Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Reviews

With my first client on Viptela were getting MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Service). That is a type of communications network that most of the major providers like Verizon offer. They were paying roughly $3,000 a month for each one of their 30 branches. That was giving them 10 megabits per second. We replaced that with the likes of Verizon Fios and Comcast. Each one of those business internet services cost about $200 apiece per month. The cost of the SD-WAN was maybe another $200. So for $600 a month, we replaced something that was costing them $3000 a month, and they were getting a minimum of about 50 megabits-per-second upload and download.  

Because our client uses two different ISPs at each location, the service is always up. The chances of Comcast going down at the same time that Verizon Files goes down is very, very small. The result is that the client's services are always up with much higher speeds and much lower costs. I think that those benefits are the ones that people are primarily interested in and that is what SD-WAN allowed us to achieve.  

I think that the SD-WAN had everything that my client was interested in in our first experience with it. I think that some of the solutions now are being integrated with other services. As an example, Fortinet has a product called FortiGuard. Included in the FortiGuard product is an SD-WAN. So some of these products are expanding capabilities so that they have more to offer in a single product.  

That would be a nice thing for Cisco. They could provide you your firewall and your SD-WAN solution together. Some people like that approach of nesting products or bundling because they have fewer vendors to deal with and immediate integration.  

I am sure as time goes on that the threat landscape will continue to change all the time. What was good encryption five years ago may not be such great encryption today. Because of that, I am sure that you have to constantly be looking at the threat landscape to see if you need to change anything. I do not know if I am close enough to that cutting edge of the problem to answer the question as to what Cisco's solution really needs. All I know is that my client is very happy with what they have got in the way of savings and functionality. That does not mean that there are not some other things that they would like to see. I just do not know what they are.  

There are a number of large companies that have bought out various SD-WAN vendors. If you looked at VMware, you will find that they also have an SD-WAN that they bought. There are several other companies that have bought SD-WAN services because the technology is so good and the cost benefit is so great that it is worthwhile for almost any company to implement it. They get the advantage of performance and the benefit that these systems never go down.  

As an example, one time locally there was an incident where two providers, CenturyLink and Level 3, went down at the same time. If you had CenturyLink and Level 3, your connection to the internet would have gone down for six or seven hours or whatever the overlap of those outages was. That would be an extreme case. There is another local ISP service called Cox, if you had CenturyLink and Cox, Cox did not go down. In that case, you would continue using your internet or your connections to your branches without ever experiencing an outage and it would just go through Cox. The reason is that Cox's infrastructure, their central office, their wiring, their co-ax cables, or fiber are completely separate from what CenturyLink uses. CenturyLink has got a completely separate central office and completely separate wire. So the chances of those two entities going down exactly at the same time is something that just never happens.  

I helped a client implement a solution called Viptela a while back. Cisco purchased Viptela in August of 2017 and that is what Cisco uses as thier main SD-WAN solution. That first encounter was probably about four years ago.  

The system worked extremely well from the beginning and there have been no issues with stability. In fact, stability is the reason why the solution was put in place.  

SD-WAN is certainly scalable. Huge companies use SD-WAN. Ever heard of Jiffy Lube? Ever heard of PNC Bank? Ever heard of Gap? (I do not know whether Gap surviving because of COVID) Those are just a couple of companies off the top of my head who are using SD-WAN solutions. It is largely scalable. I think that PNC Bank had something like 4,000 locations. It is very scalable.  

In the SD-WAN world, they have something called an orchestrator. On the orchestrator, you can see everything that is happening on your SD-WAN. So you can see if a particular carrier is going down, or if you are experiencing errors or whatever. You can see a complete picture of your entire wide area network in one pane of glass. In the old days before SD-WAN, if you had six carriers, you would have to go and look on six different carrier systems to find out what was going on. Even then, you were not necessarily getting all the information that you needed. SD-WAN is the greatest thing since sliced bread when it comes to having an overview of services.  

It is very widely adopted because it is better and cheaper and easier. You are seeing more companies looking for those solutions. Some of the telecom companies are offering SD-WAN. Some of the UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) companies are also promoting SD-WAN. One of the reasons that they are is to assure their clients that their telephone service will always be up.  

Any technical support we needed was great. Everything worked from day one so there was not a lot of need for those services.  

Our client was using a single service and they wanted a more reliable service, higher speed, and much lower price. We found that solution for them by integrating services. Instead of paying $3000 a month for each of 30 locations, they got it down to about $600 a month for each location. They switched because they got what they wanted.  

The initial setup and installation was pretty straight forward.  

The people from Viptela, at the time, assisted in the implementation. They were helpful in pushing along the implementation and it went smoothly.  

Depending upon the speed and depending upon the vendor, if you are getting SD-WAN as a service, it is probably something in the neighborhood of $100 to $200 a month per location. That is the cost of the SD-WAN. Then, of course, you need your business broadband connections. Business broadband with like 50 megs symmetrical or 100 megs symmetrical and may cost something like $100 a month or so. But at any rate, the services are not very expensive and they are widely available.  

The advice that I would give someone in the market for an SD-WAN is to look at Gartner and see what Gartner has to say. My information is recent in that the bank that I implemented it in does other business with me and they tell me that everything is working great. They have never had a problem. It is now four years later and it is probably worthwhile taking a look at what the competition is doing — including Cisco Meraki, which is another SD-WAN offering from Cisco. A lot of companies have implemented Cisco Meraki, and Cisco Meraki is a good solution. But there is also Versa which is a good SD-WAN solution. There are at least seven or eight very well-known companies that provide SD-WAN solutions.  

On a scale of one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Cisco SD-WAN as a ten-out-of-ten. For my client, it was certainly a ten between the cost savings of 80% and a performance boost of 400% or so. It worked right from the beginning and saved them a ton of money.  

We are a solution provider and Cisco SD-WAN is one of the products that we implement for our customers. I am a pre-sales engineer and help with the consultancy.

The idea of SD-WAN is very good and it's efficient.

You get security, all of the service you need, and it's easy to deploy.

It is a feature-rich product with a lot of components.

Cisco products are a little bit complicated, so making them a little bit easier would be an improvement. The installation is easy but having many components, and the integration with other components, is a little bit complex compared to other products and other vendors.

I have been working with Cisco SD-WAN for one or two years.

This is definitely a stable product.

It is a scalable product and it can also be integrated with other Cisco products such as NSO (Network Services Orchestrator) and the virtual CPE. The customers for this product are enterprise-level companies.

The Cisco technical support is excellent.

Prior to this solution, we used Cisco iWAN.

The initial setup is easy to do. I'm not sure of how long it takes to deploy, but it is not very complex and if all of the requirements are met then it should be straightforward.

We deploy this product for our clients.

Cisco is more expensive than some competing products.

We have compared Cisco with all of the vendors such as Fortinet and Talari. I believe that Cisco is the best, overall. It is not the cheapest, but it is the best both technically and support-wise.

With respect to other vendors, they have different strengths. For example, Fortinet is coming from a security background so they have quite a good product with a secure firewall on it. However, they lack some of the SD-WAN functionalities. I believe the routing part is still being done on the CPE, whereas with Cisco, it's done on the orchestrator.

Overall, I don't know how other vendors can compete with Cisco, and that is partly because of the integration that Cisco has with all of its products. It gives them a big edge.

Cisco is a company that has been in this market for quite a long time. They have a stable office, stable software, and all of the features are there. Having the SD-WAN on top of the routers they have has given them an advantage. Plus, they have a wide range of products and there is integration between all of them and SD-WAN.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are network providers. SD-WAN is one of the main options we offer to our customers.

Clients primarily use the solution for three main reasons. The first is for cost savings when accessing the internet. The second is access to the cloud. The third is to allow customers a kind of autonomy with management over the network.

Cisco is an industry leader, so customers have a high level of trust with the brand more-so than with some newcomers that might have some more revolutionary solutions, but no name recognition.

The solution appeals to big companies that are keen on selecting a major vendor rather than an emerging one as there's an assumption of reliability.

Cisco's technical solution in itself is very reliable. From a purely technical point of view, this is one of the best options.

Overall, the solution is very advanced in network configuration and offers excellent automated routine features.

The client portal needs to be improved in order to make the solution much better.

The service care area of the solution needs improvement. That is to say, the ability to have a simplified management system is a key success factor. 

If you could have the ability to raise an SD-WAN capability just by activating a kind of license, it would great. We have too much hardware deployment needed right now. 

In the future, if the solution could make it so that there is nothing to deploy beyond a license and some firmware, it would be great.

I've been using the solution for six months.

The solution is stable. This is the reason why we ultimately chose it as a product. Cisco's experience regarding the complex configuration of networks is perhaps the more mature in the market. 

They have made some improvements to the solution, and I think these advancements make it one of the most stable in the industry. It's not great for large configurations, so it may not be as stable in those cases. However, Cisco remains the most stable on the market.

The solution is scalable, however, it may be less so than Cisco Viptela. SortNet also has a portal that is not completely mature, and quite complex. This is why we developed a customer portal, dedicated to our customers, although some portals are still Viptela or SortNet. This custom portal has the ability to simplify the considerations of SD-WAN features for all of our sign-in customers.

We have approximately nine or ten big customers that are still in the proof of concept phase. Of those, three or four are large scale projects. Those have hundreds or even thousands of users on the network.

I haven't been in touch with technical support. I personally have a strong relationship with pre-sales people, but not technical support itself.

I've worked with a variety of other solutions in the past. They have their own approaches to the industry.

Sophos, for example, approaches their solution from a security perspective. The main premise of the product is its ability to secure the network itself. Others have close relationships with VMware solutions that provide for an easy way to bind the applicable network with the network walls.

In the near future, most will need to provide for UCTE, which will become a must-have for any solution.

Fortinet does not have a UCTE itself, but it has a low segment and basic equipment that is really interesting because it is so cheap. Plus, it's not so difficult to add it in to complete another appliance. This is one thing that we sometimes use to expand security requirements while still being able to have specific SD-WAN equipment.

For Cisco or any other solution, SD-WAN's initial setup is complex. The vendor needs to explain and define the customers clearly. It's not as simple as it sounds. It's better for large clients to do a modest deployment rather than a large one as it's not so easy to deploy. This will be clear after running through a POC.

It's much better for a company to do the deployment with the help of a consultant or integrator, as they understand the solution quite extensively. I'd recommend if a company is seeking out an integrator, that they choose a portal DNA integrator.

Typically, we work to offer our customer autonomy, however, we do offer maintenance packages. Typically, we'll sell co-management packages to clients whereby they choose the priority of the application on the network and we will manage all of what is programmed on the customer's behalf.

The solution works very well for mid-size and enterprise-level organizations.

I would advise others considering implementing the solution to set aside time to strategize and create a proof of concept before diving right in. This will help a company reveal where the solution is relevant and where it is not.

Then, it's important to look at the cost and layout of all of the finances so that the board will have all of the information in front of them. It will help them decide if it makes sense to pursue implementation. The finances and P&Ls must be clear for them. 

Finally, it's important to find a good consultant to assist in the entire process. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our Cisco SD-WAN use case involves implementing it for enterprise customers with multiple sites who want to connect it. This is achieved by turning on the product on the router or firewall.

There was a scenario where the product improved our network's efficiency. For example, we had a customer with a main office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, who wanted to connect with their offices in Hanoi and Hong Kong. By using the product, we could establish a connection between all the IP sites, creating a local network between them. 

The tool is stable, and its troubleshooting capabilities are good. It helps us identify and fix any issues. It simplifies VPN setup for both side-to-side and multisite connections. This allows for easier data sharing between main and branch offices, creating a local network feel even for distant sites.

The most significant benefit we've realized from Cisco SD-WAN's application optimization capabilities is cost savings. Traditionally, businesses had to purchase expensive WAN or wide channels to connect their sites. However, with SD-WAN, they can utilize existing internet lines, eliminating the need for costly WAN.

The solution's integration with other products is good.

The product should improve its prices. 

Cisco SD-WAN is stable. 

The tool is scalable. My company has 20 customers for it. 

The impressions of Cisco SD-WAN's tech support have been positive. Whether from Cisco directly or through our service level management (SLM), the support is quick.

We can only buy three-year licenses, not monthly. The cost seems high for us, especially since we're in Vietnam, which isn't a rich country. But we still like the product because it is good.

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. We recommended Cisco products, including the Cisco SD-WAN, to our customers. If a certain product is not stable, we suggest switching to Cisco products.

Cisco SD-WAN is used to connect users to network applications securely.

The segmentation, high security, and flexibility of the Cisco SD-WAN are the most valuable features.

The cost of Cisco SD-WAN is high and has room for improvement compared to competitors such as Fortinet which has similar functionality.

The technical support has room for improvement.

The UI has room for improvement.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for a couple of years.

Our engineers dislike dealing with Cisco technical support as they frequently face redirection and have to wait for months to get their issues resolved.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward and easy to deploy.

The price is based on the types of routers being used as well as the product licenses.

Fortinet FortiGate has a more comfortable UI and better logic than Cisco.

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

Cisco SD-WAN is mainly intended for medium to large enterprises as it provides significant benefits for organizations with distributed offices across different regions or countries.

I recommend that new users become familiar with all the features that Cisco SD-WAN offers, to enable them to complete their tasks effectively.

We deployed Cisco SD-WAN primarily for our retail customers because they run on the traditional LAN. We migrated them to SD-WAN. They had more than 4000 locations. We didn't have to do anything manually for the failover of the circuit.

I like creating policies. This way, we can better utilize our WAN circuit and get better rates. Its GUI is user-friendly, and the CLI is also great.

It would be better if it provided more visibility. At present, we can't troubleshoot in real time.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for more than three years.

Cisco SD-WAN is very stable. It's a decent product. 

Cisco SD-WAN is a scalable solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give scalability a nine.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

We deployed it the first time with the help of Cisco engineers. We had two Cisco engineers along with an in-house team of four.

I would tell potential users that if they are worried about the cost factor or want an easy plug-and-play solution, they can go ahead with this solution. It's straightforward, and you don't need highly technical people to use it.

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

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.

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.