SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN comparison

Riverbed and VMware are both solutions in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category. Riverbed is ranked #29, while VMware is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Riverbed holds a 0.2% mindshare in SDW, compared to VMware’s 10.3% mindshare. Additionally, 50% of Riverbed users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

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

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 850,900 peers since 2012

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 May 2025, in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.1%, up from 20.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN is 10.3%, up from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Sami-Isoaho

Principal Cloud Architect at Loihe

To fully utilize cloud vendors' hardware networking, Microsoft and VMware support everything

To improve the product, the company, alone or with a good partner, should manufacture their own hardware brand with boxes to make the product more shippable. Implementing VMware is much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive than implementing Fortinet or Check Point. With Fortinet, you pay a couple of hundred dollars for hosting and a low-cost firewall, there's only one box to ship to each site, and it's much easier to manage. Moreover, it would be easy for the large telecom operators and system integrators to sell the solution. It would also be a good fit for customers with multiple small offices, who I currently advise to choose hardware-vendor SD-WAN solutions over VMware.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."

"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."

"FortiGate's ability to perform as expected and fulfil our needs has been the most compelling feature for network security."

"It's very fast and easy to configure."

"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."

More Fortinet FortiGate 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."

"It's easy to deploy and manage. Even a small group of people can manage a large environment. It's stable, easy to deploy, easy to install—all the stuff."

"VeloCloud developed DMPO to increase performance and connectivity."

"The most valuable feature for one of our customers is the ability to stage cloud workloads from the local network."

"The biggest feature is called D.M.P.O., or Dynamic Multipath Optimization, which is one of the technologies that they use to deliver or ensure data integrity."

"VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN is recognized as an SD-WAN leader, offering user-friendly solutions that help end customers and enterprises solve network optimization issues efficiently."

"VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN has truly transformed our environment, providing significantly more bandwidth at lower costs, which is essential for tasks like Teams calls."

"Initially, we had a scattered environment, but VMware SD-WAN helped us achieve centralization, which was beneficial."

"There are 400 functionalities of the system."

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN pros

Cons

"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."

"The advanced models are expensive."

"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."

"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."

"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."

"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."

"With the standard support subscription, if the device goes down, the customer has to first ship the box, and then Fortinet sends the replacement. With the higher support, the customer has to ship the device after they have the replacement. It would be better for customers to get immediate replacements even with a standard subscription."

"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"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."

"Can't execute commands quickly when troubleshooting. The graphic user interface is slow."

"The firewall can be more advanced."

"The solution is pricey. It could be cheaper."

"The prep time and understanding what you want to do and how much bandwidth you'll need and how you're going to configure it on the network, that's more of an issue than anything else."

"The product should have on-demand tunnels instead of fixed tunnels."

"Implementing VMware is much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive than implementing Fortinet or Check Point."

"VMware SD-WAN can improve on the security features."

"The solution doesn't offer failover between their own devices. If I want to, I should be able to put the two devices at the side, so there can be a failover."

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very reasonable."

"By default, they give SD-WAN along with the firewall. They don't have separate licensing for the SD-WAN functionality. However, they have security licenses that are sold separately on a subscription basis. Customers can consume these security features to protect their users from internet traffic."

"When I look around at other products, such as Sophos, Fortinet FortiGate is 20% to 30% more expensive with our current cost."

"The price depends on the size of the company. From the beginning, you just want to know the internet bandwidths, speed, and the number of users to be able to offer the right product and model. They have a lot of products in FortiGate according to the size of the company, like 200D and 300D."

"A year or two years back, its price was competitive and reasonable. That was one of the reasons that people easily switched to Fortinet. Over the last two years, the prices have increased drastically. However, the prices of others have also increased. An advantage is there from the price point but not as much as it was previously."

"Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."

"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."

"The license for Fortinet FortiGate is affordable in my country."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"The price of this solution should be lower."

"VeloCloud performs as well as the Cisco SD-WAN but it is cheaper in price."

"The pricing is very comparable to Fortinet."

"Overall pricing could be lower. It is much more expensive than traditional hardware vendor pricing."

"We make monthly payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."

"There is only a standard fee for the solution."

"The minimum cost is $10,000 a month to have a monitoring station set up."

"The price of the solution could be reduced."

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

850,900 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What are the biggest differences between Fortinet Fortigate and VMware SD-WAN?

One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. It is a very ...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware SD-WAN?

One of the key use cases for VMware SD-WAN was assisting a customer in the industrial zone. They required virtualized...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware SD-WAN?

The pricing is high, making the margin thin, which limits mark-up opportunities from the wholesale price.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 22% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

No data available

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 18% of the time

Meraki SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 11% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 7% of the time

Peplink SpeedFusion vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma SD-WAN vs VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

May 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

April 2025

SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN report

Download SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN

April 2025

Download VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

SteelConnect, Riverbed SteelConnect

VMware SD-WAN, VeloCloud

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

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

VMware Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a secure access service edge (SASE) platform that combines many types of software-based network technologies in an attempt to enable users to virtualize their wide area networks and reduce their reliance on hardware. In essence, this solution makes it possible for users to reliably access their applications from anywhere in the world by leveraging cloud technologies. Users can simply, efficiently, and completely control their network devices and traffic. It ensures that organizations are always able to use the best possible connection to their data centers. VMware SD-WAN steers traffic so that it is always using the most reliable connections and at the same time takes steps to remediate any problems that it detects in other network links. This guarantees that organizations can access high-priority applications at all times.

VMware SD-WAN Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by deploying VMware SD-WAN include:

Reduced cost of network management. Organizations that choose to employ VMware SD-WAN can manage their network at a cost that is 2.5 times less expensive than what it costs to use traditional WAN architectures. Its ability to both augment existing hardware and replace said hardware if the user chooses to do so is part of what enables users to reduce their overhead costs.

Ease of deployment. VMware SD-WAN makes it possible for organizations to deploy it without having to rely on the assistance of technical experts. When the device - whether virtual or otherwise - is connected to the internet, it integrates with a central orchestrator that pushes the correct integrations to the device in question. This automates the installation process and makes it so that anybody can initiate and follow the deployment through to the end of the process.

Easily segment networks to improve environmental performance. Users can divide their networks into multiple segments that share a single IP address. These networks can be incorporated into an organization’s IT infrastructure and enable it to run more reliably. One way it does this is by providing multiple potential channels for data to use to travel in the event that one of the data pathways is suffering from some kind of issue.

VMware SD-WAN Features

Centralized monitoring. VMware SD-WAN is monitored at all times by a centralized orchestrator. From one place, an organization can watch every part of its network. Instead of having to search for the data they need, it can all be found in one location.

Integration capabilities. VMware SD-WAN offers users the capability to integrate their network with the environment of their choosing. This enables them to connect their network to the IT environment that best meets their needs. It makes it easy for them to work with multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Real-time data analytics. VMware SD-WAN can analyze network data in real time. This makes it easy for users to monitor their network’s performance. It also allows them to take steps to quickly remediate any issues that arise before they can become worse.

Reviews from Real Users

VMware SD-WAN is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its ability to automate the process of creating and maintaining a virtual local area network and its intuitive user dashboard.

Sami I., principal cloud architect at Loihe, writes, “One of the solution's most valuable features is the VMware core automation stack at an SDDC. It includes NSX, the VMware virtualization layer for the networks (the LAN virtualization), which works extremely well with the VMware SD-WAN solution and is the primary advantage over all the others. None of the other vendors could integrate with the virtual LAN, making it quite complicated and virtualized to be fully automated.”

Chih S., senior technical consultant at a tech services company, says, “The product has a very good user dashboard that is simple to navigate.”

VMware

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

Roxtec, Software Solutions Company, Rignet

Redmond, Coca Cola, Roka Bioscience, MetTel, Deutsche Telekom, Rockford Construction, The Bay Club, tru Independence, Triton Management Services, DevCon, AXPM

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

April 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, VMware and others in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

850,900 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions vendors and best WAN Edge vendors.

We monitor all Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.