Cisco SD-WAN Reviews

The solution allows us to manage a network or manage policies and goals from the cloud. 

The solution has a high trust-level with clients.

The solution offers the customer good cost savings.

Our organization has found that the solution has helped us increase our levels of security for client networks.

It's very easy to manage and monitor the network's health and security using the solution.

The solution is east to upgrade as necessary.

Since most user-data is going through the solution, we are concerned about security, as all the information is in the cloud and not on-premises. The user data authentification should be higher to better prevent malicious attacks.

I've only been working with the solution for about three or four months, so I am not what I would call an expert on the solution.

The solution is extremely stable. It's not something that has a lot of bigs and glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash.

The solution is easily scalable. A company would have no trouble expanding.

We've found the technical support to be quite helpful. We've used it both on desktop and in front of clients and we've been satisfied with their level of support. You can also go online and view solutions to queries.

The initial setup was not complex. It was straightforward. If we couldn't handle a technical aspect, we had technical people on hand who could assist us. The cloud version is easy to operate and manage. We didn't have any issues.

How long it takes to deploy depends on the size of the network, as well as the policies and how much there is to manage. It does take some time.

The pricing of the solution is okay. Previously we used Cisco Prime and found we were wasting a lot. This is much better for us and our clients. However, it's still expensive.

We're a Cisco partner.

I would recommend the solution. I'd rate it six out of ten. If it could guarantee better security, we would rate it higher. The cost could also be less.

Here in Pakistan, there are few deployments of Cisco SD-WAN. We are trying to push Cisco to our clients. But the issue is that the prices of the competitors are too high. So it's very difficult to capture the market here in Pakistan. As you know, practice in Pakistan, the market is under development and Pakistan is a developing country and they are looking for a cheap solution at a price to achieve in terms of price comparison with other windows.

Cisco SD-WAN improved the productivity of our organization, in terms of ROI and in terms of the resources they require.

Good for cloud bases integrations and operational overheads. There is minimum blind space in this solution.

The main issue is that not in the technology, but it comes back comparison. When we do a comparison with other SD-WAN solutions, they are priced better. Then on that basis, they conclude to use the other solution. 

Cisco SD-WAN is stable. It's scalable and reliable, and robust.

Cisco SD-WAN is scalable. It's scalable and reliable, and robust.

I believe the Cisco technical support as compared to other principles is some of the best support we've ever seen.

The initial setup is the most straightforward part. It takes some time. But then you want to add the other branches, it takes only three to four minutes.

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN at an eight out of ten.

Cisco SD-WAN's collaborative features are unique and sustainable. I also like the protocols, which use two SD-WAN.

Some configurations or procedures could be more user-friendly. Adding a bandwidth management feature would make Cisco SD-WAN more scalable and less resource-intensive. 

I've been using Cisco SD-WAN for more than five years.

The scalability could be better. 

Cisco support is good.

We are also using Fortinet. Fortinet SD-WAN is more user-friendly, but Cisco is better overall. 

Setting up Cisco SD-WAN is easy.

Cisco is in the top pricing tier among SD-WAN solutions. 

I rate Cisco SD-WAN eight out of 10. 

When I was working at BT Telecom, we used Cisco SD-WAN for IP telephony.

In my current position in this company, we use this solution to classify network traffic and send the IP packets to the appropriate link.

I have found the solution's main features are its ability to be customized, network traffic classification, and has a wide range of features that can be set.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

The solution is stable.

I have found the solution scalable. We have approximately 10 clients.

I was satisfied with the technical support.

The installation is not easy. If you have experience and it is not your first time doing the installation, it can be easier. Additionally, there are a lot of different parameters to set and you have to know exactly what the parameters do. From this perspective, it is not easy. There are a lot of possibilities to do fine-tuning with the SD-WAN settings.

If you were to set all the parameters all at once it would take a lot of time. It is best to fine-tune them over time. This is not a negative factor, having more options allows flexibility.

I would recommend a system integration company that has the knowledge of how to operate the system to do the implementation.

The price of the solution is the only negative factor, it is much more expensive compared with the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution.

I have evaluated Cisco Meraki SD-WAN.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Cisco SD-WAN a ten out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Cisco SD-WAN is one of the products that we implement for our customers. I am a pre-sales engineer and help with the consultancy.

The idea of SD-WAN is very good and it's efficient.

You get security, all of the service you need, and it's easy to deploy.

It is a feature-rich product with a lot of components.

Cisco products are a little bit complicated, so making them a little bit easier would be an improvement. The installation is easy but having many components, and the integration with other components, is a little bit complex compared to other products and other vendors.

I have been working with Cisco SD-WAN for one or two years.

This is definitely a stable product.

It is a scalable product and it can also be integrated with other Cisco products such as NSO (Network Services Orchestrator) and the virtual CPE. The customers for this product are enterprise-level companies.

The Cisco technical support is excellent.

Prior to this solution, we used Cisco iWAN.

The initial setup is easy to do. I'm not sure of how long it takes to deploy, but it is not very complex and if all of the requirements are met then it should be straightforward.

We deploy this product for our clients.

Cisco is more expensive than some competing products.

We have compared Cisco with all of the vendors such as Fortinet and Talari. I believe that Cisco is the best, overall. It is not the cheapest, but it is the best both technically and support-wise.

With respect to other vendors, they have different strengths. For example, Fortinet is coming from a security background so they have quite a good product with a secure firewall on it. However, they lack some of the SD-WAN functionalities. I believe the routing part is still being done on the CPE, whereas with Cisco, it's done on the orchestrator.

Overall, I don't know how other vendors can compete with Cisco, and that is partly because of the integration that Cisco has with all of its products. It gives them a big edge.

Cisco is a company that has been in this market for quite a long time. They have a stable office, stable software, and all of the features are there. Having the SD-WAN on top of the routers they have has given them an advantage. Plus, they have a wide range of products and there is integration between all of them and SD-WAN.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I recently provided Cisco SD-WAN to one of my customers for the first time. This customer had a traditional network and had been happy with the conversion to a software-defined WAN.

The introduction of Cisco SD-WAN, has make some greate change to our organization in terms of acquiring new knowledge as we are a cisco premium partner, we have to take some training on SD-WAN to understand the knowledge so that it will be easy for us to sell and implement to the end customer

So far, the feature that I like best is the policy configuration manager. It is better than performing a manual configuration.

It would be very helpful if we had better access to a knowledge base, or online documentation, to help both us and our customers learn to use this solution.

I have been working with Cisco SD-WAN and doing online training for the past year.

Cisco SD-WAN is a stable network solution.

This solution is super scalable. Most of our clients are midsize and enterprise-level organizations. These include banks, social security funds, educational institutions, government departments, community groups, and agencies. 

I have not contacted Cisco support specifically about SD-WAN, but I have dealt with them on other occasions and they are good. I would rate them a seven out of ten. Overall, I am satisfied with the support.

Most of our customer using traditional WAN technologies and we are the one configuring and deploying those solution, now we are on the way of educating them the importance of SD-WAN and finally implenting it

The initial setup is somewhat complex, although we are currently learning about this solution. In our country, most of the customers do not know much about this type of technology, and we are the ones who are propagating Cisco SD-WAN. When it comes to the setup, it is not like a traditional, manual configuration.

Level of expertise is good as mos to cisco engineer are certified in specific area 

Not yet calculated

Setup cost is reasonably standard as it gives a complete WAN link utilization with perfomance of QoS

Yes SD-WAN offered with VMware

This is a good product and I totally recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use Cisco SD-WAN for a VPN, and we create the DNS in Fortinet. We have used this solution for data centers and failover tests for disaster recovery.

It is really easy to deploy and use. It is also easy to use for failovers and designing solutions.  

The rollout is really quick. It is easy to adjust and roll out.

I have been using Cisco SD-WAN for five or six years.

It is as stable as your lines are. We mostly have fiber connections, and it is really stable and performing well. I once had a problem with a power unit, but I have never experienced any downtime.

We have contacted them. All engineers were experienced enough to support us. We had a special team from Cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward. The design takes longer than the implementation. You have to know your layer 3, but it can also define layer 2 or layer 1. It is really a great tool. 

I used a consultant for the implementation. I am an architect, and I only design the solution. I discuss the solution with the network engineer and then roll it out with the help of the network engineer and the project manager.

It is much cheaper than other solutions. Most of our clients are the top 500 companies, and they all have a corporate contract.

I would recommend this solution. It is a great solution, and it is already defined. It is more suitable for medium and large enterprises operating in lots of regions and countries. For smaller organizations, you can use a normal business DSL solution. 

I would advise doing a VR test to make sure that all settings are correct. We have had issues where the configuration or IP spoofing on the network was not so good. You also need to know the number of tenants that you need. You can set it up on paper, but if you don't test it, you would never know that it is working. 

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN a nine out of ten. It is the best solution that I ever had, but there might be something better than this in the future.

Our primary use case generally relates to customers looking to reduce their MPLS costs. In addition, many of our customers are moving to the cloud, which can handle both on-prem and cloud services, a hybrid solution. Finally, some of our customers are looking to move towards new technologies and will choose this solution, but the primary use cases are the first two - reduction of MPLS costs, using multiple modes of transport, and managing and control of technologies.

We deal mainly with large enterprise companies. A few years ago customers were not aware of SD-WAN or they were not looking to migrate to SD-WAN, but now whenever there is talk around WAN, 95% of the customers are moving to SD-WAN.

I think segmentation is a valuable feature that the product provides. I think the segmented traffic it provides is the best in the industry right now.

The product is not a cheap solution and could be improved by lowering the cost. Most customers who do not buy Cisco give their primary reason as cost. If the cost was reduced then I think we'd be able to sell more. Vendor log in could also be improved. There are a lot of solutions on the market now that are open solutions, meaning boxless solutions. You don't really need to buy the box that Cisco provides. You can upgrade to SD-WAN using the open solutions. Cisco could provide a full mobile solution but I don't think they'll do that because selling their hardware on top of the software is their bread and butter, .

Before SD-WAN came in they provided quite a few features. For example, a lot of customers were using Cisco's router and voice gateway which has not been available since the launch of SD-WAN. They are still working on restoring it. It's one of the key issues with the Cisco SD-WAN solution that would be a good additional feature. Whatever features were supported before are not supported in the SD-WAN solution now. If they could incorporate all those features for customers that would be a big improvement. 

I've been using SD-WAN for about two and a half years. We always pitch the latest version of the product. 

The stability of SD-WAN on iOS needs improving, they're in a transition phase. Cisco recently acquired Repeller. They are gradually migrating from their old SD-WAN to this new retail SD-LAN. It's been a challenge because the roadmaps they envisaged haven't quite worked out, it's not a smooth road. If you change from traditional WAN to SD-WAN from the retailers perspective, it can be a bit of a challenge. We also deploy Fortinet and that's easier. I don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of years, but for now, doing SD-WAN is a little bit of a challenge

If you can get to the first step of migration and to stable operations then the scalability is not a challenge. The Cisco solution is pretty scalable. I think it's the most scalable solution in the market, but it has to setup properly. Once it's set up properly. Then scalability is not a challenge. Scalability is more of a challenge with products like Fortinet. The initial migration to SD-WAN is more of a challenge here.

Technical support is very good, better than most of the vendors in the market, but they charge for it. 

It depends on the customer. For smaller and medium-sized customers, it's not that difficult. But recently I have faced problems in migrating because it's where some of this new Cisco iOS is SD-WAN. It seems to be a bit unstable moving to it. All these complexities make migration difficult. It's not a cakewalk.

Again, deployment time depends on the customer and size of the company. It's hard to generalize. I'm from the presale team so we don't implement. We have another team dealing with implementation and there are around eight people in that team. 

The solution is not cheap.  Most customers are now moving from an APEX spending model to an OPEX spending model. The licenses are pretty expensive. There are additional support costs which is not inexpensive. Licensing, support, product, technology, and everything in the Cisco SD-WAN solution costs. I think it's the most expensive solution on the market.

It's important to realize the product has two layers, the underlay, and the overlay. The controller is in the overlay and the underlay is the physical devices. Most of those are on-prem, but the controller is mostly on the cloud. That's what most people prefer.

In terms of size, different customers have different migration plans and different approaches. For example, Cisco has the Meraki SD-WAN solution, and then they have the retailer SD-WAN solution. The question is which solution fits the customer best. I would advise them on that aspect first before deciding whether they go for a Meraki solution or a retailer solution. The second aspect, of course, is the budget. How much does the customer want to spend? And the third would be to ascertain their internal skill set on deploying, managing, and operating the SD-WAN solution. If the skill set is in-house then good for them, they can go ahead. But if not then I would propose a managed SD-WAN solution where maybe, for example, our company provides managed SD-WAN solutions for some Cisco products. The third thing I would advise for global customers is to decide if they want to deal with the last mile connectivity themselves or find a partner to do that for them. Security would be a final consideration and that depends on setup and scale. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10, it hasn't quite made it for me to be rated higher. I'd like to see some improvement.