What is our primary use case?
Actually, we propose Moogsoft as a solution. Previously we were using the solution for our customer, and we were basically using in-house to train our resources. We still propose this as a solution as part of our global product solutions, but currently, my role has changed, and I'm not in the same business line. So I'm not directly involved with solution selling to customers now. However, it's still part of our portfolio. We do offer this as a solution.
Previously, I was leading the tools as Chief Architect, tools and automation. So then I was directly responsible for Moogsoft as a solution. We were pitching that, and then I was directly responsible for the solution. Now, in my new role, I am still selling it to my customer, but I no longer look into the tools as my ownership because that's a chief architect job.
I'm not directly responsible, but I can tell you as part of our international tooling strategy, we are having a partnership now with ServiceNow as the core tool. So being ServiceNow as our core platform, eventually it will provide a journey end to end from project management will also be onboarded as various solutions on top of ServiceNow platform.
We sell it to our customers. When we define solutions for our customers, we do offer the features under ITOM. So on a pre-sales level, I can say that we have used it, but on a customer environment, I would say I personally have not hands-on experience with ITOM. But I know what it supports, what is the pricing, what are the capabilities as a pitch on the pre-sales. When you propose a solution to customer and then you offer them the tooling. We do offer ITOM a lot, although it's expensive, the way they charge your basis, the number of devices, the features that you want to use and the typical licensing around it. So it's pretty complex and expensive, but it's very powerful at the same time.
What is most valuable?
On the observability side, I've used Splunk a bit. I've used Moogsoft, but that was more of a tool. I've used Dynatrace. I have good exposure to various tools though I'm missing some names.
It's technically much less complex with Palo in terms of configuration management and policy management. It's pretty straightforward in terms of complexity.
Our products are typically around SASE solutions, SD-X using these two OEMs or maybe there are more OEMs. For example, we work with Cato SASE Cloud Platform. We work with Fortinet as one of the larger products that we sell, mostly around SASE and SSE solutions.
Cato SASE Cloud Platform is new in our portfolio. It's been six months that we have engaged with them, and we are offering that solution to some of our partners and customers as well. It's very lightweight but very powerful at the same time. So we are exploring their solutions currently.
The benefits and use cases remain consistent. It's a one-stop solution. You do not need to have different products to manage the SASE environment. They offer a very lightweight and powerful console where it has everything needed to manage as a service. Being cloud-based, they have very good integrations with third parties. They offer various types of APIs where you can interconnect your network with different solutions. It's not heavy something Splunk. The UX part is very user-friendly. The dashboards are clean and crisp. The level of customization that you can do from your UX is very powerful. In terms of service and reliability, the platform is pretty stable and they're expanding very fast.
The platform offers more than 400 different types of interfaces. This allows you to bring this solution as part of a bigger solution if you need various different components on your network. It's very easily fittable as a brick. If you talk about solution, then it's a very good brick which is easy to fit. The integrations are available off the shelf which do not need a lot of customization. It's quite plug and play.
The policy center and the ease of managing all those policies and configuration is pretty straightforward. It's easy to use for users. If you need to spend 30 minutes in any other product, you will spend only 15 minutes here.
It's flexible. If you have a large organization and if you are divided in zones, your other zones use some different solutions. It's very easily fittable that you can still continue to work on your other products while Cato SASE Cloud Platform fits in very smoothly. It allows you the flexibility of using multiple products at the same time within the same organization. It's a flexibility of adaptability and adoption.
What needs improvement?
I may not be that equipped now, but there are certainly growth areas for them, especially around how they provide reporting and monitoring and then flexibility of combining it with an observability part attached to it. This would remove the need to integrate another specialist tool for observability or monitoring part.
They would certainly employ AI, especially agentic AI. I think that should be already part of their roadmap as a transversal. But certainly, the kind of integrations they offer today, in the future, I would think they would add more and more feature sets, especially around where they remove the dependency of having specialist solutions on a typical monitoring side.
I think it's a fair price. It's positioned very well in the market. It's not low or very high. In the future, I hope that with more services being bundled as part of the solution on the cloud side, they should reduce the price being, provide bundle service. I think in the future they will come up with reduced pricing, more competitive pricing. But today it's fair. It's not very low or very high.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's pretty much stable and that's one of the reasons that more and more customers are onboarding. On the stability scale, it's probably around nine. We have not seen many issues with Cato SASE Cloud Platform recently.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very fast and easy to scale. In terms of strength, it's very high.
How are customer service and support?
They provide very good technical support, but their professional services are very expensive.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Because of my role in sales and business development, I do not work on tools anymore.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is pretty straightforward in terms of complexity. The onboarding of devices or new branches is straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
Their implementation team can be rated between eight to nine out of ten.
What was our ROI?
My business development role is basically for a group which is an expert team more on the network solutions, less monitoring. Previously it was more on monitoring, now it's more on SD-WAN and SD-WAN incubation, SASE and SSE solutions around it with Palo Alto and Fortinet. I've moved on to that part, so I'm not primarily looking into the tools here.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The features are available for much less than Palo Alto. Palo Alto is more expensive today.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Palo Alto is pretty close to Cato SASE Cloud Platform. However, on the pricing, Palo Alto is more expensive being a more matured player in the market. Certainly, Fortinet is big in volume, but on the pricing, Fortinet offers better pricing.
What other advice do I have?
My experience would be four out of five. I personally need to understand it more deeply. But it appears good at this point, as it's one of the good products which are expanding very fast and the market adoption is very good. I rate Cato SASE Cloud Platform as nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner