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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs VMware NSX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.3
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN reduces WAN expenses, improves efficiency, and enhances reliability, with ROI in three years for most users.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware NSX saves costs by reducing network needs, enhancing security, and achieving ROI within a year when deployed effectively.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN support is highly rated for expertise and responsiveness, despite occasional delays and redirection challenges.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware NSX support is generally reliable but varies in responsiveness and expertise, with improvement needed in certain regions.
Cisco's ongoing reorganizations have affected the quality of technical support, which varies depending on the engineer handling cases.
Our technicians have a good support experience from the company.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is praised for its scalability, suitable for diverse industries and enterprises, despite some technical expansion limits.
Sentiment score
7.7
VMware NSX is scalable across large infrastructures, praised for adaptability, hardware independence, and seamless integration in various environments.
Cisco SD-WAN is highly scalable and can be expanded to more than 10,000 sites.
The ease of configuration and features like zero-touch provisioning enhance the scalability of Cisco SD-WAN, especially in disaster recovery situations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is stable and reliable, but complex setups and new deployments may face minor issues and bugs.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware NSX is stable and mature, praised for robust performance and dependability, despite occasional minor upgrade issues.
While some software-related issues and bugs were encountered, they did not cause the whole environment to crash.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN needs cost efficiency, better interface, enhanced security, simplified licensing, and improved support and scalability.
VMware NSX needs enhancements in integration, automation, deployment, and support to address complexity, pricing, and user-friendliness challenges.
Including more features like integrating with Splunk for monitoring vulnerabilities would help eliminate the need for other SOC solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is costly compared to competitors, with complex licensing but offers comprehensive solutions and performance benefits.
VMware NSX pricing is higher than competitors, complex, and may discourage smaller organizations due to potentially unused features.
Its pricing is justifiable due to the comprehensive solution it offers.
It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller businesses when using the Meraki version.
VMware NSX is a little higher in price compared to the competition.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN offers centralized management, security, scalability, cloud integration, and enhances network performance and cost savings.
VMware NSX offers micro-segmentation, automation, scalability, and integration, enhancing security and flexibility across virtual environments and clouds.
Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations.
Integration with Cisco ISE, Cisco Firewalls, and other Cisco solutions is beneficial.
The most powerful feature of VMware NSX is the micro-segmentation that allows us to separate the different protocols our application works with.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (5th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (2nd), WAN Edge (2nd)
VMware NSX
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (6th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (8th), Network Automation (5th), Microsegmentation Software (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Van Den Ouden - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables secure and flexible branch connectivity with application-aware routing
The valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN include its security policies and zone-based firewall that are applied to every site, as well as application-aware routing. Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations. Application-aware routing offers flexibility in using different lines for traffic, depending on the policy implemented.
Tarek Nader - PeerSpot reviewer
It extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3
NSX extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3, covering the vRO and extending the capability on Layer 3 by decapsulating using a new mechanism. NSX-V was designed to use with VMware products and Success 360, providing more flexibility toward different levels of cloud, containers, and components. NSX-T gives you the ability to stretch your network across different view locations. If you have multiple sites, you can connect them using NSX-T.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco SD-WAN?
When considering the most valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN, the decoupling of self-monitoring stands out significantly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
The pricing for Cisco SD-WAN is rated eight out of ten, with some variability depending on the reseller discounts and the size of the enterprise. It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller bu...
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
The main area for improvement in Cisco SD-WAN is the lack of documentation, which often lags behind the software releases. This is especially notable since Cisco acquired the solution and is still ...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about VMware NSX?
The product has valuable features for security and network extension.
 

Also Known As

Cisco SD-WAN
VMware Nicira, Lastline Defender
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
City of Avondale, Lumeta, Kroll Ontrack, Heartland Payment Systems, Baystate Heallth, Exostar, Tribune Media, iGATE, NTT Communications, Synergent, California Natural Resources Agency, Bloomington Public Schools, Columbia Sportswear, Join Experience S.A, Schuberg Philis
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.