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Aruba Airwave vs Fortinet FortiManager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Aruba Airwave significantly boosts ROI by enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and optimizing engineer time from 60 to 15-20 minutes.
Sentiment score
7.4
Fortinet FortiManager offers cost-effectiveness and ROI benefits, enhancing security and reducing administration costs with improved configuration visibility.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Aruba Airwave support is reliable with strong ratings, though slower escalation compared to Cisco is noted by some users.
Sentiment score
6.9
Fortinet FortiManager's customer service is praised but experiences delays, wait times, and variable expertise among support engineers.
Angie was very kind and communicated well in both Spanish and English, making it pleasant to connect with her.
I'd rate their support a nine out of ten.
Fortinet's support has proven to be reliable, particularly as we've been engaged with them since the project's initiation.
The level of support for P2 and P1 is wonderful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Aruba Airwave is scalable and adaptable, supporting medium to enterprise businesses with adjustable resources for varying infrastructures.
Sentiment score
7.5
Fortinet FortiManager is scalable and suitable for large enterprises, supporting multiple devices but may have hardware and cost limitations.
Aruba Airwave is fully scalable, as we have a large number of tenants using the network with approximately six thousand end users.
You can raise the capacity as you go, and there is no limit for hardware.
Effective policy management and centralized upgrades are critical for multi-location management.
If the company has many switches and access points and traffics with customization Fortinet FortiManager is not the correct solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Aruba Airwave is highly rated for stability, reliability, and integration, though minor performance issues occur in crowded environments.
Sentiment score
8.1
Fortinet FortiManager is considered stable and reliable, with minimal bugs, occasional reboots, and infrequent minor upgrade issues.
I have found Aruba Airwave to be stable.
I rate the solution's stability ten out of ten.
95% of the time, there are no problems interacting with other devices.
The solution is highly stable and has good performance.
 

Room For Improvement

Aruba Airwave needs improved GUI stability, integration, and cost-effectiveness, with better scalability, support, and device compatibility to meet customer demands.
Fortinet FortiManager requires enhanced documentation, integration, support, stability, scalability, and improved usability for configuration, VPN management, and automation capabilities.
When upgrading hardware, there were technical issues with network interfaces and Red Hat, which required escalation to developers.
When attempting to copy a floor plan, it does not copy well, so I often have to redraw the walls.
You have to order licenses for different endpoints and devices, and calculating the costs can be confusing.
Fortinet changes its subscriptions. A few years ago Fortinet Firewall had capabilities for use in the cloud environment; they then changed the subscription and it was no longer part of the subscription, forcing the customer to buy an additional license.
FortiManager is a good tool, but there is a lack of really advanced documentation.
 

Setup Cost

Aruba Airwave offers flexible yet complex pricing, cost-effective compared to competitors, with trials to evaluate features and manageability.
Fortinet FortiManager offers competitive pricing for enterprises, particularly in large deployments, though smaller installations may find it costly.
Although there is a cost associated with Fortinet FortiManager, its price is undoubtedly justified by the value it provides in terms of the purpose it serves.
It isn't like other solutions where you need to pay for SD-WAN or additional bandwidth.
Fortinet has the best pricing currently on the market.
 

Valuable Features

Aruba Airwave provides comprehensive multivendor network management with real-time monitoring, orchestration, troubleshooting, and robust reporting features.
Fortinet FortiManager excels in centralized firewall management, scalability, automation, and integration, enhancing network efficiency and security.
It provides near real-time monitoring using AIMON and AURO protocols, which is robust with multiple models and brand support.
Aruba Airwave provides good visibility, offering extensive data on network dynamics, such as access point connections, usage, signal strengths, and potential interference from neighboring Wi-Fi networks.
The most helpful feature I noticed, yet did not utilize, allowed us to add our Cisco switches for monitoring.
I can automate the installation of configurations using different programming languages like Python or HPE, and it's a GUI solution, so it's pretty easy to use, even for basic users.
The main benefit of Fortinet FortiManager is the ability to control all the devices from a central location.
It integrates all the global devices into one platform.
 

Categories and Ranking

Aruba Airwave
Ranking in Network Management Applications
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiManager
Ranking in Network Management Applications
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Aruba Airwave is 6.8%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiManager is 5.1%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution has multi-vendor support, and it can be used for network management
Aruba Airwave is an on-prem solution, so you have to manage it with your servers to be deployed. You can also deploy it on the cloud if you have your own private cloud. All the configuration guides and the different types of designs you need are available from Aruba Airwave's portal. I would recommend Aruba Airwave to other users. Overall, I rate Aruba Airwave ten out of ten.
HamedWasel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices
We've faced an issue when we need to move devices. Templates need to be recreated instead of having the policies, et cetera, cut and pasted over. Everything should just move over when we need to move devices instead of recreating everything from scratch. For the IPSEC tunnels, Fortimanager doesn't have all of the features that are available on Fortigate.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
8%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aruba Airwave?
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with Aruba Airwave?
When attempting to copy a floor plan, it does not copy well, so I often have to redraw the walls. It's somewhat annoying since other Wi-Fi design software we use is easier for drawing walls and inc...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiManager?
The most valuable feature is the centralized management console.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly. Better integration of Fortinet ADC into FortiManager would be beneficial.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Henkel, University of Findlay, University of Minnesota Duluth, University of Iowa
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Airwave vs. Fortinet FortiManager and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.