VMware SD-WAN vs Versa FlexVNF comparison

Cisco Umbrella offers flexible, cloud-delivered security according to users’ requirements Cisco Umbrella includes secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality all delivered from a single cloud security service. Cisco Umbrella’s protection is extended to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. As company employees work from many locations and devices, Cisco Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect users everywhere in minutes.

Cisco Umbrella uses machine learning to search for, identify, and even predict malicious domains. By learning from internet activity patterns, this DNS-layer security solution can automatically identify attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat. These domains are then proactively blocked, protecting networks from potential compromise. Cisco Umbrella analyzes terabytes of data in real time across all markets, geographies, and protocols.

Cisco Umbrella works with leading IT companies to integrate its security enforcement and intelligence. Built with a bidirectional API, Cisco Umbrella makes it easy to extend protection from on-premises security appliances to cloud controlled devices and sites.

Cisco Umbrella is suitable for small businesses without dedicated security professionals, as well as for multinational enterprises with complex environments.

Why use Cisco Umbrella?

• Simplify security management: Cisco Umbrella is the fastest and easiest way to protect all users within minutes and reduces the number of infections and alerts sent from other security products by stopping threats at the earliest point. With no hardware to install and no software to manually update, ongoing management is simple
  
  
• Reliable reporting: Cisco Umbrella reports show activity for each device or network in the system. Users gain a more complete picture of the security risks facing their organization and can take action to remedy them.
  
  
• Manage and control cloud apps: Umbrella provides visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services in use across the enterprise. Users can uncover new services being used, see who is using them, identify potential risk, and block specific applications easily.

Reviews from Real Users

Cisco Umbrella stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its DNS-based protection, ability to protect users no matter where they are located, stability, and high performance.

Daniel B., a network specialist at Syswind Kft, writes, “We primarily use the solution as cloud security for our branches. It protects us from direct internet outbreaks. It makes for good flexibility. The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple. Efficient protection on the DNS level and even higher. The sandboxing feature analyses and handles the complicated security risks.”

Victor M., SOC & Security Services Director at BEST, notes, “It provides security for the remote workers and it helps to improve enterprise security in a very easy way. We mainly enjoy web software protection capabilities. It prevents the end-users from getting into bad sites or sites that potentially could have malware or could be phishing. It helps end-users avoid the wrong sites. The solution works very smoothly. The user interface is good.”

Versa Networks Versa Operating System (VOS) is a next-generation operating system that is highly pliable. VOS empowers service providers, organizations, and businesses to deploy an extensive variety of software-defined solutions, including Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Secure SD-WAN in satellite offices, cloud, campus, and data centers.

The Versa Director, a single-pane-of-glass management platform, administers and provisions all security and network functions of a VOS deployment for either cloud or on premises. Versa Analytics collaborates with Versa Director to deliver full transparency, predictive analysis, baselining, and correlation for application, network usage, and security events. Versa Analytics will thoroughly analyze and filter all logs, export reports, application usage, and network security. The information is collated to make searching events super fast and easy, and will deliver comprehensive intuitive directives.

VOS is a multi-tenant, cloud-native, and multi-service software stack with a complete set of networking functionalities, such as advanced scalable routing and full-featured SD-WAN. This makes it feasible to easily create dynamic managed services and software-defined enterprise architectures that are very flexible and scale easily.

VOS is specifically created using enterprise-class carrier-grade operational functionalities such as distributed management and data plane fabric with on-demand capacity and embedded elasticity. Enterprises and service providers are empowered to seamlessly integrate advanced networks and security functions into any desired process using robust service chaining for third-party services and appliances.

Versa Operating System Benefits

• Cost-effective: Versa VOS is deployed using a low-cost x86 architecture and appliances. VOS makes use of next-generation developments in virtualized infrastructures and processors. This minimizes the need for excessive capital purchases and costly upgrades that are customary with traditional legacy network hardware devices.

• Flexible deployment options: Versa VOS offers the broadest offering of deployment options in the marketplace today. VOS can be deployed in SASE, new SDN environments, cloud, and legacy environments. VOS has been developed to run seamlessly on bare metal Versa Cloud Gateway (CSG) groups of appliances using cost-effective pricing and industry-leading next-generation features. VOS is able to run on preconfigured certified white box platforms, IaaS platforms (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle), and hypervisor VMs (Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, VMware ESXI). VOS delivers high performance and throughput by fully utilizing Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) support and robust multi-core processors.

• Seamless operations: VOS is out-of-box operational and fully supports industry standard protocols and log formats such as SNMP, IPFIX, Netconf, and Syslog. This makes VOS easily compatible with existing reporting, monitoring, and network management systems.

• Scalable: The multi-tenant and cloud-native software services platform seamlessly integrates networking and security services, which enables VOS to scale easily on demand and maintain high availability, service continuity, and delivery of both third-party network security functions and Versa VOS.

Reviews from Real Users

“They are pretty transparent on every layer of the networking to build the SD-WAN. Troubleshooting is easier due to that. They, it seems like, do not try to cover or wrap the SD-WAN into my interface, which would make it difficult to troubleshoot. They really open up every part of the technology so that if there is an issue, it would be easier to troubleshoot. It's very powerful, especially for engineering teams. And yet, they manage also to keep it from being too complex.” - Networking Consultant / Networking Business Manager at a tech vendor

Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is the application of softwarebased network technologies that virtualize WAN connections to provide agility,
performance and reliability for network traffic between remote and branch offices to
data centers and the cloud.

SD-WAN leverages cloud-hosting to simplify deployment and management of
network devices and employs traffic steering to applications in the data center and
the cloud. It combines the bandwidth of broadband with existing WAN connections to
more efficiently and cost-effectively connect users to data center and cloud-based
applications from any location in the network.

SD-WAN optimizes traffic over multiple available connections (MPLS, broadband,
LTE) to deliver traffic across the network, delivering a better user experience to any
location. SD-WAN will dynamically steer traffic to the best available link, and if the
available links show any transmission issues, it will immediately apply remediation for
jitter and packet loss based on policies to ensure performance of the high-priority
applications.