What is our primary use case?
My clients are mostly based in the government. They are my core clients. I install the solution for my clients.
What is most valuable?
The solution is very easy to use.
Of course, we have the skills, however, it's very easy for us to deploy the solution. That's one of the valuable features.
They have a communication between the endpoint and the firewall which is very, very useful for security purposes.
Pricing is now pretty good. They changed the pricing structure a few months ago.
The initial setup is pretty easy.
What needs improvement?
The integration could be a bit better. They need to allow their solution to integrate with other products and not just other Sophos solutions.
Sophos has a feature that in my opinion is very limited. They don't have enough VPNs on their models. They have the XG 750, which is a sizeable appliance. On those models, they used to have not enough VPNs. They always were short on that area.
Pricing used to be very bad, however, they've adjusted their strategy recently.
The product needs to improve its marketing in Mexico. It's not a well-recognized product in our country.
The solution's technical support is very bad.
There is an overall lack of documentation in relation to features and capabilities. We need these to help explain aspects of the solution to our clients.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution since around 2014. I have about six years of experience at this point. It's been a while. I've definitely worked with the product in the last 12 months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash and freeze. It's quite reliable. We don't have problems with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very scalable. It is not a problem. Sometimes we have issues when we are trying to do something with a different traditional version of hardware as sometimes the new hardware has more ports. However, if we are talking about scalability in a huge customer, we can do it very easily.
Mexico is very different than other countries and continents as here, when we say it's a big customer, we are talking about 2,000 to maybe 3,000 users. There aren't too many large-scale operations in the country. However, in general, for our area, we tend to deal with large-scale companies.
For a company that has maybe 1,000 users, Sophos seems to work very well. We have one operation with 10,000 endpoints and it is working quite well.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support from Sophos is very bad.
Sometimes we lose a project due to the fact that we need to solve some issues or answer questions. Things that may be technical but also involve the administrative side. I'm talking about licensing and the capabilities of the feature. We need some documentation, something we can show clients. They can better in those cases. They can either help us or supply us with what we need.
In response time, they are terrible. In the area of technical knowledge, they are getting better, however, they aren't where they need to be. Right now, we are not satisfied with the level of support provided.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not complex. However, here in Mexico, it's very complex to sell the product. The brand is not as well known.
That said, the process is pretty straightforward.
The deployment times vary. It depends on the end-user and what they need. Sometimes, it's easy as they don't have too many policies. The more policies they have, the longer it takes.
In other cases, clients may have a lot of VPNs. We have to work on those VPNs, and we have to do a lot of routing. However, that depends on the customer. Not all are like that.
For one appliance, you just need one person for deployment and maintenance. If we are working a lot of VPNs, we would have to use more people. We need to involve maybe two or three individuals and re-apply the configuration in that case.
What about the implementation team?
We handle the installation process ourselves. We do not need the assistance of consultants.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing has recently changed on Sophos. Their licensing and cost structures are much more clear now. It's much better than it was.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Clients, in many cases, evaluate for Check Point, Forcepoint, and sometimes Fortinet. Occasionally, they may look at SonicWall, or Palo Alto however, the others are the main big competitors.
Palo Alto is very expensive as are Check Point and Forcepoint. That's why we sometimes win the projects. We find Fortinet, is very, very hard to beat as they have a lot of market share, have a lot of marketing. Sophos doesn't have that presence, that marketing. Also, when you have to think about prices, Fortinet gives customers everything and it's hard to beat.
The biggest issue I've found with Sophos is the small number of VPNs that we can do compared to a similar appliance with Fortinet or in the same level center. In fact, many other brands offer more VPNs than Sophos.
What other advice do I have?
I'm a Sophos reseller.
We use multiple versions. We have worked with XG 460 and XG 135 and some others -such as XG 230. In those cases, sometimes it has been Rev 1 and in other cases Rev 2 in terms of the hardware versions.
I mostly work with on-premise deployments. The only item I have installed in the cloud is an email solution by Sophos.
I'd recommend the solution to other organizations. Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller