Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform and Steelhead are competing products in the SD-WAN market. Based on user reviews, Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform takes the lead in pricing and support, while Steelhead is considered superior in features.
Features: Users highlight Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform’s robust path conditioning, simplified WAN architecture, and flexible deployment options. Steelhead stands out for WAN optimization, application acceleration, and advanced performance optimization.
Room for Improvement: Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform needs better reporting tools, improved scalability options, and enhanced security features. Steelhead should focus on enhancing integration capabilities, reducing complexity, and improving user interface design.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform is easier to deploy and has consistently higher-rated customer service. Steelhead's deployment process is seen as more complex, and while its customer service receives praise, it is not as uniformly well-reviewed as Aruba’s.
Pricing and ROI: Users find Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform cost-efficient, delivering good ROI with competitive pricing. Steelhead, despite a higher setup cost, provides valuable ROI through its performance benefits. Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform offers better initial pricing, making it more attractive for budget-conscious users.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
The SMB market is always price competitive. To penetrate the SMB market or middle segment, we definitely need to work on the pricing aspect.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
The key factor is the language in which the support is offered, which, in this case, is in Thai.
Aruba's technical support is very responsive.
Technical support from Aruba currently rates at nine on a scale from 1 to 10.
I can harness the power of the teacher model without lowering my top and laser focus.
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.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
It is very stable, with no significant issues.
I have not observed any vulnerabilities in one year.
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version.
I would also like the management of EdgeConnect appliances to be incorporated into Aruba Central Cloud Central.
The security could also improve.
In the Indian market, we need to design a solution with built-in security when considering areas of improvement for the Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform.
It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.
It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high.
The licensing is not too expensive, however, it is also not cheap.
The pricing is on the higher side compared to the competition when discussing experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of the Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform.
It is an affordable product and yet still a bit expensive.
Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.
Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Additionally, it integrates perfectly with Aruba ClearPass, offering a robust security solution, covering network admin, access control, authentication, and authorization.
The Zero-Touch Provisioning feature is one of the best features I have seen so far.
Many features are valuable for automation, connectivity, and throughput.
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.
Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.
Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.
Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.
Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.
Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.
Cloudflare benefits
Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:
- Faster load times
- Robust DNS security
- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)
- Free universal SSL
- Image enhancement
- Automatic browser caching
- Next-generation cloud load balancer
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Rate limiting
- Minification
- Zero-trust capabilities
- Cost-effective
- Reduced carbon footprint
Reviews from real users
“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange
“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet
“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company
The EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform secures and powers a self-driving wide area network for cloud-first enterprises.
In today’s edge-to-cloud enterprise, user experience and security are not optional
Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN provides a secure network foundation for Zero Trust and SASE. It includes a first-class SD-WAN paired with a next-generation firewall delivering unmatched quality of experience and advanced security.
Best-of-breed SASE with no compromise
EdgeConnect SD-WAN enables a best-of-breed SASE architecture that meets the security requirements of today’s digital organizations. It provides comprehensive SD-WAN and security services including next-generation firewall, fine-grained segmentation, IDS/IPS, and tightly integrates with many SSE (Security Service Edge) solutions.
Steelhead is the leading network optimization and application performance solution chosen by over 30,000 organizations worldwide. The performance of networks and applications directly impacts business productivity. Riverbed draws from nearly two decades of experience in driving network and application performance over Wide Area Networks with its flagship offering, SteelHead. SteelHead delivers the underlying technology that helps enterprises of all sizes maximize the efficiency and performance of the networks and applications used to run modern business.
SteelHead is proven to dramatically speed up the performance of applications anywhere in the organization while delivering the best end-user experience even under sub optimal network conditions. Reduce bandwidth utilization by up to 95%, deferring costly network bandwidth upgrades. Increase performance by up to 100x for on-premises applications.
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