Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] Reviews

Our company uses Citrix SD-WAN for branch-to-branch connectivity, internet routing, and firewall policies.

Citrix SD-WAN's first good feature is its connectivity between branches. The tool is quite cost-effective because it replaces the need for MPLS, which is a bit expensive. Managing Citrix SD-WAN's platform is easy since you can manage it online. One can manage all the devices in different branches on a central portal online.

Citrix SD-WAN's knowledge base has a few missing things, so you may need to seek help from support. One of the challenges in the solution is that Citrix's support takes time since it involves a bit of a lengthy process. Despite the challenges, I think the solution is good.

The solution's installation phase has certain shortcomings and needs improvement.

I have been using Citrix SD-WAN for two years. I am an end-user of the solution.

It's a stable product. We have encountered a few issues, like glitches and bugs causing some of the devices to fail, while also facing a hardware failure.

Our company faced some difficulties when trying to scale up the solution. I can say it's not easily scalable since it needs a major upgrade somewhere.

Four of my organization's branches use the product.

I rate the technical support a five out of ten. I rate the support less since the response time is too high, and a lot of time gets taken to resolve an issue for a ticket raised by us.

Neutral

Citrix SD-WAN is the first-ever solution we implemented.

Citrix SD-WAN's installation process can be termed as an average one.

Once you have the policies and if you have a new device, the deployment process takes a few minutes to half an hour.

The appliances are deployed on-premises, but the controller is cloud-based. In general, it can be considered a cloud-based solution.

One engineer is required for deployment.

Compared to other SD-WAN products in the market, Citrix SD-WAN offers the best return on investment since its annual subscription cost is quite low compared to other solutions.

Citrix SD-WAN is quite an affordable product.

Citrix SD-WAN doesn't need much maintenance. It only needs some monitoring and updating of the firmware. One person is able to do the maintenance comfortably.

It's a good solution. The only challenge with the tool will be the support offered by Citrix. There is a need for a lot of technical support required.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Citrix SD-WAN can be implemented either on-premises or in the cloud. You have the option to set it up as a physical appliance within your environment, or as a virtual machine subscription through Citrix or one of its partners. If you have VMware servers or a VxRail in your environment, you can order Citrix SD-WAN from Citrix or one of its partners and deploy it as a VM on your virtual machine.

You have the option to set up multiple sites in different locations within the same environment. This can be achieved by creating secure tunnels between the sites using Citrix SD-WAN's user interface license, which allows you to customize data and prioritize your needs. For example, you can ensure the quality of service for specific applications like team applications, even with multiple connections, through the solution's load-balancing capabilities. This leads to accelerated business operations and enhanced performance.

The most valuable feature of Citrix SD-WAN is customization. You are able to customize the solution to your needs.

Citrix SD-WAN does not have the SD-WAN with one optimization in a single license. Other competitors have this option and it should be added to this solution.

In the next release of the solution, it could be more user-friend and easier to use for IT managers to do troubleshooting.

I have used Citrix SD-WAN within the last 12 months.

We have deployed this solution for 16 sites and we have not had any issues with the stability.

Bandwidth utilization can be optimized using Citrix SD-WAN. For customers who have limited speed on their main connection, this can lead to issues. However, Citrix SD-WAN can solve this problem by load balancing the main connection and bandwidth. Additionally, for customers with limited bandwidth, optimization can also be achieved through Citrix SD-WAN.

The initial setup of the solution is simple.

We have a team that does the implementation of the solution.

It would be helpful to have a demo license available for customers who want to prove the concept and conduct a proof of concept (POC) before committing to the solution. This is particularly important for customers in Egypt who often require a demonstration of the solution's features and compatibility with their needs before making any investment or incurring costs. Providing a demo license would allow customers to assess whether the solution would meet their needs or not.

There is a variety of licensing options from the vendor.

I rate Citrix SD-WAN a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is to provide interconnectivity between branches and optimize the connection.

The most valuable feature is load balancing. This feature allows for multiple links on one device which is a lifesaver when dealing with load shedding.

I would like to see more customization to adjust for the WAN lock-out due to our unexpected power outages.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable. We only require two people for maintenance. 

The solution is extremely scalable.

The support is excellent with quick response times and resolution.

The initial setup is straightforward as long as you are familiar with the solution.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Before choosing the solution I evaluated Juniper Networks and Cisco Meraki.

I rate the solution ten out of ten.

The solution is brilliant, the way it calculates its paths and trails is great.

The hands-on customer support and load balancing that come with this solution are above all others on the market. 

I recommend the solution, especially for organizations based in areas that suffer from load shedding. 

Our use case was for a distributed network. We have customers around Russia, and a customer in the Far East had infrastructure with about 5,000 kilometers between each branch. We needed to create some kind of network that was distributed through data and media or big files. The Far East isn't very stable territory, so we had to use a low-level network and create a good result in data transmission.

It was a retail company, so there were branches, and the branches needed to connect to HQ. We provided HQ and each branch with Citrix SD-WAN. We tried to use it, and it worked well. The transmission was good, and they were losing less data.

The solution is deployed on our customers' hardware.

The stability is the main feature of Citrix SD-WAN. You can also upgrade the data packages or have less transmission.

The price is the only thing that could be improved. Citrix is not a cheap solution.

I have been using this solution for one year.

The solution was stable.

We haven't used the Citrix tech support because we have our own support.

I think the ROI is okay. You have to spend a large amount of money at first, but you could see ROI in 3-5 years. It's a good proposal.

The license was a one-time purchase. It's expensive.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

It is used to get connectivity between our branches. In terms of the version, we are using version 10.1, and we have different SD-WAN devices.

The reliability of connectivity is most valuable.

I am happy with this product. If anything, its price can be reduced. It is a bit expensive.

I have been using this solution for about six years.

It is very stable. 

It is scalable. We've got about 250 users in the company. We don't have any plans to increase its usage.

They have been okay to work with. I am satisfied with their support.

We didn't use any other solution previously.

I don't know about the setup. I had a consultant set it up for me. For its deployment and maintenance, we just have one person.

It is a bit expensive. A cheaper product would be good, but everybody likes things to be cheaper.

We bought the devices up front, and then we pay for the annual support.

It is not a cheap product but it serves. I would rate it a nine out of 10.

Our primary use case is for stability and redundancy on connectivity from the branch offices to the company head office data centre. We have a head office and six remote branches. Most of the applications we deliver to the branches are through terminal services. This includes the EPR system, Microsoft Dynamics-AX. Everything is hosted on-prem. When a line between the branch office and the head office was down the branch could not operate. For most sales orders we have a 4 business hour turnaround time from order to delivery. So when a line is down we were losing sales. SD-WAN has prevented this almost completely. 

Downtime for branch offices is now almost zero. We have 100% real-time visibility into all of our lines. MPLS links have been replaced with lower-cost links, saving a larger percentage of line costs. Overall, I see SD-WAN as a must. And the Citrix SD-WAN product has delivered on expectations and exceeded them. (With later firmware updates we now have good firewall capabilities in the product too.). In one specific notable case that was an outage at an upstream provider that would have taken our Cape Town office offline. And this was on the first of the month when we process bulk orders. The branch did not even know the line was down thanks to SD-WAN. 

Lines run Active-Active. So we get better bandwidth usage i.e.we don't have backup lines sitting idle. We see the state of all lines all the time i.e. we don't have backup lines that are broken, that we only discover when a primary line fails. (This has happened even when we had an MPLS network). Downtimes on lines result in a loss of business. This is inevitable given that we run all applications through terminal applications from the head office data centers.  In the 4 years running SD-WAN, we have only had 1 branch offline due to line failures where the backup line could not cope with the additional load. 

The firewall reporting could be easier to use and filter. (It works well enough, but if I need to give an area for improvement, I think this would be it.). The built-in reporting on the product in this regard is not great. You can get a much more detailed reporting analysis using the SD-WAN center that is configurable with the product. If the additional reporting capabilities were bundled into the Master Controller Node, it would make the solution more appealing, and add better value from day one.

I have been using Citrix SD-WAN for four years. 

We have used an external consultant, (Troye) to complete the set-up. Between Troye and Citrix South Africa we were in excellent hands from beginning to end. The requirements were drafted between KOLOK, Troye the partner and Citrix South Africa.  We had very qualified consultants on site for the cut-over.  It was a smooth migration.  There were a few complex issues that came from how the ISP had configured routing in the MPLS.  These issues were resolved by Citrix.  We have subsequently removed all MPLS links. 

Easy under 18 months.

If I was going to look at this project again now, I would investigate the option of using virtual appliances rather then physical appliances. I don't know enough about this option, but I think it would have some cost and give better DR options.  

We looked at the Cisco product at the time. (Briefly). But we found the Citrix product to be better because it uses a packet by packet switching, where as the Cisco apparently switched session by session to the best line. This was some time back, and I have not looked at the Cisco product since.

I used to stress about line failures. MPLS was not working for me. MPLS gave me no visibility into the line redundancy. And MPLS is very expensive. SD-WAN was an easy choice for me.  Citrix has delivered. 

We offer this solution mainly to retail companies that have many sites and want to connect between them without relying on an MPX or a fiber connection. With SD-WAN, they have all the features and benefits they need to send live streaming information to the database and to headquarters without requiring a server at each site. Our other clients have various sites with just one type of communication, say a radio or a mobile network. SD-WAN helps them to combine and get a better bandwidth to balance all their applications and services. I'm a reseller and I make demos with the product. We are partners with Citrix and our company is based in Ecuador. 

I like that SD-WAN allows you to combine two asymmetrical connections. Citrix provides more options than other solutions so you can balance the amount of bandwidth to any of your applications or solutions that need prioritizing, in addition to putting a hold on things that might block in a communication cut-off or some other event. It provides a more fluid experience to end-users when they're using their applications or desktops. It's user-friendly and easier to manage especially for those who don't have much knowledge about the minutiae of the product. I think Citrix is better than Cisco's solution.

I think the price can be improved, particularly in third world countries such as Ecuador where companies don't have the budget to implement expensive products. Citrix is a very complete solution, but the price is not in line with our market. It would be great if they could come up with a budget product. Cisco provides an inexpensive solution and Citrix could compete with that even if it doesn't have all the features of SD-WAN. I think it would catch on quickly in Latin America.

I've been supplying this solution to our customers for two years. 

The solution is very scalable. One of our clients started out very small and implementing didn't require any more of an investment than they would have had to make with another MPX communication system or a radio system. They worked with what they had, and then implemented more and more solutions and connected them to their headquarters with a good result.

Citrix support is tricky in Ecuador. The people assigned to our region are not very well organized. As a result, we now certify our technicians so they can provide support to our clients. They carry out the updates and any patching and deal with any configuration improvements that can be made. Our clients are very happy with what we provide and give us good reviews. We have clients who have bought Citrix from other companies but they come to us for support. 

For a certified user, the setup is very simple. I'm not involved in deployment but they say that it's very easy to implement. It only requires the setting up of some policies and the solution works. We have two engineers who deal with implementation. 

I would suggest getting to know your core business solutions, knowing which are the important solutions or apps that could be improved in terms of communications, and then just balancing it through SD-WAN with any kind of communication that they already have. It doesn't require a larger budget to put in place various symmetrical communications. 

Licensing costs aside, I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

We use this product to improve the security of our network.

We also use it to monitor and control the endpoints that we have.

The best feature is the backup capability, where all of the users' computers are tied into a central data repository.

The documentation is good.

Citrix should continue to offer a perpetual licensing model because it is very important to us.

I have been using Citrix SD-WAN for eight months.

We have approximately 60 users.

I have not been in contact with technical support. We found that the documentation is adequate and we were able to follow all of the instructions.

We have not used another similar solution in the past.

The installation process is very easy and it does not take long to set up.

We deployed it with our in-house team. We have two software administrators in the team.

We have a perpetual license, which is very important because it allows us to manage our costs, rather than having a monthly or yearly subscription. A yearly license is okay except that we consider software an asset, which means that we need a perpetual license.

The price of the subscription should be cheaper.

I would rather pay three-to-five times more for a perpetual license than pay for a subscription because the lifecycle will be between five and seven years. After seven years, we will try to look for another solution. If Citrix is still top-notch then we would update to the most recent version.

Citrix is a good product so I have not looked at other options.

This is a good product and I recommend it. I'm going to continue using it unless something new is offered by a competitor at a cheaper price. I that case, I may switch.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.