We performed a comparison between Cisco SD-WAN and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two WAN Edge solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Encryption, which is native to the solution, is a valuable feature. Also, central management, onboarding of devices, QS, and routing applications are all okay."
"The segmented traffic it provides is the best in the industry right now."
"Cisco SD-WAN's best features are the development of network links, application control, and bandwidth monitoring."
"One of the most valuable features is that they have multiple SD-WAN options: you have Meraki for simple management solutions, you have Viptela, and you have the option of having any type of WAN interfaces. Presently, you can also have a single combined solution for both WAN as well as for voice, so you can have a voice bundle as well. These are major unique points of this solution."
"When we have had power outages for a few hours we have had no issue with Cisco SD-WAN coming back online and functioning."
"The solution is good to use and easy to handle and manage from the centralized location or from the cloud."
"I have found the performance and the Zero-Touch provisioning helpful which makes it easier for us to develop."
"The solution's application control and application traffic steering tool are its most valuable aspects in terms of how we utilize the product."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."
"The integration of Cisco SD-WAN with cloud solutions could improve. For example, if any of the applications are hosted in the Amazon AWS cloud we can use a virtual transit gateway for integrating Cisco SD-WAN."
"Cisco needs to improve the technical support for this solution."
"The initial setup is really complex."
"Cisco SD-WAN's clustering mechanism needs to be improved. If there are more than five milliseconds of latency time between installations of the VM manager, the cluster automatically breaks down."
"This solution should include a fully functional firewall at no extra charge."
"The technical support is a bit slow."
"Simplifying the definition and implementation could add significant value, as it can be complex due to multiple product integrations and customization requirements."
"The solution is very costly."
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"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."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"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."
"The solution needs to have alert notifications."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
Cisco SD-WAN is ranked 2nd in WAN Edge with 86 reviews while Steelhead is ranked 15th in WAN Edge with 22 reviews. Cisco SD-WAN is rated 8.0, while Steelhead is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco SD-WAN writes "A solution for integrating services to enhance up-time, performance and lower costs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Steelhead writes "Exceptionally stable and reliable but costly". Cisco SD-WAN is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN, Juniper Session Smart Router and Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform, whereas Steelhead is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, WAAS, Citrix SD-WAN and SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN. See our Cisco SD-WAN vs. Steelhead report.
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