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.
Prisma SD-WAN helps reduce network costs.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
They respond promptly and are good at finding issues.
I would rate the support at minimum eight plus.
Since we are at a premium level, customer service is rated at eight or 8.9 out of ten.
Steelhead's support is generally good for typical issues yet can be time-consuming during complex problem-solving across teams, particularly for Active Directory integration.
I have no issues with technical support from Riverbed.
Riverbed's customer service and technical support would be rated an eight.
Everything is managed by the service provider, Palo Alto Networks, allowing me to manage my infrastructure without overheads or extra costs to adapt the management infrastructure to the actual needs of the field.
I rate it a ten out of ten since we can easily scale by just paying for additional licenses as needed.
Scalability is a significant concern for us due to the poor documentation that limits our ability to understand and utilize their system effectively.
If a customer has 1 GB traffic, they will only be able to utilize 600 MB of traffic with Steelhead.
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
Stability is high, I rate it 9.8 out of ten.
Prisma SD-WAN is an absolutely stable solution.
Our engineers make the system appear stable through effective management.
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
For instance, even if there is a power failure, Riverbed still works.
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
Scalability is a significant concern for us due to the poor documentation that limits our ability to understand and utilize their system effectively.
If there were an option to extend management to other firewalls, users could perform staggered migrations.
It would be beneficial if the solution integrated the SD-WAN features of Prisma SD-WAN with the security features of Palo Alto's next-generation firewalls.
Steelhead is very expensive, and the vendor should work on handling Oracle type of traffic better.
It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.
It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.
The solution is not cost-effective for smaller environments and is more suitable for medium to large companies.
The price for Prisma is a bit high.
The product could be a bit cheaper for the services it provides.
Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.
Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.
By reducing the need for expensive internet connections, Prisma SD-WAN allows customers to achieve cost savings.
Prisma is a mature platform in terms of security.
The most valuable feature is the single pane of glass, especially since we have Palo Alto firewalls.
Functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP, and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency.
My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.
Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Prisma SD-WAN | 5.4% |
| Steelhead | 1.6% |
| Other | 93.0% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 13 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 5 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 14 |
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.
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