VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN Reviews

We use VMware SD-WAN on the cloud and we use our own cloud.

The solution is used by our customers for putting their IT infrastructure in the Cloud and bridge to connect for retail. We have a very big string of customers moving their workplaces into the Cloud. This calls for a new topology and this is where VMware SD-WAN is the best fit.

There is one feature that would set VMware SD-WAN apart from others solutions, and that is what I call inter-cloud connectivity. All the solutions regarding VMware are good because for example, If I go from my workplace to a retail office and I want to use my applications in the Cloud, that is possible. Perhaps we have customers who have their IT partial environments hosted in different cloud locations, such as Amazon and Azure, and the interconnection between the clouds, this is not possible. If it was possible it would be a market game-changer. Having the SD-WAN solution that is good at optimizing and facilitating traffic between different cloud providers would be great.

I have been using VMware SD-WAN for more than one year.

The stability of VMware SD-WAN is very good.

VMware SD-WAN is scalable.

The initial setup is very simple.

The licensing model of VMware SD-WAN could be improved, it is not always that competitive. The biggest concern is to be competitive against other solutions. However, the way that the licensing model is designed is not corresponding to the real use cases of my customers.

My advice to others would be to trust the solution and buy it.

I rate VMware SD-WAN an eight out of ten

VMware SD-WAN is a layer 7 firewall.

We're doing POCs and getting a lot of good feedback from customers about VMware. They see how simple it is to deploy and how it reduces the number of employees needed on the network team. 

I like VMware SD-WAN's automation and zero-touch provisioning. Its main advantage is simplicity. Anyone can use this gateway.

Security is a challenge. I would like to see VMware add things like IPS, IDS, and web filtering. These features are the future of security, and most competing firewalls have them. We already have layer 7, but that is not enough for a headquarters. Maybe it's okay for a branch office.

We have been a VMware partner for three years.

VMware SD-WAN is highly stable. We haven't had any complaints about lost connections or the need to restart devices. 

VMware's scalability is good so far. We have 100 devices. 

We opened many tickets with VMware support in the last month. It's good, and they usually respond in under 24 hours. I rate VMware support five out of five.

Setting up VMware SD-WAN is simple and smooth. I would rate it four out of five for ease of deployment. 

I rate VMware SD-WAN eight out of 10. If you are looking for automation and want to free up your IT to focus on other things, I recommend VMware SD-WAN.

Our only use cases are large multinational enterprise customers, as well as very large service providers. The solutions get deployed to the public cloud or to the private cloud depending on the user's requirements.

There are 400 functionalities of the system. Depending on the user's requirements, we may find one feature more important than the other.

Sometimes the room for improvement is designing it for a different customer base that they're not currently in. We match the right solution to the right user's requirements. Some users need a multitenant offering, whereas most large enterprises don't need that. But if you are talking to a service provider, some don't offer a multitenant solution. And so when the customer needs that, we would say use one with a multitenant, like VMware.

We have been using this solution for about two or three years.

The ones we work with are all very good.

The scalability of the solution is very good. We have plans to increase usage.

Some clients want to go very slowly and test out just one country first. If you're going into a lot of countries, you sometimes have regulatory problems with devices being imported and finding the right people to handle that.

I can't really comment because I haven't used it that much.

The initial setup is always pretty complex with what we're involved in.

The deployment time really depends on how conservative a customer is and how quickly they want it to go. Some of them are three months and some are a year.

The amount of staff we need for the deployment depends on whether you're deploying to 50 sites or 2,500 sites. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. In order for it to be a ten out of ten, there should be more automation and self-service features.

Our main use cases have been for customers who have been traditionally using MPLS lines and are now moving into a lot more SaaS-based applications to transform the WAN infrastructure. A lot of our customers have end-of-life, end-of-support devices on the WAN and they are always looking for doing RFPs on cutting edge technology. Some of them happen to use a lot of VMware and Cisco portfolios in their data centers and they are constantly trying to see what solution fits best for them.

VMware has been chosen by many of our customers who do not want to do a lot of complex routing in their environment and want a very easy-to-use solution. The most valuable features are simple troubleshooting, Dynamic Multipath Optimization (DMPO), and cybersecurity. 

DMPO is a technology that is similar to a proprietary technology that VMware has. Customers probably do not understand too much about it in detail but they know about the benefits of it in general. What it does is constantly monitors all different areas, such as latency, jitter bandwidth, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It makes sure that if there is a case where there is a networking jitter contained in the link, it figures out how to maneuver your traffic elsewhere. This is all done automatically without customers getting slowed down on those poor links. The customers do not want to spend too much time researching these complex technologies which VMware automatically takes care of them. It benefits many IT teams by taking a lot of the burden away who are constantly juggling a hundred different other things as well.

The cybersecurity component is very important. VMware also has a lot of security components embedded into the SD-WAN, especially with the traditionally SD-WAN, and now a lot more integration through secure access with partnerships companies, such as Zscaler and other SaaS-based solutions. VMware has a lot of portfolios within themselves that can support many security use cases and if they cannot they have partnerships with industry leaders who can. For example, the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions through the Zscaler partnerships can help customers who want to move from traditional VPN solutions towards ZTNA based ones.

Overall as an experience, I have found that customers like the UI/UX experience that they receive from VMware.

There are customers that have very large routing and segmentation operations who do a lot of segmentation within their network and have complex routing requirements. VMware does not provide the facilities in terms of doing a lot of operations with routing tables, such as complex routing policies. It is more about that out-of-pocket experience that customers get out of VMware. There are other technologies for this type of use case from solutions, such as Versa or other WANs. These are for customers who are wanting to maneuver or configure things themselves, similar to DIY solutions, for them going to technologies, for instance from Versa, makes much more sense because they can do a lot more with routing, complex segmentation, and complex configurations. For customers who have complex service provider requirements, VMware and other solutions cannot support a lot of those use cases.

In an upcoming release, they should allow customers the flexibility to use mobile applications where they can go and check on the information about their networks. A lot of vendors, such as Meraki, have a lot more integration with the use of portals to a mobile application. Having this feature as an alternative to logging into a laptop would be beneficial. If you are a SaaS-based company why not make a mobile application as well. You might not be able to do configurations but at least monitor while away or on vacation.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

The software itself is very stable which our customers really like. They do not want to have buggy software or problems. I see the customers choose VMware over others and over time because of positive experiences with use cases, it becomes a trusted vendor and they tend to trust in the name as a brand in the future.

IT vendors are getting much more stable with the code, but nowadays everybody has more attention towards SaaS technology. Networking will just become another bundle to a lot of those providing this type of solution. Many vendors are getting into SaaS solutions and in terms of documentation, code releases, and features, there are probably more advancements. In SD-WAN specifically, a lot more features are moving into SaaS-based solutions. These new solutions are going to get reviewed and push the industries even further towards SaaS solutions it is the future.

The technical support is good.

The solution is straightforward to install compared to other solutions, VMware makes setup simple. SD-WAN vendors have a kind of simplicity embedded into them, just because of the nature of the software-defined components into it. 

I have evaluated Zscaler and Versa.

The advice to others wanting to implement this solution is not to try and do everything yourself. A lot of customers choose this route and are negatively affected two years later. It is important to do a lot of proof of concepts and testing. Get the solution from a trusted service provider who can manage it for you because these technologies are really complex under the code. Having a trusted service provider who can work with you and can have a lot of benefits. If your company business is not running the WAN links, I would suggest just offload that burden to a trusted service provider because then you can focus on your business. Technologies are complex, and doing all of these operations through your own IP node is complex. A trusted service provider who knows what they are doing can offload a lot of that burden allowing for you to relax and actually focus on your main applications and business.

A lot of customers I have seen in the industry try to do all the operations themselves just because they think that it is good to insource everything. This is one of the areas that you should not be insourceed a hundred percent of your team because these technologies can be extremely difficult to do on a day-to-day basis. Service providers handle hundreds of customers and they know a lot more about what you are doing and can be very useful than if you did it by yourself.

I rate VMware SD-WAN an eight out of ten.

a customer seeking to deploy an SD-WAN environment via 2 alternate stable methods either in a virtual environment or a physical device depending upon their site-specific requirements.

It is fairly similar to other solutions. It has the capability for testing link connectivity, which is its unique feature from a control perspective.

I would like to see an on-premise NGFW embedded into the solution. They have a SASE solution that is part of the deployment model now but is more cloud-focused. It would be nice to have an on-prem all-in-one SDWAN/NGFW box for some smaller deployments that don't need or have a virtual environment nor have a need for a full SASE deployment model.

I have been using this solution for a couple of years. We generally have the version that is previous to the latest one. Our clients have cloud and on-premises deployments.

Early on, there were some issues with it, but now, it is fairly stable.

It works well, but as it gets larger, it becomes more complex and difficult to address. It is good for mid-market type enterprise deployments but not for large deployments. Our clients are small, medium, and large businesses.

I haven't used their technical support.

One of our clients was using Fortinet.

It is fairly straightforward. After you've done it once or twice, it is fairly simple.

I would advise others to understand what you're using SD-WAN for. It is not for replacing MPLS. It is about application performance, access control, and manageability of your sites. Most of our clients don't even understand why they need SD-WAN or what they're looking at in SD-WAN. They think they can just replace MPLS, which is not really the case for SD-WAN. They do it because they think they are lowering costs, which in some cases is true, but it depends on the application performance criteria and things of that nature. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. They can do some improvements. There are other solutions out there that I would highly recommend over this solution, but it is not bad.

The most valuable features are the orchestration layer, plug and play capabilities, and also the fact that you can either configure it as a full mesh or hard install. Even though fully meshed is limited, it is still a good feature.

There are a number of customers we have that require a fully mashed SD-WAN on VeloCloud that is not available currently. If you compare the reporting tool to all other tools that you use for customers for MPLS, they are not as granular. Additionally, the security could be better and increasing the capabilities for fully meshed architectural typology would be beneficial.

I have been using the solution for approximately two years.

This solution is scalable, most of our clients are enterprise size companies. 

The technical support is there if we need them. We are a premium partner to VMware, if there are issues that you cannot resolve internally, we reach out to them and they give us the help we need.

We currently use a few solutions other than this one such as Meraki. When picking the best solution for our clients, the best depends on the use case. It depends on the customer requirements, what they are looking for and then we will recommend the best fit based on our offering.

The installation is easy.

The price is reasonable for this solution, but the only challenge for us is that the Rand currency fluctuates to the dollar and provides some complexities. The price might go up just because the Rand has actually lost value.

This solution is at a very high level, and quite good. However, it is not one platform that fits all, it depends on the use case and what the customer looking for. You might find customers that want security or other UTM based features, which VeloCloud does not offer. It weighs heavily on the customer requirements, but if security is what they are after then I would not generally recommend the VeloCloud offering.

I rate VMware SD-WAN an eight out of ten.

The primary use cases of this solution are global WAN refreshment, Campus-to-Campus connectivity, and because my client is a global customer, they want zero-touch provisioning.

It's true, zero-touch provisioning. Anyone can migrate over to VeloCloud, it's that simple, just plug in the necessary cables and it's done.

Security needs improvement.

Also, it needs better scalability. There are certain products that if you need to create extra, the company expands and they will bring on extra branch-to-branch connectivity. There is a point where you will have to move to new hardware. We would need a larger scope for scalability.

I don't want to deploy a number of VeloClouds, and then in one year after business acquisitions, they need scalability. The only way to do that would be to remove the hardware and replace it with the new hardware.

I have been using VeloCloud, on and off for 18 months.

We are using the latest version, but not in a deep dive method.

It's stable, definitely.

It's a scalable solution. We have approximately 700 sites at the moment, and it's growing more as we adopt Microsoft Azure for this particular customer. So, we will need to spin up virtual instances of VeloCloud in Azure Regions.

The whole company is going through a restructuring where they're going to segregate portions of the business. They'll have their own VeloCloud SD-WAN overlay instance, integrating into the Cloud.

We have not contacted technical support. We have someone in our company that addresses anything obscure. He has a fair bit of experience that began prior to our engagement.

The initial setup is simple. SD-WAN is the simplest, and anyone can do it.

To deploy VeloCloud itself takes approximately one hour.

In IT, things don't always go to plan, but for the most part, it's an hour.

I used a consultant to help with deployment.

For the maintenance of each region, there will be a network SME to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

I will continue to use this solution, we have another customer that wants to use SD-WAN, but they are better suited for Cisco Meraki, so we are just doing a proof of concept with them.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others. 100%. That said, it needs better security. There is always room to improve.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for connecting multiple sites through the internet.

Typically, our clients are medium-sized businesses.

VeloCloud developed DMPO to increase performance and connectivity.

VeloCloud provides very good performance, support, portal configuration, and service integration — I think that it's perfect.

VeloCloud could improve its integration capabilities with other solutions. VeloCloud just provides connectivity, but what about advanced security services or administration service providers, and HPP for voice solutions? I think that VeloCloud could improve this kind of service integration. I know it's not their main use case, but it's part of their portfolio.

In the next release, I would like to see better support for IPv6.

I also think that a CPE that supports WiFi 6 is necessary.

I am a reseller — I have been using this solution for three years.

The stability is good, but it could be better.

Scalability-wise, I think it's pretty good. It can support various numbers of CPEs and VMs for different uses in order to grow the capacity of the platform.

Our customers don't have any complaints surrounding technical support. They don't often need help as there is plenty of reliable documentation online surrounding VeloCloud. We have yet to come across a use case that VeloCloud doesn't have documentation for.

The initial setup is very simple. You can auto-connect the CPEs. Once you activate the CPEs, the CPEs can then connect to other CPEs that are in the network.

For reliable connectivity, I would definitely recommend VeloCloud; however, if my customers want another kind of service in addition to connectivity, then I would recommend another kind of solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.