Steelhead and VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN are competitive solutions in the SD-WAN market. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN appears to have an edge due to its extensive features as reported by users.
Features: Steelhead offers strong performance optimization, integration capabilities, and customer support. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN provides advanced security features, superior routing, and a scalable architecture with a robust feature set.
Room for Improvement: Steelhead could improve its analytics, reporting functionalities, and scalability. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN needs better troubleshooting tools, improved documentation, and more efficient operational capabilities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Steelhead has a straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN's deployment is user-friendly with excellent customer support, though it can be more complex initially.
Pricing and ROI: Steelhead is cost-effective with positive ROI. VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN, while more expensive, offers higher ROI and better overall value due to its extensive features.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
The deployment time with VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN saves 50 percent compared to traditional MPLS networks.
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.
I appreciate having dedicated service engineers who manage our account and ensure any technical issues are addressed efficiently.
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
The customer base for VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN has been growing 30 to 40 percent per year when transitioning from traditional MPLS networks.
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
Overall, VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN is a stable solution.
The technical team from VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN addresses these issues promptly, making us very happy with their support.
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.
Unlike the comprehensive reports we receive from Palo Alto for our firewalls, VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN doesn't offer detailed reports that effectively convey the solution's benefits to management.
I would like to see improved security features, such as adding more SASE functions.
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 pricing is high, making the margin thin, which limits mark-up opportunities from the wholesale price.
The pricing involves licensing for the VeloCloud gateway based on the bandwidth used.
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.
Previously, organizations used MPLS links for 1 MB at around $200, but now they can use 4G or 5G SIM cards for half that price while achieving more bandwidth.
Its proprietary Dynamic Multipath Optimization (DMP) technology is regarded as the most powerful and valuable function by VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN.
Real-time application prioritization offers MPLS-like quality of service using internet circuits, resulting in a cost-effective network solution.
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.
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:
VMware SD-WAN Features
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.”
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