We performed a comparison between Prisma SD-WAN and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two WAN Edge solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Prisma supports all of the applications we're currently using."
"It is flexible to use the internet connection via local breakouts without going to data centers."
"I like that the integration with Palo Alto is easy."
"If the MPLS goes down, there is a really smooth transition for a branch site to take traffic over the Internet. It will advertise the routes of that site in a jiffy."
"I like the link monitoring and analytics. These are the features that set Prisma apart from other products. Prisma works well with large, complex networks. One of my clients is a top bank in the United States, and Prisma has performed well for that customer."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The gateway is available on the cloud which allows you access from anywhere and still connects to your home gateway."
"Prisma SD-WAN is intuitive. We have a better idea of the different tools we can use and jump between the menus quickly."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"We are incorporating their zone-based firewalls. Prisma SD-WAN has limited documentation on how it manipulates traffic, e.g., how it is interacting with TCP and UDP. We recently had some traffic that was black holing. We literally had to do packet captures to see that the new zone-based firewall, which runs on top of Prisma SD-WAN, was causing issues."
"I would also like to see improvement in the product training for customers. Palo Alto has not initiated very much training but they have to do so because this is a new product. If you have experience in a legacy environment, and you are moving to Prisma SD-WAN, you don't have a training framework. That is one of the disadvantages."
"The only con is the pricing because it's more premium."
"Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved."
"Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default."
"The tool needs to work on price and complexity."
"There are two parallel things that we want Palo Alto to work on. First, customers want a unified appliance that does the work of all firewalls in addition to SD-WAN. Second, the cloud presence should be completely automated. If I purchase the SASE architecture, I shouldn't worry about deployments in Prisma Access or on Prisma SD-WAN. It should be deployed in one go."
"Event correlation and analysis capabilities do not help minimize the number of alarms from a single event. That is the problem. We are getting a lot of incidents, and there is some issue with the correlation. That is still a drawback."
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"The solution needs to have alert notifications."
Prisma SD-WAN is ranked 7th in WAN Edge with 11 reviews while Steelhead is ranked 15th in WAN Edge with 22 reviews. Prisma SD-WAN is rated 8.6, while Steelhead is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Prisma SD-WAN writes "A stable tool that offers a good uptime and ensures a return on investment". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Steelhead writes "Exceptionally stable and reliable but costly". Prisma SD-WAN is most compared with Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN and Fortinet FortiGate, whereas Steelhead is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, WAAS, Citrix SD-WAN and Vcinity UltimateX RadicalX. See our Prisma SD-WAN vs. Steelhead report.
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