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Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) vs Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Alkira Cloud Services Excha...
Ranking in Network Management Applications
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Ranking in Network Management Applications
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) is 0.0%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN2.3%
Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX)0.0%
Other97.7%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Abiola Olaibi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer and Software Engineer
Unified orchestration has enabled secure multi‑cloud networking and optimized traffic management
Based on my experience, I believe continuous improvement is key for senior-level solutions like Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX). Enhancements in terms of granular cost allocation and visibility for complex environments would be valuable, and deeper integration with existing enterprise tools and improved predictive AI-driven network analytics could enhance operational efficiency and proactive management. I have identified improvements needed for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) regarding user experience and documentation. In terms of documentation, improvements in reporting would go a long way toward a solid experience with the tool. I rate it an eight out of ten because there is room for improvement. I believe Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) can still be more powerful, integrating extensively into various infrastructures and providing highly effective cost attribution across the cloud platforms. There is definitely potential for improvement with large-scale deployments to manage critical long-term success. We have covered most of the areas that need attention, and many of them have already been addressed.
Ashwani-Tyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager at Orange
Centralized control has simplified cloud access and has improved operational visibility
If they can have better firewall features as their competitors have, such as Fortinet and Versa, that would help to place this solution better so that we can address security related things. If they can have all the IPS, IDS, everything built on all the edge devices, whether physical or virtual, that could be one improvement. Actually, if customers are existing Cisco customers, if Cisco can be more flexible to leverage the existing investment, that could be another important aspect to save on cost and be more competitive from a pricing perspective. Overall, the pricing or the segment that Cisco deals with is a bit premium, which they charge a bit premium against the competition on the licensing, hardware, and services. The implementation is not straightforward. You need a specialized partner or specialized people who can implement this. It can be simplified a bit from that perspective as well. Mostly the way we implement the policies for a big environment requires a lot of things that we need to take care of. If that can somehow be improved, because they have different components, like they have vManage, they have vSmart, and vBond and all these components have to work with a certain flow that they need to follow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) has positively impacted my organization with significant returns on investment driven by a massive reduction in provisioning time, hardware enumeration, and labor optimization."
"Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX)'s unified network orchestration makes my daily tasks easier by allowing me to centralize management and automate complex repetitive processes."
"Overall, I really like the whole technology."
"It's a scalable solution."
"The integration of Layer 3 and application routing is great."
"The solution allows organizations to have visibility into the application traffic."
"The solution already affords availability, scalability, link monitoring and performance monitoring on the link."
"Cisco SD-WAN is valued for its operational efficiency and ease of operation."
"Customizing SD-WAN is very easy because you can define two colors. You can define two different operators. You can deploy a partial mesh, a full mesh, or hub-and-spoke totally differently. If you want to do this on a DMVPN solution, that's really hard."
"Cisco SD-WAN is a good product."
 

Cons

"I feel that the user interface of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) can be more user-friendly."
"I rate it an eight out of ten because there is room for improvement."
"It is the best solution that I ever had, but there might be something better than this in the future."
"The bandwidth limitations would be good to remove, but it is a policy and license situation for Cisco because the cost is very high. It would be good to have OTP implemented with VRF. It can have support for EIGRP Over the Top (OTP) VRF. I saw some limitations in regards to the VRF protocol and the advertisement between VRF configuration. EIGRP Over the Top basically was quite limited with the VRF configuration. If you wanted to do rollback in VRF by using the EIGRP OTP protocol, the formation was not populated across. Cisco got back and confirmed that it is a configuration that I need to wait for until the next release, which is going to happen in one year. Cisco documentation is not the way it used to be before. It just gives an easy way to configure, but it doesn't go into the details of the configuration. The information that you need is there, but sometimes you want to go further and get more information, but the information is quite limited. It would be good to cover a few business cases or configuration cases. They used to be there in the past."
"They need to improve the licensing, definitely. It needs to be easier to license."
"Stability (especially running in virtualized environment) is an issue SDN vendors do not talk about until customer learns the hard way."
"The price of the solution is the only negative factor, it is much more expensive compared with the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution."
"When you buy the equipment, they should already put it into your cloud account. It should already be set up so that we can manage with vBond."
"Cisco should focus more on making products that are convenient for users. Sadly, I think they are more interested in making money rather than making reliable products."
"Since most user-data is going through the solution, we are concerned about security, as all the information is in the cloud and not on-premises. The user data authentification should be higher to better prevent malicious attacks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of Cisco SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive. The cost of the solution is approximately 30 percent higher than competitors."
"On a scale of one to five, I would rate Cisco's pricing as a three."
"In the Russian market where we operate, this solution is expensive."
"The license model is too complex with too many flavors and options. You might not be able to see it from an end user's point of view, but from a telco point of view, their license model is too complex. They should have a flexible license model. If you want to have good pricing, you need to buy it for a two-year, four-year, or five-year license immediately. Some other vendors have much more flexible license models."
"You have to pay between 3000 and 10,000 euros, or something in that range. The core switches Nexus cost me between 10,000 and 20,000 euros."
"It is going to be on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"Licensing is on a subscription basis."
"The cost of Cisco SD-WAN is high and has room for improvement compared to competitors such as Fortinet which has similar functionality."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
37%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Transportation Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business52
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) was seamless because I already have extensive experience with various other tools and cloud environmen...
What needs improvement with Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX)?
Based on my experience, I believe continuous improvement is key for senior-level solutions like Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX). Enhancements in terms of granular cost allocation and visibilit...
What is your primary use case for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX)?
My main use case for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) is leveraging the solutions for a multi-cloud networking environment, primarily to enable seamless connectivity, security segmentation, and...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
Regarding Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN's price, I find it reasonable, based on commercial pricing and CDCS support, although we see that there is some lack in TACACS and other support.
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
I see some room for improvement for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN with G2 routers, as we are expecting more customers. To bring Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN closer to ten, I would like to see improvement in the G...
What is your primary use case for Cisco SD-WAN?
I am using Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN mainly for enterprise customers.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco SD-WAN
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) vs. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.