Aruba Orchestrator vs SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Riverbed are both solutions in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.9, while Riverbed is ranked #26. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 1.4% mindshare in SDW, compared to Riverbed’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Aruba Orchestrator and SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Cato Networks and others in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

September 2025

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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

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 18.6%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aruba Orchestrator is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	18.6%
Aruba Orchestrator	1.4%
SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN	0.5%
Other	79.5%

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Aneesh K

IT Solution Analyst II at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Provides complete internal visibility from LAN to Wi-Fi, resulting in higher stability and easier troubleshooting

Aruba has plenty of solutions showcased at this event. Perhaps they offer their firewall, which we are not currently utilizing—the LAN switching, ClearPass, and Wi-Fi. ClearPass is is still on-premises, but the switching, Wi-Fi, and security features are included. It has some capabilities, like automation intelligence, which they call AI operations. So it is helpful. Our time spent on troubleshooting will be significantly reduced with it. Another useful feature is that we can inquire about the health data from Aruba Central and receive the necessary answers. Aruba Central simplifies management. Yes, deployment will be much faster than on-premises setups, where you need many hardware gateways. With just an access point or minimal hardware, deployment will be quicker. Troubleshooting with it has also made it much more straightforward. A group of ten people should be more than sufficient to manage an extensive infrastructure. Aruba is providing better support. They are also improving their email services. They are up to market standards, so we choose to go with them. We were looking for a direct vendor, but they didn't meet our requirements. Aruba Orchestrator is meeting our current expectations and standards, so we are sticking with them. We don't have any issues because we have been with Aruba for many years. We don't mind moving from one vendor to another. We are simply transitioning from one rental type to another with Aruba. I prioritize enhancements in AI functionality over other features. There are several implementations, with AI being the primary focus. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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Jason Best

Data center network architect at Cloudwire

Analytics feature is very granular and comprehensive, although complicated to use

It's like an SD-WAN project basically. You really need to make sure that the product matches the needs of what the customer's trying to achieve and their overall strategy to meet their core business requirements. I think a certain customer made a mistake in choosing this solution because a large part of their network was Cisco and they had firewalls that were from Fortinet. I think they would have been better off and it would have been better from a CAPEX, OPEX point of view. It would've been more advantageous for them to have maybe chosen a Cisco or Fortinet solution based on their existing environment. Make sure you understand your network correctly before you try to implement any SD-WAN solution. That was one of the good lessons I learned about SD-WANs with this specific product. I wouldn't say it was a fault of the product. I would say it's more a fault of the CTO who tries to do things quickly without taking into account the existing environment or give the internal faculties the time to provide real low-level design implementation. It was more of a management mistake than from their technical team. In the next release, I would like to see things like integrated security but with local internet breakout instead of using third party solutions like NetScaler or Palo Alto. I would also like to see the integration of things like a VPN so that if you have remote sites where you might have remote workers that need to access the site from home or something, there's a VPN solution. Those are two key features and hotspots in the sort of global crisis. I would rate Riverbed a seven out of ten. I could never give any solution a 10 cause they all have good and bad points. To get any solution to a ten is pretty much impossible. If I was to rate it against others like Fortinet, I would probably give Fortinet an eight or nine. Again, I think you have to be careful because it's very subjective. I think it really depends on the type of environment, the type of customer you're deploying the SD-WAN solution for, and from which perspective you're looking at like if you an operator, if you're a large enterprise, if you're looking for a plug and play type solution. If you're looking for more of a security solution, I would go for Fortinet. It's kind of tough to say. I'd probably put the clouds a little bit ahead of the game because it does what it's supposed to do and easily. It's a little more of a plug and play type solution. Fortinet, for example, is more complex. I put it in a close second place, it's better from a security perspective. It has integration with FortiGuard. After that, I would put Riverbed in third place.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is a good solution because it has a range of options and a clear ecosystem."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a very good next-generation firewall."

"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."

"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."

"The most helpful features of FortiGate include its firewall policy, specifically the user-based policy, which I find to be quite beneficial in managing our network security effectively."

"It is quite easy to handle."

"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The product has reduced OpEx expenditure."

"I rate Aruba Orchestrator ten out of ten."

"The technical support services are excellent."

"The solution has a single pane of glass view that allows you to see everything happening in your SD-WAN world."

"The most valuable feature is optimization."

"I can say that 100% the ROI from Aruba Orchestrator is really good because we have reduced the number of people needed; there is no need to have a team of people to manage the huge network, and with a relatively smaller number of resources, we are able to manage."

"We had to deal with separate management models for Wi-Fi and switches. With Aruba Orchestrator, it's now a unified solution, making things much easier for us. We log in and manage everything from a single console. It provides complete internal visibility from LAN to Wi-Fi, resulting in higher stability and easier troubleshooting. The management process is much quicker and more streamlined."

"The most important feature is WAN optimization."

More Aruba Orchestrator pros

"The analytics is the most valuable feature because it was very granular and very comprehensive, although a little complicated to use. If you're really interested in knowing what's happening on your network, it's a very good solution. That was the .NET Profiler part of the solution."

Cons

"The solution should allow more user-friendly integrations or deployment"

"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."

"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's costs need improvement."

"It would be better if they had a dashboard where we could see what attacks were happening. It would be good to see who's trying to get into our network."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall's performance and threat intelligence could be improved."

"Fortinet FortiGate IPS could improve the VPN. There are times it is slow."

"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The solution lacks sufficient security features."

"The solution can be improved by lowering the cost and making it more user-friendly for first-time users."

"The price should be improved as it is very high. The Aruba products are expensive."

"The management menu should be simplified."

"Aruba Orchestrator should implement dynamic certificate changes for security."

"We also had a POC with a Juniper product, and the Juniper Mist is actually outstanding. If you compare it with Juniper, that is the reason I have given it an eight."

"They could provide essential training to understand the product functionality."

"The initial setup is complex, depending on the overall planning for the entire environment."

"The routing scalability needs improvement. We have run into a lot of limitations and also primarily from a routine perspective, things like RSPs line support. It was supportive but not really supportive."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is more expensive than Sophos. It could be cheaper. The licensing is on a yearly basis. We have had it for about three years. We must only pay extra for the license, additional requirements, and the hardware box."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is an expensive solution with a yearly subscription."

"Fortinet FortiGate is cost-efficient. Palo Alto is expensive, but Fortinet FortiGate is not."

"When you look at these end security systems and firewalls, these firewalls even five years ago were $50,000 or perhaps $25,000 to implement in some types of customer sites. Now we're talking about tools that are $1,000. In this case, it might have been $500 or something like that."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall costs our company around $12000 per year."

"Although the solution's pricing is high, compared with other products, it may be cheap."

"It is an inexpensive solution."

"The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"The solution's licensing costs are yearly. It is not expensive, and I rate it around three to four out of ten."

"Aruba Orchestrator is free to use."

"I rate the platform’s pricing a five out of ten."

"I think it is quite expensive compared to other vendors in the market because it depends on what kind of features you really want to acquire in the product."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	350
Midsize Enterprise	129
Large Enterprise	187

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

See all answers

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator?

The most important feature is WAN optimization.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator?

Regarding my experience with the pricing and setup costs, I find it expensive software compared to others.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator?

There are some aspects of Aruba Orchestrator that could be improved. The price should be improved as it is very high....

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN vs Aruba Orchestrator

Compared 46% of the time

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Aruba Orchestrator

Compared 36% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Aruba Orchestrator

Compared 18% of the time

More Aruba Orchestrator Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Aruba Orchestrator

September 2025

Download Aruba Orchestrator product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

September 2025

SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN report

Download SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator, Unity Orchestrator

SteelConnect, Riverbed SteelConnect

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

Fortinet

Aruba Orchestrator has an intuitive interface that allows you to centrally define, assign, and enforce policies across the WAN. Network managers experience the highest quality of experience to:

Centrally define, assign and enforce policies based on business intent to secure and control all application traffic across the WAN.

Orchestrator dashboards provide real time visibility into SD-WAN health and performance in a single screen, monitoring traffic throughput along with loss, latency and jitter across overlays and underlays.

Maintain the highest levels of application performance by automatically assigning application and security policies across 100s or 1000s of sites, including automated orchestration with cloud security services.

Central orchestration of network functions including SD-WAN routing, firewall, segmentation, WAN optimization, application visibility and control, and automated orchestration with cloud security services.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Accelerate business velocity with enterprise-class SD-WAN. As enterprises and organizations adopt more cloud and SaaS applications to support an increasingly distributed workforce, the hybrid networks connecting it all have been more complex, less predictable and less secure.

Riverbed SteelConnect EX is a powerful enterprise SD-WAN solution that integrates best-in-class routing, application acceleration, network visibility, and security services – a flexible and complete WAN Edge platform that gives you what you need to modernize your network and propel your business in the digital age.

Riverbed

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Information Not Available

Roxtec, Software Solutions Company, Rignet

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

September 2025

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