Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Reviews

Here in Pakistan, there are few deployments of Cisco SD-WAN. We are trying to push Cisco to our clients. But the issue is that the prices of the competitors are too high. So it's very difficult to capture the market here in Pakistan. As you know, practice in Pakistan, the market is under development and Pakistan is a developing country and they are looking for a cheap solution at a price to achieve in terms of price comparison with other windows.

Cisco SD-WAN improved the productivity of our organization, in terms of ROI and in terms of the resources they require.

Good for cloud bases integrations and operational overheads. There is minimum blind space in this solution.

The main issue is that not in the technology, but it comes back comparison. When we do a comparison with other SD-WAN solutions, they are priced better. Then on that basis, they conclude to use the other solution. 

Cisco SD-WAN is stable. It's scalable and reliable, and robust.

Cisco SD-WAN is scalable. It's scalable and reliable, and robust.

I believe the Cisco technical support as compared to other principles is some of the best support we've ever seen.

The initial setup is the most straightforward part. It takes some time. But then you want to add the other branches, it takes only three to four minutes.

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN at an eight out of ten.

We implemented and currently support some clients using Cisco SD-WAN.

Essentially, everything is moving to the cloud. There is a big shift from the traditional network operator-based infrastructure to a fully cloud-native kind of infrastructure for companies. People don't want to deal with so many providers. The network provider, the cybersecurity provider, another company managing the routers and firewalls, et cetera. Everything is moving to the cloud to simplify things. The shift to SD-WAN is motivated by business reasons. It allows for cutting costs. Traditional networking forms for data centers are simply too expensive, too slow, and very time-consuming to maintain.

Today with the SASE architecture, it's very easy to immediately deploy the cloud to have one subscription for one set of services. With one subscription, you have full access to a dedicated network that is much faster than the traditional MNTL networks that traditional data centers are using. Plus, you have integrated cybersecurity and a fully dedicated private backbone that is essentially spreading across the globe. People don't want to delegate to British telecom off to Verizon anymore, handing their network into another company managing the security into another company managing the networking infrastructure. With SD-WAN, especially with solutions based on the SASE framework, they pay one subscription fee each month, and one single company is managing everything. 

In terms of technology, we are completely agnostic. In many cases, we deal with Cisco simply due to the fact that the client already has a Cisco implementation. Most of the clients started their corporate deployment 10 or 15 years ago, and therefore there are legacy systems. Some of them are built on Cisco and we found that their systems are already implemented. 

I evaluate new technologies continuously each month and we deploy, as I told you, across geographies in multiple companies. Cisco is definitely cutting edge, absolutely cutting edge in terms of robustness on the capability of the network to be very stable with very low delay. It is a proven, tried, and tested technology. It is very reliable software. It is rock solid and very stable with respect to delivering top-performance networking functions. 

It is very stable with very good firmware. In terms of traditional functionality, it's unbeatable as an offer. I would say 10 plus as a vote in terms of traditional networking.

There is much room for improvement on the cybersecurity side. For most of the clients, it is unacceptable nowadays to have too many people involved in managing the corporate network, and many clients like to see providers that can deliver a unified solution that integrates together with the network functionalities and the cybersecurity functionalities as they go hand in hand, especially in a regulated industry such as in banking, insurance, or healthcare. All governmental infrastructure must be compliant with very specific guidelines and requirements. It's not always it is possible to meet them with out-of-the-box products. You need to integrate on the top. If Cisco can work more in creating a true SASE solution known simply as an SD-WAN solution, that will be magic. That will be perfect. Right now, they need to do more of the cybersecurity side. 

Cisco is working at the moment. Unfortunately, like all traditional companies, it is very big and quite spread out. That makes it a little bit slower to react than some of the other competitors in the space. Some competitors are much faster in providing out-of-the-box solutions, more innovative solutions. In terms of innovation, in many cases, they're lagging behind.

Specifically, with Cisco SD-WAN I have about five years of experience now. With Cisco, it's a long-term kind of connection with the company. We have been serving clients over the past 12 years. Always, Cisco is very present.

The solution is stable. There is very minimal movement and very minimal packet loss. There is very minimal delay in the network. In terms of performance, it's absolutely best of breed, and world-class. There is no discussion about that. In terms of hardware, probably is the best provider. 

The solution is very scalable. From the branch office to the data center, you have so many Cisco modules, and you can cut the system the way you like. Any shape and size are available from Cisco. I don't see any provider of networking solutions with more options. It's definitely a solution where you can pinpoint exactly the specific needs of a branch, a data center, or an office, and find the right piece of hardware. There are so many sometimes it can be even complicated to choose, however, Cisco provides everything from the ground up without any problem. It's a tried and tested solution, and therefore is very well documented. 

The solutions are stable, however, we offer technical support. If it's broken, you always have access to local support. Somebody from Cisco will react very, very rapidly. 

In terms of configuration, usually companies, schools, companies, providers managed service providers like us tend to manage the network. 

In terms of support, it's one of the most well-known and respected companies and universally accepted as a top player. You can trust the support they provide. 

The typical brands we deal with are mostly Cisco, Palo Alto, Zscaler, and, in more recent times, Check Point and Citrix.

Typically we have on average, a team of three or four people managing Cisco systems based in New Bailey, where we have representatives specializing in Cisco Systems.

Cisco is very well-known for being easy to use. We help quite a few clients with their Cisco implementations. There are absolutely no issues in terms of performance, or setup. It's more of innovation in their architectural kind of a problem that Cisco has at the moment. They are having trouble keeping pace with the innovation in the sector. That said, it's a very good system, and easy to deploy.

We help our clients implement the solution.

Being embedded with Cisco is a matter of negotiation. Therefore, the pricing depends on the negotiation and if the client is a medium-sized company or a large company. It depends on the geography. We already see different pricing when we deploy in India when we deploy New Zealand or we deploy in the Nordics, in Europe, or even in Southern Europe. Prices are always different and depend on the local offices and how big the deal is. 

Pricing varies according to requirements, accessory services, and pure hardware. 

Markets are so hyper-competitive, and pricing is converging for all top providers. If you go to Fortinet, if you go to Palo Alto, it's not that you'll find prices that are so dramatically different. Everyone is completely aligned to compete. Differentiation is not on pricing. When you deploy a system like Cisco, the main selection criteria, is not pricing.

Today, even rich companies are very careful on pricing, however, companies are very mature in terms of structuring deals. The price of a system is very well-known in the market. All the differences are made by two essential elements. One is the ability of your sales team to penetrate within a company. Sales channels are making all the difference - not technology, not anything else. The second point is innovation and quality of accessory services delivered on top of the hardware. Hardware today is a given, is like code for a nice screen. Cisco is able to provide some hardware functions and firmware functions, however, all the difference is made by ancillary services, by additional service, by all the service that you build on the top of your products, and adding a very good success manager that is handling the deployment process and can guarantee that the client is extracting true business value from IT investments. People don't spend money to buy hardware, to buy networks. People spend money to execute their corporate functions in a very effective, efficient way, in a very secure way. They don't care about Cisco. They don't care about the firewall or the router. They need to deliver products and successful expediencies and services across the globe.

What I'm looking for is for companies - and Cisco is among them - able to provide best-of-breed technologies to support both the network implementation side and the cybersecurity side. 

Typically, we are technology agnostic, therefore, we can support clients in implementing systems, using different kinds of technologies. Among them is Cisco.

We tend to work with hybrid deployments as the major pain point for clients is to harmonize, to have public and private clouds working together. There is no distinction for clients between public and private. Typically, they call us to organize to a single pane of glass, where they can control all the cloud, their network activities in a very simple, seamless way. The difficulty today is exactly putting together to work a very diverse kind of hardware ecosystem ranging from Google Cloud or Amazon Cloud, Azure that is growing exponentially these days, and plus all the enterprise data center, and putting all these elements together.

Sometimes after mergers and acquisitions, we have to patch together pieces of hardware from different organizations that are not even compatible. For example, very recently, we supported the MNA integration of two different companies, and they were using two completely different systems. One was based on Cisco, the other one on Fortinet and Palo Alto, and was using lots of data. That is the problem today. Unifying all the settings, all the controls using a kind of centralized control and making sure that public and private clouds are working together in a very seamless fashion.

I'd rate the solution at a perfect ten out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Cisco SD-WAN is one of the products that we implement for our customers. I am a pre-sales engineer and help with the consultancy.

The idea of SD-WAN is very good and it's efficient.

You get security, all of the service you need, and it's easy to deploy.

It is a feature-rich product with a lot of components.

Cisco products are a little bit complicated, so making them a little bit easier would be an improvement. The installation is easy but having many components, and the integration with other components, is a little bit complex compared to other products and other vendors.

I have been working with Cisco SD-WAN for one or two years.

This is definitely a stable product.

It is a scalable product and it can also be integrated with other Cisco products such as NSO (Network Services Orchestrator) and the virtual CPE. The customers for this product are enterprise-level companies.

The Cisco technical support is excellent.

Prior to this solution, we used Cisco iWAN.

The initial setup is easy to do. I'm not sure of how long it takes to deploy, but it is not very complex and if all of the requirements are met then it should be straightforward.

We deploy this product for our clients.

Cisco is more expensive than some competing products.

We have compared Cisco with all of the vendors such as Fortinet and Talari. I believe that Cisco is the best, overall. It is not the cheapest, but it is the best both technically and support-wise.

With respect to other vendors, they have different strengths. For example, Fortinet is coming from a security background so they have quite a good product with a secure firewall on it. However, they lack some of the SD-WAN functionalities. I believe the routing part is still being done on the CPE, whereas with Cisco, it's done on the orchestrator.

Overall, I don't know how other vendors can compete with Cisco, and that is partly because of the integration that Cisco has with all of its products. It gives them a big edge.

Cisco is a company that has been in this market for quite a long time. They have a stable office, stable software, and all of the features are there. Having the SD-WAN on top of the routers they have has given them an advantage. Plus, they have a wide range of products and there is integration between all of them and SD-WAN.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I recently provided Cisco SD-WAN to one of my customers for the first time. This customer had a traditional network and had been happy with the conversion to a software-defined WAN.

The introduction of Cisco SD-WAN, has make some greate change to our organization in terms of acquiring new knowledge as we are a cisco premium partner, we have to take some training on SD-WAN to understand the knowledge so that it will be easy for us to sell and implement to the end customer

So far, the feature that I like best is the policy configuration manager. It is better than performing a manual configuration.

It would be very helpful if we had better access to a knowledge base, or online documentation, to help both us and our customers learn to use this solution.

I have been working with Cisco SD-WAN and doing online training for the past year.

Cisco SD-WAN is a stable network solution.

This solution is super scalable. Most of our clients are midsize and enterprise-level organizations. These include banks, social security funds, educational institutions, government departments, community groups, and agencies. 

I have not contacted Cisco support specifically about SD-WAN, but I have dealt with them on other occasions and they are good. I would rate them a seven out of ten. Overall, I am satisfied with the support.

Most of our customer using traditional WAN technologies and we are the one configuring and deploying those solution, now we are on the way of educating them the importance of SD-WAN and finally implenting it

The initial setup is somewhat complex, although we are currently learning about this solution. In our country, most of the customers do not know much about this type of technology, and we are the ones who are propagating Cisco SD-WAN. When it comes to the setup, it is not like a traditional, manual configuration.

Level of expertise is good as mos to cisco engineer are certified in specific area 

Not yet calculated

Setup cost is reasonably standard as it gives a complete WAN link utilization with perfomance of QoS

Yes SD-WAN offered with VMware

This is a good product and I totally recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are working with telecom companies and many government companies. The main request is to tie the branches, separate the bandwidth depending on the application, and have a unified orchestrator to see all these connections from one centralized management center.

SD-WAN provides a range of common benefits, including cost reduction, increased visibility, and scalability. It can be seen as a replacement for MPLS. This applies to all vendors, not just Cisco. When someone requests SD-WAN from Cisco, they already recognize its value within their environment.

It is expensive. 

I have been using Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN for three or four years. We are Cisco's golden partner.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is high.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

The product pricing is high. Fortinet is cheaper than Cisco.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Cisco SD-WAN's most valuable feature is the ease of transition.

Cisco SD-WAN's smart account stuff could be improved. People still think they're using traditional licenses, so customers need a lot of education on using SD-WAN devices, especially on the smart/virtual account side.

I've been using Cisco SD-WAN for about two years.

Cisco SD-WAN's stability is good - I haven't found any issues at the operational level.

Cisco SD-WAN's scalability is good.

The initial setup was complex and required us to plan ahead. If you don't have an in-house design team or outsource to a third party with expertise, the setup will be difficult.

It takes some time, but Cisco SD-WAN gives a good ROI - for example, we have had some savings in terms of transport.

I'd advise anybody thinking of implementing Cisco SD-WAN to learn the smart and virtual account setup and the staging and installation process very clearly. This isn't just a case of buying a license or device and installing it, you need to create a lot of stuff, so you need to understand the technology before buying it, at least in a test lab or non-production environment. I would give Cisco SD-WAN a rating of seven out of ten.

We use Cisco SD-WAN for a VPN, and we create the DNS in Fortinet. We have used this solution for data centers and failover tests for disaster recovery.

It is really easy to deploy and use. It is also easy to use for failovers and designing solutions.  

The rollout is really quick. It is easy to adjust and roll out.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for five or six years.

It is as stable as your lines are. We mostly have fiber connections, and it is really stable and performing well. I once had a problem with a power unit, but I have never experienced any downtime.

We have contacted them. All engineers were experienced enough to support us. We had a special team from Cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward. The design takes longer than the implementation. You have to know your layer 3, but it can also define layer 2 or layer 1. It is really a great tool. 

I used a consultant for the implementation. I am an architect, and I only design the solution. I discuss the solution with the network engineer and then roll it out with the help of the network engineer and the project manager.

It is much cheaper than other solutions. Most of our clients are the top 500 companies, and they all have a corporate contract.

I would recommend this solution. It is a great solution, and it is already defined. It is more suitable for medium and large enterprises operating in lots of regions and countries. For smaller organizations, you can use a normal business DSL solution. 

I would advise doing a VR test to make sure that all settings are correct. We have had issues where the configuration or IP spoofing on the network was not so good. You also need to know the number of tenants that you need. You can set it up on paper, but if you don't test it, you would never know that it is working. 

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN a nine out of ten. It is the best solution that I ever had, but there might be something better than this in the future.

Our primary use case generally relates to customers looking to reduce their MPLS costs. In addition, many of our customers are moving to the cloud, which can handle both on-prem and cloud services, a hybrid solution. Finally, some of our customers are looking to move towards new technologies and will choose this solution, but the primary use cases are the first two - reduction of MPLS costs, using multiple modes of transport, and managing and control of technologies.

We deal mainly with large enterprise companies. A few years ago customers were not aware of SD-WAN or they were not looking to migrate to SD-WAN, but now whenever there is talk around WAN, 95% of the customers are moving to SD-WAN.

I think segmentation is a valuable feature that the product provides. I think the segmented traffic it provides is the best in the industry right now.

The product is not a cheap solution and could be improved by lowering the cost. Most customers who do not buy Cisco give their primary reason as cost. If the cost was reduced then I think we'd be able to sell more. Vendor log in could also be improved. There are a lot of solutions on the market now that are open solutions, meaning boxless solutions. You don't really need to buy the box that Cisco provides. You can upgrade to SD-WAN using the open solutions. Cisco could provide a full mobile solution but I don't think they'll do that because selling their hardware on top of the software is their bread and butter, .

Before SD-WAN came in they provided quite a few features. For example, a lot of customers were using Cisco's router and voice gateway which has not been available since the launch of SD-WAN. They are still working on restoring it. It's one of the key issues with the Cisco SD-WAN solution that would be a good additional feature. Whatever features were supported before are not supported in the SD-WAN solution now. If they could incorporate all those features for customers that would be a big improvement. 

I've been using SD-WAN for about two and a half years. We always pitch the latest version of the product. 

The stability of SD-WAN on iOS needs improving, they're in a transition phase. Cisco recently acquired Repeller. They are gradually migrating from their old SD-WAN to this new retail SD-LAN. It's been a challenge because the roadmaps they envisaged haven't quite worked out, it's not a smooth road. If you change from traditional WAN to SD-WAN from the retailers perspective, it can be a bit of a challenge. We also deploy Fortinet and that's easier. I don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of years, but for now, doing SD-WAN is a little bit of a challenge

If you can get to the first step of migration and to stable operations then the scalability is not a challenge. The Cisco solution is pretty scalable. I think it's the most scalable solution in the market, but it has to setup properly. Once it's set up properly. Then scalability is not a challenge. Scalability is more of a challenge with products like Fortinet. The initial migration to SD-WAN is more of a challenge here.

Technical support is very good, better than most of the vendors in the market, but they charge for it. 

It depends on the customer. For smaller and medium-sized customers, it's not that difficult. But recently I have faced problems in migrating because it's where some of this new Cisco iOS is SD-WAN. It seems to be a bit unstable moving to it. All these complexities make migration difficult. It's not a cakewalk.

Again, deployment time depends on the customer and size of the company. It's hard to generalize. I'm from the presale team so we don't implement. We have another team dealing with implementation and there are around eight people in that team. 

The solution is not cheap.  Most customers are now moving from an APEX spending model to an OPEX spending model. The licenses are pretty expensive. There are additional support costs which is not inexpensive. Licensing, support, product, technology, and everything in the Cisco SD-WAN solution costs. I think it's the most expensive solution on the market.

It's important to realize the product has two layers, the underlay, and the overlay. The controller is in the overlay and the underlay is the physical devices. Most of those are on-prem, but the controller is mostly on the cloud. That's what most people prefer.

In terms of size, different customers have different migration plans and different approaches. For example, Cisco has the Meraki SD-WAN solution, and then they have the retailer SD-WAN solution. The question is which solution fits the customer best. I would advise them on that aspect first before deciding whether they go for a Meraki solution or a retailer solution. The second aspect, of course, is the budget. How much does the customer want to spend? And the third would be to ascertain their internal skill set on deploying, managing, and operating the SD-WAN solution. If the skill set is in-house then good for them, they can go ahead. But if not then I would propose a managed SD-WAN solution where maybe, for example, our company provides managed SD-WAN solutions for some Cisco products. The third thing I would advise for global customers is to decide if they want to deal with the last mile connectivity themselves or find a partner to do that for them. Security would be a final consideration and that depends on setup and scale. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10, it hasn't quite made it for me to be rated higher. I'd like to see some improvement.