What is our primary use case?
In construction, we have a company in the steel industries, where we are doing the POCs currently, and we have one exchange, Al-Jabr Exchange. We have a few others lined up, but currently, we manage this construction group.
Basically, we are providing the solutions for industries, such as the manufacturing industry, construction group, and a money exchange group. Additionally, we have another customer lined up, which is RPM, a rapid response team in the medical field.
My relationship with the Cato SASE Cloud Platform vendor is as a partner.
What is most valuable?
The Cato SASE Cloud Platform supports my customers' needs for connectivity and security by removing the throttling from the headquarters and putting a firewall in the cloud, instead of having to use a costly MPLS network to perform security inspection on all traffic from various branches. Now, with Cato SASE Cloud Platform solutions, branches no longer need to go to headquarters for inspection; they are picked up from the cloud, which increases efficiency and protection.
The most useful security feature of Cato SASE Cloud Platform for my customers is the Firewall as a Service (FaaS), which provides a single firewall solution that scales regardless of the size of the enterprise.
Cato's global SD-WAN capability impacts network performance positively by partnering with global tier-one networks, which increases efficiency, guarantees SLAs, improves speed, and reduces packet losses, making it a more efficient solution compared to traditional IPsec.
What needs improvement?
I don't see any areas of improvement for Cato SASE Cloud Platform since they have all their solutions in-house and implement suggestions rapidly, providing a continuous improvement process without any current challenges.
Having worked with the Cato SASE Cloud Platform solution for eight months and previously as a TAC engineer with Palo Alto and Cisco, I don't see any room for improvement as they provide everything we need for a SASE solution.
I don't have anything to mention regarding improvements at the moment, but I can contact you in a few months for any further observations as I continue to explore the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the Cato SASE Cloud Platform for eight months.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The deployment time is indeed quick, taking just two hours, and I have faced no significant challenges with Cato SASE Cloud Platform during this time; it has been easy to use.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability shows no complaints on my end.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The setup is straightforward from one to ten, and my customers are using it mainly in public clouds. For scalability, I would rate Cato SASE Cloud Platform as perfect.
How are customer service and support?
Support is rated at eight out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
What was our ROI?
The SD-WAN functionality improves network connectivity by optimizing traffic and reducing latency, which can lead to a return on investment with cost savings. Specifically, it replaces costly MPLS links with SD-WAN and utilizes an internet-based backbone with intelligent routing, resulting in a cost reduction of 40% to 60%.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is reasonable and depends on the usage.
What other advice do I have?
I am also a partner with Cato SASE Cloud Platform.
Mentioning the bypassing feature and traffic engineering would be fine.
Currently, I find no need for any small improvements for Cato SASE Cloud Platform, but I have noticed that they implement suggestions rapidly, and although I'm not facing challenges now, I could think of potential additional features in the future, such as improvements in DHCP IP release functionality, which I have already requested.
To summarize, I recommend this solution for medium to enterprise-sized businesses. I am Mr. Anas Abdul Rauf, working for FSD Innovative Technologies as a network security engineer, and I hold a CCIE certification. I am set to work on FishOS as the first authorized partner in the GCC region, enabling me to provide further reviews after some months.
I rate the Cato SASE Cloud Platform a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
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