect. Right now, they need to do more of the cybersecurity side. 

Cisco is working at the moment. Unfortunately, like all traditional companies, it is very big and quite spread out. That makes it a little bit slower to react than some of the other competitors in the space. Some competitors are much faster in providing out-of-the-box solutions, more innovative solutions. In terms of innovation, in many cases, they're lagging behind.

Specifically, with Cisco SD-WAN I have about five years of experience now. With Cisco, it's a long-term kind of connection with the company. We have been serving clients over the past 12 years. Always, Cisco is very present.

The solution is stable. There is very minimal movement and very minimal packet loss. There is very minimal delay in the network. In terms of performance, it's absolutely best of breed, and world-class. There is no discussion about that. In terms of hardware, probably is the best provider. 

The solution is very scalable. From the branch office to the data center, you have so many Cisco modules, and you can cut the system the way you like. Any shape and size are available from Cisco. I don't see any provider of networking solutions with more options. It's definitely a solution where you can pinpoint exactly the specific needs of a branch, a data center, or an office, and find the right piece of hardware. There are so many sometimes it can be even complicated to choose, however, Cisco provides everything from the ground up without any problem. It's a tried and tested solution, and therefore is very well documented. 

The solutions are stable, however, we offer technical support. If it's broken, you always have access to local support. Somebody from Cisco will react very, very rapidly. 

In terms of configuration, usually companies, schools, companies, providers managed service providers like us tend to manage the network. 

In terms of support, it's one of the most well-known and respected companies and universally accepted as a top player. You can trust the support they provide. 

The typical brands we deal with are mostly Cisco, Palo Alto, Zscaler, and, in more recent times, Check Point and Citrix.

Typically we have on average, a team of three or four people managing Cisco systems based in New Bailey, where we have representatives specializing in Cisco Systems.

Cisco is very well-known for being easy to use. We help quite a few clients with their Cisco implementations. There are absolutely no issues in terms of performance, or setup. It's more of innovation in their architectural kind of a problem that Cisco has at the moment. They are having trouble keeping pace with the innovation in the sector. That said, it's a very good system, and easy to deploy.

We help our clients implement the solution.

Being embedded with Cisco is a matter of negotiation. Therefore, the pricing depends on the negotiation and if the client is a medium-sized company or a large company. It depends on the geography. We already see different pricing when we deploy in India when we deploy New Zealand or we deploy in the Nordics, in Europe, or even in Southern Europe. Prices are always different and depend on the local offices and how big the deal is. 

Pricing varies according to requirements, accessory services, and pure hardware. 

Markets are so hyper-competitive, and pricing is converging for all top providers. If you go to Fortinet, if you go to Palo Alto, it's not that you'll find prices that are so dramatically different. Everyone is completely aligned to compete. Differentiation is not on pricing. When you deploy a system like Cisco, the main selection criteria, is not pricing.

Today, even rich companies are very careful on pricing, however, companies are very mature in terms of structuring deals. The price of a system is very well-known in the market. All the differences are made by two essential elements. One is the ability of your sales team to penetrate within a company. Sales channels are making all the difference - not technology, not anything else. The second point is innovation and quality of accessory services delivered on top of the hardware. Hardware today is a given, is like code for a nice screen. Cisco is able to provide some hardware functions and firmware functions, however, all the difference is made by ancillary services, by additional service, by all the service that you build on the top of your products, and adding a very good success manager that is handling the deployment process and can guarantee that the client is extracting true business value from IT investments. People don't spend money to buy hardware, to buy networks. People spend money to execute their corporate functions in a very effective, efficient way, in a very secure way. They don't care about Cisco. They don't care about the firewall or the router. They need to deliver products and successful expediencies and services across the globe.

What I'm looking for is for companies - and Cisco is among them - able to provide best-of-breed technologies to support both the network implementation side and the cybersecurity side. 

Typically, we are technology agnostic, therefore, we can support clients in implementing systems, using different kinds of technologies. Among them is Cisco.

We tend to work with hybrid deployments as the major pain point for clients is to harmonize, to have public and private clouds working together. There is no distinction for clients between public and private. Typically, they call us to organize to a single pane of glass, where they can control all the cloud, their network activities in a very simple, seamless way. The difficulty today is exactly putting together to work a very diverse kind of hardware ecosystem ranging from Google Cloud or Amazon Cloud, Azure that is growing exponentially these days, and plus all the enterprise data center, and putting all these elements together.

Sometimes after mergers and acquisitions, we have to patch together pieces of hardware from different organizations that are not even compatible. For example, very recently, we supported the MNA integration of two different companies, and they were using two completely different systems. One was based on Cisco, the other one on Fortinet and Palo Alto, and was using lots of data. That is the problem today. Unifying all the settings, all the controls using a kind of centralized control and making sure that public and private clouds are working together in a very seamless fashion.

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

We use it to manage hospitals and clinics in my country.

It has improved our connection and bandwidth.

I like the feature that lets you transfer from old devices to new devices without changing the hardware and subscription.

The price could be better. From a technical side, and everything's working smoothly. Cisco SD-WAN could be cheaper. 

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for about one year.

It's very good and stable compared to the others.

It's scalable. We have around 250 sites around Jordan.

Technical support is good. We don't have any issue with their performance.

The initial setup and deployment were straightforward.

I implemented this solution by myself.

It's expensive. If you compare Cisco with Fortinet and Juniper, you'll find that Cisco is more expensive than other vendors.

We don't have Sympatico or Versa in my country. We just have Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet. But Fortinet doesn't have complete distribution, and the switching solution is very weak. We needed a solution that integrates with others, and we think that Cisco helped. Fortinet doesn't have all the switches, and they have some issues with statistics. This is why we chose Cisco.

I would advise potential users to try Cisco and see if they offer more for their enterprise needs. I would recommend Cisco SD-WAN to new users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco SD-WAN a nine.

We are a solution provider and Cisco SD-WAN is one of the products that we implement for our customers. I am a system integrator.

We use this product for zero-disk provisioning at branch offices. The controllers are at a central location and are used to manage the branches.

The most valuable features are zero-disk provisioning and link load balancing on an application basis. In the case of link load balancing, if an application is not working properly on the primary link, it may be fine on the secondary one. This means that if the first link goes down then it may still be accessible, which is a very good feature.

The process of onboarding the vSmart, vBond, and vManage should be improved to make it easier to manage in general. 

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for one year.

Stability-wise, it is a good product and it works very well.

This is a scalable solution. There are between 1,000 and 1,500 users.

I have been in contact with technical support and my experience with them has been fine.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the scenario, but it usually takes between two and three days to set up.

As a system integrator, I deploy this solution myself.

We need a couple of engineers at headquarters to maintain it, and we don't usually need anybody at the remote sites. Normally, it's plug-and-play.

Licensing is on a subscription basis.

In summary, this is a good product and we plan to continue using it in the future. It is one that I definitely recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The security of the solution is pretty good.

We like the user interface. It's fairly easy to navigate.

The user experience is pretty good.

We've found that the solution is easy to deploy.

The solution is very popular with many vendors.

Overall, our experience has been very positive. So far, so good. We don't have many complaints about its capabilities.

We've worked with BetterCloud, and found the security to be better than what is offered by Cisco. The user interface is nicer as well. Cisco should look at what they are doing and try to replicate it a bit.

When it comes to adding more security features, you need to add more RAM.

The pricing could be a bit better. When a customer transfers from a traditional WAN to SD-WAN, the subscription price is one big problem for them.

The solution is a bit buggy, which makes it slightly unstable.

The provisioning could be easier during deployment. Some vendors say they can handle provisioning, however, it differs from vendor to vendor.

I've been working with the solution for more than one year at this point. It is likely closer to two years now.

We do find that the solution can be a bit buggy. The more complex the setup is, the more bugs we seem to find. There seem to be many bugs in the software.

The web GUI is easy to deploy, however, when we deploy a whole network for a customer, we can see how they run inside the GUI. We've had to open cases with technical support to help us deal with issues that arise.

We have medium-sized clients, largely based in the retail industry.

We've dealt with technical support in the past to help us deal with a few bugs. They are pretty professional.

I'm working for a partner in Vietnam. They have many vendors, including Aruba and Meraki Cisco.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's pretty straightforward. A company shouldn't have too many issues with the setup.

I've done it a few times at this point, and every time, day by day, it gets easier and easier.

The solution is a bit expensive. There's a big jump from WAN to SD-WAN which customers don't like.

We are a Cisco partner.

I've worked with a variety of different versions of the solution. I'm not always using the latest version.

Cisco is a very professional organization. They offer good support.

I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is providing the servicing of this solution globally. Cisco is an experienced vendor, which is the main reason we chose this solution.

An area of improvement for this solution is reducing the complexity. Currently, the solution requires people who have a very good understanding of Cisco SD-WAN. 

For example, VeloCloud can be used and is easier to understand, but it has limited functionality. It is designed like a block box where the internal architecture is hidden. With Cisco, I can see the inner workings of the architecture. Therefore, it is necessary to have a good understanding of how the solution works in order make full use of it.

An additional feature that should be included in the next release of this solution is the ability to use a local area network (LAN) behind the domain name system (DNS) box. This feature would allow for better communication protocols to be put in place.

I have been using this solution for three years.

Since Cisco acquired Viptela, the stability of this solution has given problems since it is quite new. 

The scalability of this solution has given problems in the past since it is quite new. 

The customer service/technical support for this solution is very good.

The setup of this solution is both straightforward and complex. For example, the initial setup is simple, but the design and formatting thereafter is very complex.

The pricing of this solution is very expensive.

We would recommend this solution to customers looking to implement it on a global scale. We recommend the solution, not only because of the functionality or the technical support, but also because of the delivery of the solution, and the docking and upgrading capabilities.