What advice do you have for others considering Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?

I would rate Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. The reason I give it the highest rating is that the features I discussed, including great throughput and familiarity with Cisco routers, stand out to me. I have no comment regarding Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms' AI capabilities and their governance and security. I have not used Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms' AI capabilities at all, so I cannot provide an opinion on its accuracy and reliability of output. Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is deployed in the cloud, specifically in AWS and in Azure. I use Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms more frequently in AWS compared to Azure. My advice to others looking into using Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is that depending on what you want to do with it, it is a very good device to buy, especially for people coming from a Cisco environment who want to use a Cisco-native CLI for configuration.

When it comes to the accuracy and reliability of output, especially with any automated or intelligent features I might have used, it is hard for me to believe that AI or intelligent features are going to solve so many problems because they tend to make mistakes. Sometimes trying to configure something by itself leads to more mistakes and makes it harder to solve the issue, although this does not happen all the time. I believe in the future this will be possible, but I am not sure when or how long that will take. Having a tool where I could just type one prompt would be great. If I were talking to someone new to Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms, I would want them to first learn how to configure it, how it works, its performance, the resources required, how much money they need to spend on it, what the limits are, and what the benefits are. They should learn all of that to understand if this is the best path or solution for their network. They should not expect it to do everything, but rather understand what it does and what it does not. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

My advice for others looking into using Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is to first look at the features available on the platform because, in the Meraki form we use, there are not as many routing or firewall features compared to other vendors. Consider if zero touch deployment are key differentiators for your deployment size, as it makes a significant difference when deploying many sites. Also contemplate how you will operate your overall WAN or SD-WAN solution; if you have a small team and many sites, a centralized and simple platform with observability and built-in monitoring tools is essential. Lastly, assess the security aspects and the management of vulnerabilities; for us, when Cisco Meraki has a patch, rolling it out is easy, which has been proven beneficial. I would rate my overall experience with Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms a 7 out of 10.

I would advise others looking into using Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms to go for it as it is a good option, and you can have a good product along with good support from Cisco. Everything is good, and I very much enjoy this product. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.

I still work with the product, specifically with this solution, but I have low hands-on experience myself. However, I am managing the team which is hands-on. 90% of the time, even now, if you call my team, they will be configuring something on the switch. I have not touched Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms for the SD-WAN. I recall the Catalyst, the 48 and 4 services, as well as the 6 services. I have never gotten to the 8000. For Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms, we are using it normally because it is a layer three switch. We are using it for the MPLS connection and BGP. We are working on doing some network segmentation and are doing a lot of other work on them. I also mentioned that I use the UCS, the servers, and I also used the ASA. My advice to other organizations considering Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms would be as follows: if they are going to grow bigger on their network and traffic, and if they want their network to be very stable, they must consider taking Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms. I would advise them to have Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms if they ever want to have stability, good performance, scalability, and reliability. I rate this solution 9.5 out of 10.

The application performance in our remote and branch offices remains unaffected as we have plenty of bandwidth available locally, without hitting any limitations. I have not purchased Cisco products from AWS Marketplace; instead, I work directly with our Cisco SI to purchase the product. I would rate this product an overall 8 out of 10.

I do not work with application hosting capability in Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms. Implementing Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms as a gateway does not affect application performance across remote or branch offices. In terms of SD-WAN, I work with FortiGate for security. I'm currently on Fortinet SD-WAN, which is a FortiGate. We also have a third-party IPsec tunnel to form an IPsec tunnel with the third party, including Cisco and Palo Alto, depending upon the third-party devices. Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is mainly for VPN, and since I work at Orange, where we have different clients, depending upon the requirement of the different customers, if a customer is willing to migrate existing legacy networks to Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms, Fortinet SD-WAN, or Palo Alto SD-WAN, I deal with these SD-WAN technologies including the security part. Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is a very good product, and with this, we can do so many things, including integrating with the firewall, URL filtering, VPN, IPsec segmentation, and other capabilities. I would rate this product nine out of ten overall.