Prisma SD-WAN vs Steelhead comparison

Palo Alto Networks and Riverbed are both solutions in the WAN Edge category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while Riverbed is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5. Palo Alto Networks holds a 5.8% mindshare in WE, compared to Riverbed’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Palo Alto Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

Prisma SD-WAN

Read 19 Prisma SD-WAN reviews

2,727 Views
1,376 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Steelhead

Read 24 Steelhead reviews

892 Views
470 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Prisma SD-WAN

Steelhead

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Steelhead and Prisma SD-WAN are two competitive solutions in the SD-WAN market. Prisma SD-WAN is often viewed as a superior product due to its comprehensive features, suggesting it is worth the investment.

Features: Steelhead users value its WAN optimization capabilities, enhancing network performance and reducing latency. Other key features include straightforward deployment and customer service. On the other hand, Prisma SD-WAN offers a broader feature set, including advanced security integrations, simplified management, and robust versatility.

Room for Improvement: Steelhead users note the need for improved scalability and enhanced security features. Users also feel the product could benefit from better updates. Prisma SD-WAN users suggest the product could use a more intuitive management system, more detailed documentation, and simplified configuration processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Steelhead is appreciated for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. Prisma SD-WAN, while praised for support, has a slightly more complex deployment process due to its wide range of features.

Pricing and ROI: Steelhead is favored for its cost-effectiveness and quicker ROI due to lower setup costs. Prisma SD-WAN, though more expensive initially, is seen as a long-term investment with higher ROI due to its advanced features and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Prisma SD-WAN vs. Steelhead Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Prisma SD-WAN vs. Steelhead

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Prisma SD-WAN

Ranking in WAN Edge

4th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)

Steelhead

Ranking in WAN Edge

13th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

WAN Optimization (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the WAN Edge category, the mindshare of Prisma SD-WAN is 5.8%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Steelhead is 1.5%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

WAN Edge

Featured Reviews

CarlosNascimento

Senior Cyber Security Consultant at Compwyre

Has high-speed dynamic routing and a good traffic shaping feature for managing bandwidth

The dynamic routing in Prisma SD-WAN is high-speed and valuable because it quickly adjusts, so users do not realize the link is down. The traffic shaping feature is also handy. In branches with poor internet connections, traffic shaping allows us to restrict and manage bandwidth effectively. This ensures no single user can consume all the bandwidth, and it reserves equal parts of the link for all users. For example, we can share the link equally in a small office with ten people. Prisma SD-WAN is highly effective in handling network failovers and ensuring business continuity. It includes redundancy, failover capabilities, and extensive monitoring tools. If one customer experiences an attack, updates are provided to all other customers to prevent similar threats.

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Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency & bandwidth saving, best layer 7 QoS shaping policy can be achieved with ease

There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international MPLS. Additionally, functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP for branches and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency along with really good QoS for bandwidth shaping.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is flexible to use the internet connection via local breakouts without going to data centers."

"When it comes to supporting large, complex, network architectures, it's a very simple architecture. The main component is the fabric. It's very easy to troubleshoot if there is an issue happening in the underlying network."

"I like the link monitoring and analytics. These are the features that set Prisma apart from other products. Prisma works well with large, complex networks. One of my clients is a top bank in the United States, and Prisma has performed well for that customer."

"Prisma SD-WAN is intuitive. We have a better idea of the different tools we can use and jump between the menus quickly."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the visibility of the logs."

"From the main controller, we can administer the customer's devices, QoS, network, and traffic. We can monitor it and we can change and create policies as well as upgrade the software. We can totally control a customer's network from one site, the Prisma SD-WAN portal."

"The implementation of the solution is easy."

"I like that the integration with Palo Alto is easy."

More Prisma SD-WAN pros

"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."

"There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international LAN."

"One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users."

"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."

"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."

"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."

"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."

"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."

More Steelhead pros

Cons

"Prisma SD-WAN can be built on top of a couple of hardware platforms, including the Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewall or the CloudGenix infrastructure."

"We are incorporating their zone-based firewalls. Prisma SD-WAN has limited documentation on how it manipulates traffic, e.g., how it is interacting with TCP and UDP. We recently had some traffic that was black holing. We literally had to do packet captures to see that the new zone-based firewall, which runs on top of Prisma SD-WAN, was causing issues."

"The pricing for Prisma SD-WAN needs improvement."

"Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved."

"Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default."

"The solution should include custom ports and group voice connections."

"If Palo Alto could open the platform to manage other SD-WANs, it would be beneficial."

"Customer support is our biggest pain point. The quality of support has gone down a little since we initially deployed this product. I don't know if this is due to turnover at Palo Alto or a lack of training. It is now taking one or two days to get an initial response that says, "Hey, we've looked into this, can you pull this data for us?" In the past, we'd immediately get a response."

More Prisma SD-WAN cons

"They should include a network switch in a future release."

"The solution needs to have alert notifications."

"The application response time of the solution can be improved."

"If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure."

"I would like to see improvement in the solution’s configuration and protocol aspects. We have got some configurations that are not set. I would also like to simplify the call detection of some protocols."

"There was a significant challenge when moving from an older version to a newer one due to changed quality of service policies."

"Application response time and network performance could be improved."

More Steelhead cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you're already invested in a Palo Alto product, it would be logical to use this solution. If not, there might be some other solutions that are more viable in terms of pricing."

"Prisma SD-WAN is a pretty expensive solution."

"This solution stood out because it cost considerably less than the other SD-WAN solutions out there from Cisco."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"It is more expensive than Fortinet."

"Across our 12 data centers, we spend around $150k annually."

"The solution is expensive and the service contacts are costly too. The cost of the device makes the value proposition borderline acceptable for us. The service contract fees we pay is approximately $30,000 annually."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

27%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Prisma SD-WAN?

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prisma SD-WAN?

The price for Prisma is a bit high, but it is a premium service. The higher tier provides flexibility and scalability benefits.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Prisma SD-WAN?

If Palo Alto could open the platform to manage other SD-WANs, it would be beneficial. Currently, it only manages Palo Alto. Also, if there were an option to extend management to other firewalls, us...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...

See all answers

What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?

One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?

We use Riverbed Steelhead devices for WAN optimization, which saves us considerable money on our international bandwidth. It's particularly beneficial for optimizing bandwidth while connecting inte...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

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Fortinet FortiGate vs Prisma SD-WAN

Compared 18% of the time

Meraki SD-WAN vs Prisma SD-WAN

Compared 13% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Prisma SD-WAN

Compared 11% of the time

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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Steelhead

Compared 28% of the time

Noction IRP vs Steelhead

Compared 25% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Steelhead

Compared 20% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Steelhead

Compared 15% of the time

WAAS vs Steelhead

Compared 13% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Prisma SD-WAN

December 2024

Download Prisma SD-WAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Steelhead

December 2024

Download Steelhead product report

Also Known As

CloudGenix

RIverbed Steelhead

Learn More

Palo Alto Networks

Video not available

Riverbed

Overview

Simplify management, enable app-defined SD-WAN policies and deliver a secure, cloud-delivered branch today with the Industry’s first next-generation SD-WAN.

Steelhead is the leading network optimization and application performance solution chosen by over 30,000 organizations worldwide. The performance of networks and applications directly impacts business productivity. Riverbed draws from nearly two decades of experience in driving network and application performance over Wide Area Networks with its flagship offering, SteelHead. SteelHead delivers the underlying technology that helps enterprises of all sizes maximize the efficiency and performance of the networks and applications used to run modern business.

SteelHead is proven to dramatically speed up the performance of applications anywhere in the organization while delivering the best end-user experience even under sub optimal network conditions. Reduce bandwidth utilization by up to 95%, deferring costly network bandwidth upgrades. Increase performance by up to 100x for on-premises applications.

Sample Customers

Open Networking User Group, Columbia Sportswear Company, Coca Cola

ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes

Buyer's Guide

Prisma SD-WAN vs. Steelhead

December 2024

Free Report: Prisma SD-WAN vs. Steelhead

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