If an organization has the budget for Cisco Secure Email, I would not give another solution a second thought. We have been using this solution for 15 years and have not explored other options. Recently, we migrated our email to Exchange Online, but we chose to retain Cisco's defenses instead of relying on Microsoft's cloud Exchange Online Protection. We decided to stick with Cisco because I would have needed to replicate the policies from my Cisco investment in Microsoft, and I lack the resources to do so. Additionally, I wasn't confident in Microsoft's ability to match Cisco's performance in the security field at that time. I didn't observe the same level of quality in security and spam filtering with Microsoft. Cisco was setting the standard while Microsoft was still trying to catch up.

Cisco Firewalls for Firepower had to use the centralized management system, FMC, but where some customers prefer just an On-Box GUI to configure the device, Cisco was playing catch up with other vendors who were operating in that same area. But what we found is that with later versions of Firepower and also FDM which is the On-Box management, those features have now come leaps and bounds. They are now on par with the centralized FMC to the FDM, allowing customers an easier way to deploy these products not only on-premise but also in the cloud.