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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Cradlepoint NetCloud vs VMware Cloud Director comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN reduces WAN costs significantly, offering savings up to 80% with enhanced reliability and operational efficiencies.
Sentiment score
7.0
Cradlepoint NetCloud improved uptime, reduced costs, enhanced security, and boosted productivity through better remote management and scalability.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMware Cloud Director improves client provisioning, resource control, and efficiency, but opinions vary on its long-term cost-effectiveness.
They are now back to do that with the remainder of their company, so they've realized the value in 12 months and are willing to invest in the remainder of their organization.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN support is generally rated highly, though some users note delays and varying expertise levels.
Sentiment score
7.6
Cradlepoint NetCloud support is effective and highly rated, with swift issue resolution despite occasional response delays.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMware Cloud Director's support is praised for effectiveness but criticized for delays, improving complex case handling, and communication.
The principal third-level support is very good.
I would consider Cisco support a 10 out of 10.
Cisco's ongoing reorganizations have affected the quality of technical support, which varies depending on the engineer handling cases.
I have worked very closely with Cradlepoint for several years and would rate their customer service as being among the best.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is praised for its scalability, supporting enterprises across various sectors with seamless growth and integration.
Sentiment score
7.5
Cradlepoint NetCloud effectively replaces routers and firewalls, supporting scalable network and security management for large enterprises via the cloud.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Cloud Director excels in scalability, enabling efficient workload management and integration, highly rated for large-scale deployments.
The ease of configuration and features like zero-touch provisioning enhance the scalability of Cisco SD-WAN, especially in disaster recovery situations.
Cisco SD-WAN is highly scalable and can be expanded to more than 10,000 sites.
Cradlepoint products support scalability very well in medium to large enterprise environments.
VMware Cloud Director is quite scalable; I would rate it nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is reliable with few bugs, but complex setups and early releases may introduce issues.
Sentiment score
8.3
Cradlepoint NetCloud is praised for stable performance, robustness in traffic handling, minimal downtime, and seamless, dependable connectivity.
Sentiment score
7.7
VMware Cloud Director is highly rated for stability and reliability, despite occasional issues and interoperability challenges during deployment.
While some software-related issues and bugs were encountered, they did not cause the whole environment to crash.
There are occasional problems when trying to increase the parameters of a virtual machine.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN struggles with high costs, complexity, and lacks unified interface and advanced security features, needing enhancements.
Cradlepoint NetCloud needs better usability, SD-WAN enhancements, and affordable options for medium enterprises seeking cloud performance improvements.
VMware Cloud Director needs improved integration, GUI, search, interoperability, cost options, automation, and features found in competitors.
Now, they change frequently, making it difficult to obtain long-term support.
The negative, or the downside of Cisco is the knowledge base; you need to be a little bit more tech-savvy and network-savvy to work with Cisco, while Juniper is a lot more user-friendly from what I can see, especially in terms of configuration and any kind of roll back.
Including more features like integrating with Splunk for monitoring vulnerabilities would help eliminate the need for other SOC solutions.
The company realizes that there's a need for affordable connectivity products, especially for lower-end medium enterprises or larger small enterprises.
The console methods make management difficult until VMware tools are installed.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is costly due to complex licensing but offers value in robust performance, with adaptable cost management.
Enterprise users find Cradlepoint NetCloud pricing competitive, considering it a worthwhile investment for its efficiency and functionality.
VMware Cloud Director is pricey but offers extensive features, with flexibility options for cost-conscious buyers against major cloud competitors.
The pricing of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is rated between eight and nine out of ten, where ten is the most expensive.
It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller businesses when using the Meraki version.
Its pricing is justifiable due to the comprehensive solution it offers.
Cradlepoint's pricing is viewed as market competitive, offering good value for the money invested.
The pricing for VMware Cloud Director is more or less reasonable, especially when compared to Cisco, which is significantly more expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN offers centralized management, automation, security, cloud integration, and flexibility, enhancing network efficiency and scalability.
Cradlepoint NetCloud optimizes wireless WAN with 5G readiness, enhancing VPN, automated failover, and network monitoring for primary connectivity.
VMware Cloud Director offers scalable, user-friendly cloud management with strong integration, automation, and multi-tenancy for private and hybrid environments.
It also provides robust security features, including port security, analysis, mirroring, and multiple other security solutions.
Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations.
The most useful feature for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is the single pane of glass management because we also use Meraki onsite.
Cradlepoint supports the option for wireless to be a primary means of connectivity, rather than just a backup.
A notable feature is the Independent Disk, which allows detaching a virtual drive from one virtual machine and attaching it to another, enabling more flexibility in operations.
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Van Den Ouden - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables secure and flexible branch connectivity with application-aware routing
The valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN include its security policies and zone-based firewall that are applied to every site, as well as application-aware routing. Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations. Application-aware routing offers flexibility in using different lines for traffic, depending on the policy implemented.
Robert-Gardner - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy to setup solution, but it is missing useful configuration options
I use this solution to manage Cradlepoint wireless routers It lets us know whether it is online or not, and lets us do a speed test to see how quick the speed is. These are valuable features. They should change some of the configuration settings to enable it to act more as an SD-WAN box to view…
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides crystal clear dashboarding and allows you to manage and monitor your infrastructure
The overall dashboarding is very crystal clear. The ability to switch from one infrastructure to another infrastructure and get into detailed information, whether it is compute, storage network, or whatever. That helps you get a holistic view of the overall infrastructure running in your landscape. This also helps the leadership and management be aware of the right potential investment strategy by looking at the potential utilization. vCloud Director also provides ways and means through which you can make a prediction or a forecast of the infrastructure that would be needed in the future, depending on what you are currently running. That does not take away the fact that we have to be completely aware of our pipeline projects in our schedule so that you can plan your infrastructure requirements accordingly. vCloud Director provides multifold features that have been beneficial to the end users.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
42%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
9%
Retailer
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco SD-WAN?
When considering the most valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN, the decoupling of self-monitoring stands out significant...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
The pricing of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is rated between eight and nine out of ten, where ten is the most expensive.
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
The durability of the switches could be improved. In the past, Cisco devices had a longer lifespan. Now, they change ...
What do you like most about Cradlepoint NetCloud?
It is easy to set up and requires a single administrator to maintain it.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cradlepoint NetCloud?
Cradlepoint's pricing is viewed as market competitive, offering good value for the money invested. While some custome...
What needs improvement with Cradlepoint NetCloud?
There are areas for improvement, particularly at the lower end of the medium enterprise market. Cradlepoint's portfol...
Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?
VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a sin...
What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?
For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few...
Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?
When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For e...
 

Also Known As

Cisco SD-WAN
No data available
vCloud Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
City of San Antonio, Statue Cruises, Tour Dubai, St. David's Foundation, JBT, DSC Dredge
MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: April 2025.
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