We conducted a proof of concept study that compared other solutions to Cisco. Apples to apples, we determined that Cisco was a great solution for our requirements. 

We mainly work with Cisco, HP, and 4Gnet. 

We evaluated Juniper.

We evaluated Fortinet, SRX, and Palo Alto. We also looked at Openswan, which is an open source. 

I chose Cisco because I am more familiar with it. I have a lot of certificates in Cisco, so I'm more comfortable with Cisco. I was the one implementing it, so we went with Cisco.

We used the other Cisco product, Cisco ASA. It's almost the same thing. It's an on-premise firewall versus a cloud firewall. 

This product is highly recommended by AWS, so we did not consider other products.

We also looked at Arista alongside Cisco. We didn't end up choosing them because of the cost of the license, the bandwidth, and the support to different routing protocols. Considering what we have on-prem we wanted to match that and we started deploying it in the cloud. 

We are still looking at alternatives. We are looking at Palo Alto as an alternative and using their IPSec tunnels.

We have familiarity with the Cisco operating system, which is why we chose CSR. We have been using Cisco products forever.

We looked at Aviatrix, but then decided to use Cisco CSR.

We decided to go with Cisco because it was more known in the network sector than Aviatrix. Also, we have a long time relationship with Cisco. 

If I could decide now, I think I would go with Aviatrix because it's more cloud native than Cisco CSR. CSR works and does the job, but more in the old way. The connection with everything, it works. However, Aviatrix is more cloud native, so I would get the nice single pane of glass computer. Even the connections, it would be more intricate and easier to use.

We also evaluate Fortinet with our customers. They generally don't want to change products, which is the main reason for staying with Cisco.