Aruba Orchestrator vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware are both solutions in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.8, while VMware is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 0.7% mindshare in SDW, compared to VMware’s 10.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN and Aruba Orchestrator are strong contenders in the SD-WAN market. VMware VeloCloud appears to have the upper hand with its advanced Dynamic Multipath Optimization, integration with cloud services, and dashboard visibility.

Features: VMware VeloCloud features Dynamic Multipath Optimization (DMPO) enhancing link quality, zero-touch provisioning for simplified setup, and seamless integration capabilities with cloud services. Aruba Orchestrator focuses on WAN optimization, intent overlay for easier network management, and provides a single pane of glass view for comprehensive network visibility.

Room for Improvement: VeloCloud could benefit from enhancing its security features and expanding its global support network while offering better pricing models and user-friendly documentation. Aruba Orchestrator needs simpler management menus, more deployment flexibility, and better reporting capabilities with improved dynamic security certificate management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware VeloCloud provides flexible deployment options across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments but faces challenges in technical support consistency. Aruba Orchestrator is straightforward for hybrid and on-premises deployments, facing some complexities due to fewer configuration touchpoints. Aruba's support is generally positive with room for enhancements in training and documentation.

Pricing and ROI: VMware VeloCloud is competitive yet pricey, justified by its features, offering ROI through improved productivity over time, particularly for large-scale deployments. Aruba Orchestrator is seen as more cost-effective with subscription-based models that eliminate maintenance contracts, providing an appealing cost-to-feature ratio for enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Aruba Orchestrator vs. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Aruba Orchestrator vs. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.1%, up from 20.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aruba Orchestrator is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN is 10.3%, up from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

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Aneesh K

IT Solution Analyst II at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Provides complete internal visibility from LAN to Wi-Fi, resulting in higher stability and easier troubleshooting

Aruba has plenty of solutions showcased at this event. Perhaps they offer their firewall, which we are not currently utilizing—the LAN switching, ClearPass, and Wi-Fi. ClearPass is is still on-premises, but the switching, Wi-Fi, and security features are included. It has some capabilities, like automation intelligence, which they call AI operations. So it is helpful. Our time spent on troubleshooting will be significantly reduced with it. Another useful feature is that we can inquire about the health data from Aruba Central and receive the necessary answers. Aruba Central simplifies management. Yes, deployment will be much faster than on-premises setups, where you need many hardware gateways. With just an access point or minimal hardware, deployment will be quicker. Troubleshooting with it has also made it much more straightforward. A group of ten people should be more than sufficient to manage an extensive infrastructure. Aruba is providing better support. They are also improving their email services. They are up to market standards, so we choose to go with them. We were looking for a direct vendor, but they didn't meet our requirements. Aruba Orchestrator is meeting our current expectations and standards, so we are sticking with them. We don't have any issues because we have been with Aruba for many years. We don't mind moving from one vendor to another. We are simply transitioning from one rental type to another with Aruba. I prioritize enhancements in AI functionality over other features. There are several implementations, with AI being the primary focus. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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Sami-Isoaho

Principal Cloud Architect at Loihe

To fully utilize cloud vendors' hardware networking, Microsoft and VMware support everything

To improve the product, the company, alone or with a good partner, should manufacture their own hardware brand with boxes to make the product more shippable. Implementing VMware is much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive than implementing Fortinet or Check Point. With Fortinet, you pay a couple of hundred dollars for hosting and a low-cost firewall, there's only one box to ship to each site, and it's much easier to manage. Moreover, it would be easy for the large telecom operators and system integrators to sell the solution. It would also be a good fit for customers with multiple small offices, who I currently advise to choose hardware-vendor SD-WAN solutions over VMware.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."

"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."

"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."

"It's comprehensive and time-saving. It covers several areas regarding security."

"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."

"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."

"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The technical support services are excellent."

"The most important feature is WAN optimization."

"The Business Intent Overlay is a great feature."

"Aruba Orchestrator has notably reduced enrollment setup times from several hours to within an hour if prepared and planned."

"The solution has a single pane of glass view that allows you to see everything happening in your SD-WAN world."

"We had to deal with separate management models for Wi-Fi and switches. With Aruba Orchestrator, it's now a unified solution, making things much easier for us. We log in and manage everything from a single console. It provides complete internal visibility from LAN to Wi-Fi, resulting in higher stability and easier troubleshooting. The management process is much quicker and more streamlined."

"The product has reduced OpEx expenditure."

"The most valuable feature is optimization."

"VMware is the only SD-WAN solution that integrates with Azure Virtual WAN."

"I like VMware SD-WAN's automation and zero-touch provisioning. Its main advantage is simplicity. Anyone can use this gateway."

"The setup is very straightforward."

"In my experience, the setup process has been fairly straightforward."

"The most valuable feature is load balancing."

"The most valuable features of VMware SD-WAN are the overall capabilities and ease of use."

"The initial configuration and deployment are quite easy."

"I have found the dynamic multipoint protocol(DNPO) most useful because it can tell you which is the best circuit to use for different types of traffic."

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN pros

Cons

"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."

"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."

"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."

"Technical support for this solution can be improved."

"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."

"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."

"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."

"I mostly do administration, and I found Cisco to be the hardest major firewall manufacturer to deal with, with Fortinet FortiGate being the second hardest for me."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The solution lacks sufficient security features."

"The solution can be improved by lowering the cost and making it more user-friendly for first-time users."

"They could provide essential training to understand the product functionality."

"Aruba Orchestrator should implement dynamic certificate changes for security."

"The management menu should be simplified."

"The initial setup is complex, depending on the overall planning for the entire environment."

"I would like for them to upgrade to 5G integration. Our customers have 4G now and the connectivity isn't good. It should be much faster."

"The security of the firewall should be improved. It would be a good idea to have a standalone product with better security."

"VeloCloud could improve its integration capabilities with other solutions."

"VeloCloud needs improvement in terms of its security features."

"We don't have much visibility into the routing environment."

"The initial setup of VMware SD-WAN was simple. However, it took six days to complete."

"In the future, we would like to have more capacity using this solution as there are limitations on the VCE. For example, only 50 tunnels can be supported currently but we would like to have 200 tunnels using the VeloCloud VCE device."

"VMware SD-WAN can improve on the security features."

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I do not have first-hand experience with the rice of Fortinet FortiGate, but I have heard the price was reasonable."

"In the Asian economy in which we operate, FortiGate is expensive."

"Fortinet FortiGate allows you to purchase licenses for hardware and software."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate when compared to other solutions is high. However, my knowledge of the price is from third parties and I am not sure how accurate it is. I typically work in the technical area of my organization."

"Fortinet is the least expensive solution."

"The price is highly competitive when compared to other brands that offer similar functionality."

"Each feature costs money, so it is important to study your needs."

"We saved a bundle by not needing all the past appliances from an NGFW."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I think it is quite expensive compared to other vendors in the market because it depends on what kind of features you really want to acquire in the product."

"The solution's licensing costs are yearly. It is not expensive, and I rate it around three to four out of ten."

"I rate the platform’s pricing a five out of ten."

"Aruba Orchestrator is free to use."

"The cost of VMware SD-WAN is high, but I think you can still get better pricing if your volume is high."

"The price is reasonable for this solution, but the only challenge for us is that the Rand currency fluctuates to the dollar and provides some complexities. The price might go up just because the Rand has actually lost value."

"We pay about $500 USD, or 700,000 Korean won."

"Price would be a challenge for customers, because it is expensive."

"I would rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten since the license is costly."

"Overall pricing could be lower. It is much more expensive than traditional hardware vendor pricing."

"We make monthly payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."

"There is only a standard fee for the solution."

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

See all answers

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

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What do you like most about Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator?

The most important feature is WAN optimization.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator?

Aruba Orchestrator is free to use.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator?

The management menu should be simplified.

See all answers

What are the biggest differences between Fortinet Fortigate and VMware SD-WAN?

One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. It is a very ...

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What do you like most about VMware SD-WAN?

One of the key use cases for VMware SD-WAN was assisting a customer in the industrial zone. They required virtualized...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware SD-WAN?

The pricing involves licensing for the VeloCloud gateway based on the bandwidth used. The license is required to use ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 21% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Aruba Orchestrator

Compared 36% of the time

More Aruba Orchestrator Competitors

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 18% of the time

Meraki SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 11% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 6% of the time

Peplink SpeedFusion vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 6% of the time

FatPipe SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

May 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Aruba Orchestrator

May 2025

Download Aruba Orchestrator product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

April 2025

Download VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator, Unity Orchestrator

VMware SD-WAN, VeloCloud

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Aruba Orchestrator has an intuitive interface that allows you to centrally define, assign, and enforce policies across the WAN. Network managers experience the highest quality of experience to:

Centrally define, assign and enforce policies based on business intent to secure and control all application traffic across the WAN.

Orchestrator dashboards provide real time visibility into SD-WAN health and performance in a single screen, monitoring traffic throughput along with loss, latency and jitter across overlays and underlays.

Maintain the highest levels of application performance by automatically assigning application and security policies across 100s or 1000s of sites, including automated orchestration with cloud security services.

Central orchestration of network functions including SD-WAN routing, firewall, segmentation, WAN optimization, application visibility and control, and automated orchestration with cloud security services.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

VMware Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a secure access service edge (SASE) platform that combines many types of software-based network technologies in an attempt to enable users to virtualize their wide area networks and reduce their reliance on hardware. In essence, this solution makes it possible for users to reliably access their applications from anywhere in the world by leveraging cloud technologies. Users can simply, efficiently, and completely control their network devices and traffic. It ensures that organizations are always able to use the best possible connection to their data centers. VMware SD-WAN steers traffic so that it is always using the most reliable connections and at the same time takes steps to remediate any problems that it detects in other network links. This guarantees that organizations can access high-priority applications at all times.

VMware SD-WAN Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by deploying VMware SD-WAN include:

Reduced cost of network management. Organizations that choose to employ VMware SD-WAN can manage their network at a cost that is 2.5 times less expensive than what it costs to use traditional WAN architectures. Its ability to both augment existing hardware and replace said hardware if the user chooses to do so is part of what enables users to reduce their overhead costs.

Ease of deployment. VMware SD-WAN makes it possible for organizations to deploy it without having to rely on the assistance of technical experts. When the device - whether virtual or otherwise - is connected to the internet, it integrates with a central orchestrator that pushes the correct integrations to the device in question. This automates the installation process and makes it so that anybody can initiate and follow the deployment through to the end of the process.

Easily segment networks to improve environmental performance. Users can divide their networks into multiple segments that share a single IP address. These networks can be incorporated into an organization’s IT infrastructure and enable it to run more reliably. One way it does this is by providing multiple potential channels for data to use to travel in the event that one of the data pathways is suffering from some kind of issue.

VMware SD-WAN Features

Centralized monitoring. VMware SD-WAN is monitored at all times by a centralized orchestrator. From one place, an organization can watch every part of its network. Instead of having to search for the data they need, it can all be found in one location.

Integration capabilities. VMware SD-WAN offers users the capability to integrate their network with the environment of their choosing. This enables them to connect their network to the IT environment that best meets their needs. It makes it easy for them to work with multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Real-time data analytics. VMware SD-WAN can analyze network data in real time. This makes it easy for users to monitor their network’s performance. It also allows them to take steps to quickly remediate any issues that arise before they can become worse.

Reviews from Real Users

VMware SD-WAN is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its ability to automate the process of creating and maintaining a virtual local area network and its intuitive user dashboard.

Sami I., principal cloud architect at Loihe, writes, “One of the solution's most valuable features is the VMware core automation stack at an SDDC. It includes NSX, the VMware virtualization layer for the networks (the LAN virtualization), which works extremely well with the VMware SD-WAN solution and is the primary advantage over all the others. None of the other vendors could integrate with the virtual LAN, making it quite complicated and virtualized to be fully automated.”

Chih S., senior technical consultant at a tech services company, says, “The product has a very good user dashboard that is simple to navigate.”

VMware

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Information Not Available

Redmond, Coca Cola, Roka Bioscience, MetTel, Deutsche Telekom, Rockford Construction, The Bay Club, tru Independence, Triton Management Services, DevCon, AXPM

Buyer's Guide

Aruba Orchestrator vs. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

April 2025

Free Report: Aruba Orchestrator vs. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Orchestrator vs. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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