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Nuage Networks vs Steelhead comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
8.5
Nuage Networks improved efficiency, scalability, and automation, reducing costs and complexity, while enhancing control, performance, and adaptability.
Sentiment score
8.5
Steelhead enhanced bandwidth efficiency, resulting in substantial cost savings and improved user experience without additional tools or upgrades.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Nuage Networks' customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, providing quick issue resolution, effective troubleshooting, and personalized assistance.
Sentiment score
6.4
Steelhead's customer service and technical support are efficient, knowledgeable, and responsive, though complex issues may face slower resolution.
Steelhead's support is generally good for typical issues yet can be time-consuming during complex problem-solving across teams, particularly for Active Directory integration.
Riverbed's customer service and technical support would be rated an eight.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Users laud Nuage Networks for its seamless scalability, flexible network management, and efficient performance in cloud and SD-WAN environments.
Sentiment score
8.4
Steelhead efficiently scales for SMBs and enterprises, managing up to 20,000 users with effective traffic handling and deployment support.
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
9.0
Users praise Nuage Networks for reliability, strong features, seamless integration, scalability, minimal issues, and responsive support.
Sentiment score
8.5
Steelhead offers stable, efficient network operations with minimal downtime, robust performance, and reliable support, ensuring continuous traffic flow.
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
 

Room For Improvement

Nuage Networks could improve documentation, simplify setup, enhance customer support responsiveness, offer better training, and improve system integration.
Steelhead needs improved traffic handling, encryption optimization, enhanced response times, better integration, and user support with fewer scaling limitations.
It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.
It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.
 

Setup Cost

Nuage Networks provides customizable and competitive pricing for scalable solutions, appealing to enterprises with detailed, requirement-based quotes.
Enterprise users find Steelhead costly yet valuable for TCP optimization, with complex licensing and comparable alternatives like SolarWinds.
Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.
Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.
 

Valuable Features

Users praised Nuage Networks for its automation, integration, scalability, and security, valuing deployment simplicity, cost efficiency, and technical support.
Steelhead optimizes WAN with compression and caching, enhancing network efficiency and reducing costs in bandwidth-limited environments.
Functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP, and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency.
Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nuage Networks
Ranking in WAN Edge
19th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (19th), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (10th), Network Automation (20th)
Steelhead
Ranking in WAN Edge
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the WAN Edge category, the mindshare of Nuage Networks is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Steelhead is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
WAN Edge
 

Featured Reviews

Kristof Spriet - PeerSpot reviewer
Great multi-tenancy and routing functionalities but needs more security capabilities
We primarily use the solution for connectivity to the majority of our customers, for national and international deployments.  Their multi-tenancy and routing functionalities are both great. It is stable and reliable. The solution can scale. Technical support has been fine. Security needs to be…
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency & bandwidth saving, best layer 7 QoS shaping policy can be achieved with ease
There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international MPLS. Additionally, functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP for branches and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency along with really good QoS for bandwidth shaping.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...
What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?
One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.
What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?
In the past, we have sold a lot of Steelhead ( /products/steelhead-reviews ) for retail companies, insurance companies, some finance companies, and some engineering companies. Steelhead ( /products...
 

Also Known As

No data available
RIverbed Steelhead
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Produban
ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes
Find out what your peers are saying about Nuage Networks vs. Steelhead and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.