Cisco SD-WAN vs Citrix SD-WAN comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco SD-WAN and Citrix SD-WAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco SD-WAN vs. Citrix SD-WAN Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: What is the biggest difference between Cisco SD-WAN and Citrix SD-WAN?
Answer: Cisco is a traditional networking play and has successfully transformed from pure hardware to now software defined products. Many network engineers already use the product and makes a lot of sense for a company with Cisco history to go towards Cisco just like a company which uses citrix desktops will go for the Citrix ADC. Therefore, configuration of Cisco, while not being difficult, is more "formatted" for Engineers who have used the solution and already have deep understanding of the protocols As a relatively new comer, Citrix seems to have put more effort to make the implementation process easier in terms of GUI Now, citrix has one fourth the market share of cisco and this is crucial in terms of competency - as it is 4 times easier to get Cisco competency However, in terms of costs, I like Citrix Netscaler pooled licensing arrangement, It is a flexible licensing framework whereby there is a common pool of license regardless whether the customer performs the deployment as a physical hardware, virtual device or even a containerized solution already use the product. Therefore, Cisco has higher costs As for used cases, I have seen NetScalers used for Load Balancing, for external users to internal services and resources like XenDesktop and XenApp Finally, both Cisco and Citrix have resilient solutions and provide good support - also some dependency where you are located. As for recommendation, it depends on your specific scenario in light of above points.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"If I have to give a neutral view of all the SD-WAN platforms that I have known so far, Cisco is good in routing.""The reliability is high and we have only had to restart it once or twice over the years.""It has a very good GUI.""The product helps to aggregate network links. The tool increases security and makes it possible for you to have remote workers.""The tool is stable, and its troubleshooting capabilities are good. It helps us identify and fix any issues. It simplifies VPN setup for both side-to-side and multisite connections. This allows for easier data sharing between main and branch offices, creating a local network feel even for distant sites.""It's a complete solution with many security features.""It is very stable with very good firmware.""I like the feature that lets you transfer from old devices to new devices without changing the hardware and subscription."

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"The most valuable feature is its reliability.""The most valuable feature is security, as it gives me the port bindings that cannot be accomplished using other solutions.""The zero-touch deployment is most valuable for us.""The SD-WAN solution as it is already is quite feature-rich and the upgrade process is very simple.""The main advantage of Citrix SD-WAN is that it enables fast communication between our branches and data centers. And, with its cloud management features, it also makes the process of adding new branches into our company network much easier.""It allows us to use additional VPNs, offering more options compared to other VPN solutions.""It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity.""We are using it widely for the local record for SaaS-based applications. Another valuable feature is a local breakout."

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Cons
"The solution could have a better web interface to simplify changing configurations.""Cyber security should also be implemented in the solution, along with maybe implementation of AI/ML.""We had some issues with Cisco SD-WAN but somehow we troubleshot it and things are going well. The issues have not been a large problem.""It is the best solution that I ever had, but there might be something better than this in the future.""The platform needs to be updated to be more stable and simple.""Cisco SD-WAN could improve the integration with the cloud.""The user interface needs improvement. Users should be able to find various features faster without much tweaking.""I would like to see features related to security compliance, including a view of compliance with standards. With this, I should be able to do an audit of my network with SDWAN."

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"The price could be improved, it's an expensive solution.""The reports need to be improved. We need to have them customized but they don't have that right now. I would like for them to have better system predictions. We don't have that right now. My system may be working fine right now but after making some changes, that can change.""There are a few things that can be improved, are domain-based routing and the slowness of virtual parts, and it may be due to the wrong configuration, which we have been unable to find out.""Citrix SD-WAN's knowledge base has a few missing things, so you may need to seek help from support.""Citrix SD-WAN does not have the SD-WAN with one optimization in a single license. Other competitors have this option and it should be added to this solution.""The only improvement for Citrix SD-WAN would be to lower its cost.""The communication around the life cycle would have been really helpful. The main issue we have had is related to the life cycle because some of the things that we are using were discontinued. They were discontinued within a year after we had purchased it, which is a bit painful. If we had known that, we would've made some other decisions.""I would like to either see the price reduced or have it packaged with other products to give better value for the money."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We pay for the Cisco Customer Care support, which is a couple of hundred dollars."
  • "80 percent reduction in WAN costs. There are no MPLS or P2P circuits left in the organization."
  • "Cisco is more expensive than some competing products."
  • "SD-WAN as a service is probably something in the neighborhood of $100 to $200 a month per location."
  • "The costs are a bit on the high side."
  • "It is much cheaper than other solutions. Most of our clients are the top 500 companies, and they all have a corporate contract."
  • "The license model is too complex with too many flavors and options. You might not be able to see it from an end user's point of view, but from a telco point of view, their license model is too complex. They should have a flexible license model. If you want to have good pricing, you need to buy it for a two-year, four-year, or five-year license immediately. Some other vendors have much more flexible license models."
  • "It is going to be on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
  • More Cisco SD-WAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products."
  • "As NetScaler is now, I find it quite pricey."
  • "The price of the subscription should be cheaper."
  • "It is a bit expensive. A cheaper product would be good, but everybody likes things to be cheaper. We bought the devices up front, and then we pay for the annual support."
  • "The license was a one-time purchase. It's expensive."
  • "It depends on the scale. In our case, it would have been better if we had known about the life cycling steps, but otherwise, it is worth the money."
  • "I believe that Citrix SD-WAN is a good investment, but I do not have the information to be more specific."
  • "I'm not quite sure of the price ranges. Roughly, the hidden devices can scale up to $20K for one appliance. However, the branch CPs are USD $1,000 to $2,500."
  • More Citrix SD-WAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable features, application awareness, and failover resilience, stand out as key considerations for users.
    Top Answer:The initial cost is quite significant, but the investment is worthwhile.
    Top Answer:As the majority of our applications now reside in the cloud, there's a growing need for solutions that revolve around cloud-centric policies. Currently, the convergence between on-premise and cloud… more »
    Top Answer:It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity.
    Top Answer:It is on the expensive side. I would give it an eight out of ten in terms of costliness. In my region, the approximate cost for the Citrix SD-WAN license is around $150 per user per year. However, the… more »
    Top Answer:The only improvement for Citrix SD-WAN would be to lower its cost.
    Ranking
    Views
    19,678
    Comparisons
    13,510
    Reviews
    27
    Average Words per Review
    510
    Rating
    7.9
    Views
    1,157
    Comparisons
    844
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    547
    Rating
    7.8
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Viptela, Cisco vEdge Cloud Router
    Citrix CloudBridge, WOC, NetScaler SD-WAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cisco SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN (wide area network) solution that provides for secure stable connections to applications for enterprises and organizations. Cisco SD-WAN works to speed up the seamless movement to the cloud. A very robust and reliable solution, Cisco SD-WAN is cutting-edge in threat security and stability of the complete network and has very low latency. Cisco SD-WAN uses Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), data centers, and even the internet to smoothly advance the move to a SASE (Service Access Service Edge)-based architecture. The Cisco SD-WAN dashboard gives you a complete visual of your entire infrastructure; you can see everything in real time. You will also have simplified IT operations and gain advanced network capabilities, dependability, and security. One valued feature is the overlay management protocol (OMP), which applies to your entire network to speedily connect all your company data centers. Cisco SD-WAN has a very flexible architecture and can be deployed on premises, in the cloud, hybrid, and even has multi-cloud options. Cisco SD-WAN instantly discovers, authenticates, and provisions all devices, both existing and new.

    Cisco SD-WAN simplifies the management of multiple connections across the WAN, improves the end-user experience, improves overall application functionality and performance, and is a very cost-effective solution. Cisco SD-WAN integrates well with Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and many other cloud-based business solutions. Additionally, Cisco SD-WAN optimizes connectivity and streamlines workflows for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure.

    Benefits of Cisco SD-WAN

    • Increased profitability - Cisco SD-WAN will improve performance and decrease overall connectivity costs.
    • Improved productivity - Cisco SD-WAN requires less staff to manage and secure the WANs so valuable resources can be allocated elsewhere in your organization, increasing total productivity.
    • Flexible scalability- Cisco SD-WAN’s flexible and easily scalable architecture will allow your organization to address significantly greater business opportunities, helping to consistently increase revenue.
    • Enhanced security - Cisco SD-WAN offers real-time policy enforcement, ensuring that downtime and unplanned outages are kept to a minimum.

    What real users have to say:

    Cisco SD-WAN is fast with lower costs: “Using SD-WAN to combine services can result in better up time, higher speeds, and much lower costs.”

    Cisco is a brand you can trust: “Cisco is an industry leader, so customers have a high level of trust with the brand - more so than with some newcomers that might have some more revolutionary solutions, but no name recognition.”

    Cisco SD-WAN offers load-balancing and real-time traffic monitoring: “Load balancing is a feature that allows us to take the best of our links and distribute the load intelligently, always with an eye on the end-customer experience.”

    Citrix SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), WAN optimization, and WAN edge solution. Citrix SD-WAN is recognized for providing a robust, trustworthy user experience so that an organization's distributed workforce can deliver the best possible outcomes at all times. Organizations can easily deploy solid security protocols wherever needed and also have the option to choose from a diverse choice of security options with unified security service and seamless integration with today’s top next-gen firewalls.

    Citrix SD-WAN provides a single cloud-based user dashboard that enables organizations to easily manage their WAN, prioritize and audit applications, and configure security protocols. Citrix SD-WAN enables users to easily manage hybrid multi-cloud processes by improving applications and automating connectivity. Citrix SD-WAN gives organizations tremendous flexibility for deployment from public clouds, data centers, home offices, and branches.

    Citrix SD-WAN is the basis of the Citrix consolidated process to SASE (secure access service edge) combined with cloud-delivered security and zero-trust network access to provide organizations with safe, trustworthy, secure access to each and every application anywhere, using any device.

    The Citrix SD-WAN solution is made up of three basic components:

    • Two software editions.
    • Cloud-hosted (or on-premises) orchestrator for clear visibility and unified protocol management.
    • Appliances: data center, home, branch, physical or virtual.

    Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator

    The Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator can be on premises or cloud-hosted and is a multi-tenant management service offered to Citrix partners and do-it-yourself enterprise organizations. The dashboard delivers a comprehensive view of your organization’s SD-WAN network concerning the functionality and usage of every site. The intuitive dashboard delivers a summary of uptime of the overlay and underlay paths, usage trends, and network-wide alerts.

    Available application-centric policies: quality of service (QoS), firewall policies, and application-based traffic steering can all be easily configurable globally or per site.

    Reviews from Real Users

    “With SD-WAN, they have all the features and benefits they need to send live streaming information to the database and to headquarters without requiring a server at each site. Our other clients have various sites with just one type of communication, say a radio or a mobile network. SD-WAN helps them to combine and get a better bandwidth to balance all their applications and services.” - Business Consultant at a tech services company

    “We needed to create some kind of network that was distributed through data and media or big files. It was a retail company, so there were branches, and the branches needed to connect to HQ. We provided HQ and each branch with Citrix SD-WAN. We tried to use it, and it worked well. The transmission was good, and they were losing less data.” - Ruslan M., SMB Sales Director, Regional Business Development Department at Softline

    Sample Customers
    Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
    AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cornerstone Home Lending Inc., Dallara, ecVision, Essar, Eurofred, Groupe Promutuel, HMSHost Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Ltd, Royal Caribbean International
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider44%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Insurance Company19%
    Wholesaler/Distributor19%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Retailer9%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Construction Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise43%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise55%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco SD-WAN vs. Citrix SD-WAN
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco SD-WAN vs. Citrix SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco SD-WAN is ranked 2nd in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 86 reviews while Citrix SD-WAN is ranked 9th in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 21 reviews. Cisco SD-WAN is rated 8.0, while Citrix SD-WAN 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 Citrix SD-WAN writes " A scalable solution for MCN controller but lacks technical supports, upgrades". Cisco SD-WAN is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN, Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform and VMware NSX, whereas Citrix SD-WAN is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Steelhead, Meraki SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN and Cato SASE Cloud Platform. See our Cisco SD-WAN vs. Citrix SD-WAN report.

    See our list of best Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions vendors and best WAN Edge vendors.

    We monitor all Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.