Juniper Contrail SD-WAN Reviews

I am a partner and we deploy Juniper and other solutions for our customers. Right now, we are mainly focused on Juniper Contrail SD-WAN.

Juniper has layer four to seven protection. It gives you that level of visibility to understand what's going on between layer four and layer seven. Another nice thing about Juniper is that it helps us reduce bandwidth. By reducing bandwidth, I am referring to the difference when it comes to competitors' MPLS circuits. With Juniper, it cuts all of that back. To deploy on the cloud, we don't need to move from one branch to another, or from one data center to another. Juniper SD-WAN gives you that platform for cloud migration. You can deploy to AWS, and GCP — that's Google cloud — without any sort of extra bandwidth from the MPLS circuits.

The training could be better. When it comes to the demo dashboard capability, I feel like it could be much easier for our customers to use. Our last customer complained about this. 

Fortinet comes with an additional next-generation firewall — it's an add-on to the initial implementation. Juniper doesn't really provide a next-generation firewall; the add-on function is just not there either. That's something that should be improved on.

I have been dealing with Juniper for just over one year.

Juniper is very stable. 

Juniper is very scalable regardless of how large a company gets.

We provide support to our clients, but we also receive support from Juniper as well. Still, as we've only completed one deployment so far, I haven't had much contact with them yet. 

The initial setup is straightforward. It's very easy and doesn't take much time.

The licensing structure is very flexible. It's very flexible depending on what exactly is in a customer's IT infrastructure. It's not rigid at all. It's not as if they say, "Oh, you need to have this and that before you can use Juniper." It's very, very flexible depending on whatever is in the IT infrastructure.

When it comes to licensing, Fortinet is more expensive. That's why some of our customers prefer Juniper. Sometimes they prefer Juniper over Fortinet if they're a larger enterprise, too.

I would absolutely recommend Juniper, but only to small to medium-sized organizations. For larger enterprises, I would recommend Fortinet. Juniper is a good choice for smaller organizations that don't have the budget for Fortinet.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Juniper a rating of seven. 

The dashboard seems a little bit complex. The Initial setup is great but the dashboard seems a little bit too complex for IT personnel who are being trained. The dashboard should be simplified just to ensure that people who are being trained learn faster. Also, as I mentioned, a next-generation firewall cannot be added on. If they improved these things, then I would give Juniper a higher rating. These features would also help Juniper gain traction in the Nigerian market. 

Any network that is on-premise and hardwired, whether it be banks, universities, or the public sector, can be made into a software-defined wide area network rather than a physical one with this solution. This allows more flexibility to increase or decrease the network.

Greater flexibility, stablity, and lower.operational costs

When it comes to sales of the solution they need to work on marketing and awareness. Solution is best in the market.

I have been involved with Juniper Contrail SD-WAN for approximately 9 months.

The solution is stable and you can leave products for years with no resetting. With products like Cisco we had to reset regularly. 

Juniper Contrail SD-WAN is scalable by hardware and software options.

The support is very good from Juniper and from the local channel partners.

The solution installs similarly to competitors. It is not more difficult or easier. However, it could be easier and take less time for the installation. The time can vary depending on the environment but it typically takes 30 to 60 days. It all depends on scope of the project.

Implemented by Juniper channel partner, Beyond Technology MEA

JUNIPER CDWAN ROI is excellent as product has long life cycle and therefore supported with no need to buy replacement products. Lower operating costs are also there as no resetting required and products being carrier grade. 

The hardware is a one-time purchase fee and the software is purchased on an annual basis. There are additional costs for other software features that are available which are on an annual basis, such as extra capacity. Overall its excellent ROI as lower cost in longer term through lower opex costs as well.as longer lifetime. Juniper products having long lifetimes versus regular replacements of products by its competitors in our experience.

I have evaluated other solutions such as Huawei, Cisco, and Fortinet.

We have had good feedback on Juniper overall across all of its product lines with our customers.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Juniper Contrail SD-WAN a nine out of ten.