Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform Reviews

I'm an IP access engineer and we are customers of Versa.

The product has a dynamic VPN feature for SD-WAN which our customers use for their network. Another valued feature is the application awareness with its VGA engine which enables visibility. Customers can see their network traffic with whatever application is being used. 

The solution lacks a mobile version where small, manageable platforms can be developed. Our customers sometimes want to collect analytical data on-premises, and we're unable to provide those features. Perhaps Versa can develop virtual appliances for site-available solutions, like analytics or management. Our customers would like to see a server VPN and mobile applications.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

We deployed the latest version last year but there were so many bugs that we quickly reverted to the previous version which is stable. When the vendor releases new features, we now test them and do a POC before implementing them.

The solution is scalable. We have 200 workers using Versa WAN solutions. They run the gamut from network admins to security admins, installation guys, field engineers, technical account managers, and more. They use the product to check endpoints or data analytics. 

Customer service is good. 

Positive

The solution is easily deployed on virtual machines, but the integration process takes time due to the service provider's requirements. The deployment is doable because the solution is developed for the service provider. It's a difficult question because the difficulty is service providers. We have to implement many systems to different platforms and if there are no integration systems, the development is simple.

This solution is relatively new in Turkey and despite them not increasing the license price, it's a relatively expensive solution. The solution has new features and if a company doesn't need those, they will find a cheaper option. We sell SD-WAN solutions as a premium VPN service, and the license is a little expensive for Turkish customers, but there is no real alternative.

We looked at some other solutions but couldn't find an alternative. We're now deploying Huawei SD-WAN solutions and will possibly deploy Cisco antenna because we are buying Cisco browsers but they lack sufficient security.

We primarily use the solution for multi-link aggregated circuits that are co-managed with our provider.

The most valuable aspects of the solution are the next-generation firewall features and geo-blocking capabilities. 

The high availability failover has been also been very important to our organization. Failover is when you have dual boxes and if one of them goes down, the other one picks up the traffic.

The entire solution is very straightforward.

The configuration is very much a command line. Some people don't like working with command lines. I don't know if this particular model can support it, however, if it had more of a GUI, I'd like to see that. It would be nice to see that they had a webpage to configure the solution on versus doing it as a prompt.

It would help if the solution offered artificial intelligence that can actually make real-time decisions on traffic flow.

The smaller units lack a lot of functionality.

I've been using the solution for two and a half to three years now.

We definitely went over a few variations of the firmware. The initial firmware configurations had some issues, however, I think they've got it down now. I would say it's very reliable at this point.

The solution is extremely scalable. We find that having a control center and being able to monitor in one location is very scalable. If organizations need to expand the offering, they can do so rather easily.

Everyone in the organization really uses the solution due to the fact that it's a network edge. Anyone who wants to get out of the network has to use the solution. If you're looking at it from that point of view, if you're looking at it from how many people within the organization actually deal with the daily grind of monitoring and keeping up, we have a small team that takes care of it. The team contains anywhere from five to ten people at any given time.

Technical support has been responsive. This has been a co-managed implementation so when there are any high-end technical caveats, the provider has to deal with the back and forth with Versa. It hasn't been a first-person type interface with them. That said, when I've seen questions being asked, I've seen their responses, and they've been quick to help and reply.

I helped with the initial setup.

It was not straightforward. It was definitely complex. Especially since it was a new product for us. We had a big learning curve from the get-go. 

Other than that, though, once you understood the setup, although I wouldn't say it was straightforward, it wasn't that difficult.

Implementation was over a six month period. We had to swap out upwards of over 35 different sites. We had to schedule downtime and switch out our infrastructure to support it and then bring it back up. Each side had to be done one at a time, without losing business continuity. It was a bit tedious. 

There was a lot of strategy and preparation that went into the project before we even began the setup. You can only take a site down for a certain amount of time without interrupting people's flow. However, our goal was to keep business as usual at up to 90% so that our clients didn't really notice the changeover.

The deployment was co-managed with our providers. The provider brought in support and they had the expertise on the product itself. With their assistance, we strategized and came up with configurations. Then we worked out a schedule and came up with an implementation plan. We started the implementation and checked off each site one at a time as we went through.

Our original network diagram had single circuit MPLS network. And if that circuit went down, the site was down. So this network uses IQ circuit and a broadband circuit for the most part to aggregate and give you greater speeds.

We went from a single circuit MPLS to dual circuits. Therefore, between the cost of one circuit and then two circuits, the one circuit was an expensive circuit. The two are less expensive, but they kind of matched. So the pricing with the service, the new service add on that we did with the provider versus what we had, where it was a self-managed, kind-of washed out. I can't say that we really saved money, however, I don't know the full balance sheet all the way from top to bottom.

I'm not sure what the pricing is on the solution. We're looking at a variety of options, and we're looking to choose a technology and then push forward with a proof of concept as well as a pricing model. We're not there yet.

We are looking at other options. The implementation that we're looking to go forward with is going to be more app-centric based networking. We're looking to see if we can try and bring in something that is not too technical.

There are a few different SD-WAN providers that monitor what's called S-flow data and will take your traffic and balance it depending on what's happening in real-time versus just a straight "here's your internet circuits and use whatever you can" type of setup. As an analogy, if you are in a car, going from A to B, you can use an app like Waze that can warn you about traffic and can reroute you so that you get from A to B in the shortest time. That's what we're looking for. CloudGenix or Palo Alto Networks have SD-WAN solutions that not only aggregate your circuits but can actually push certain traffic certain ways on those circuits, depending on if you're being bottlenecked or if there's an over-bandwidth usage issue. Basically, what we're looking for is something that manages the flow of traffic better.

We're just a customer. We aren't a consultant or reseller.We have a couple of different models. We have the smaller models and the medium-sized models, however, I'm unsure of the exact model numbers.

New users should be aware of sizing. Making sure that the size is correct is important. There are small, medium, and large units, however, the smaller units only support certain functionality. In saying that, they seem to have some issues with some of the functionality on the small units not working. It's best to get a medium-sized unit to get some of the next-generation firewall stuff.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are a service provider, and we provide WAN services to various enterprise clients. We were among the  first three CSP's to launch SDWAN services in India with the help of Versa. Later on, we adopted Cisco and Fortinet platforms.

It is very easy to deploy. The GUI interface is really good, and the security features are also very good. It is also stable and scalable, and their support is also good.

SASE is the next big thing that is coming up, and it needs to be developed in Versa. This is the only thing that needs to be adapted very quickly by Versa.

With the pandemic going on, I would like to see more features for working from home. They have launched Versa Secure Access (VSA), but it is currently immature. They need to tighten it up for work from home and SD-WAN concept.

I have been using this solution for three-plus years.

I don't see any issues on the stability front. We have been using this product for three-plus years, and I did not see any issues related to stability.

It is pretty much scalable. Currently, it is on around 5,000 of branch location, and I don't see any problem on this front. We are providing services to enterprise customers, and we will be increasing the capacity of Versa.

Currently, approximately 1,000 plus employees regularly use Versa for various teams , and perform actvities such as  as deployment, assurance life cycle management, engineering, and PoC.

There are no issues with their support. Their  TAC support is very good at identifying and resolving problems. 

When you try to build a headend, it is a little bit complex, but after you are able to do that, it is a bit better and straightforward. In terms of duration, Versa headends in HA mode generally require four weeks. For Versa branches, you can do zero-touch provisioning.

While Head End deployment is at par with other SDWAN providers the branch deployment is is not very expensive because of the white box support. White box hardware  is much cheaper than other products. Apart from White boxes you also flexibility to use Versa Boxes , In My opinion  it is one of the  cost-effective platforms that are currently available

When we were trying to implement SDWAN four years ago, the engineering team had evaluated many products. One of them was Cisco iWAN, which was later changed to CISCO Viptela. We evaluated Versa because of the white box and x86 support, which is a special feature. We went ahead with Versa because Cisco iWAN was not a stable platform at that time. Later on, we have added Cisco, Fortinet, and other SDN platforms. There are loyal customers of each and every solution or platform. 

Versa is good for medium and large enterprises. If you want SD-WAN for small enterprises, Fortinet is good. Fortinet is ahead of Versa in terms of ease of deployment. It has controller-less architecture.

I would advise others to just go through all the documentation for its implementation. Versa has a huge repository for documentation. It is not that tough. Just go step by step, and you will be able to do it. If you miss one or two steps, it can get quite difficult to troubleshoot and implement it. That's why I advise following Versa documentation step by step.

I would rate Versa FlexVNF a nine out of ten.

We are using this product and also implementing it for our clients. We manage everything for the customer. We use it here on our platform and also manage the solution for our customers for whom we install it.

Let's say a customer is on premises and he wants to move to the internet but wants to keep the interconnection between their sites. He doesn't want to remain embedded. We would propose Versa in this case.

Also, if a client asks us for more reporting, more analytics and more monitoring and our embedded solution can't do this as a single solution because it would be very heavy and expensive, we would propose Versa. The client finds the analytics and monitoring in Versa very easy and very clear.

In terms of the most valuable features of Versa, I should know because I have also used Cisco, Fortinet and VeloCloud at a previous company where I worked. I explain that between Versa and VeloCloud I find that Versa has more features over VeloCloud. I do think that you have less regarding the firewall features compared to other solutions, though.

Their dashboard is also a good point for us and the customer. The solution is very clean and easy, but it depends what the customer has and how we can integrate it with their current network.

Another thing is regarding the analytics. We have about 15 sites in Europe, the US and Asia. I do some administration for the analytic portal, and this side is very interesting for the customer because today Versa has an embedded solution and we don't have the visibility for all the sites they're using.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say that since we're using more and more 4G today, the product should have two slots for 4G and also have the equipment for giga ready. It should not have different equipment to have a giga bandwidth. For example, it should have 110 and 200, 810 and 800. It would be good if they had only one product that goes directly to the bandwidth for one gigabyte and not necessarily to have different products to do it. Of course if I compare it to only one gigabyte, the price also needs to be reduced.

Another thing that should be improved in Versa are their firewall features. You have their firewall license secure solution but if they could include more features regarding their firewall protection and data protection it would be good. This is because when we go to a customer who also wants a firewall they compare it to other products on the market that are doing more with the firewall. As you know, Fortinet is very strong in this point. If they could put more features on this side, they can be, maybe not equal, but improved.

Our company has been using Versa FlexVNF for around five years with our customers. Our network is on the ISP here in France and our AVN solution is only based on this product. 

It is stable. We haven't had any issues, and neither have the customers that already have it running for two or three years. They have stability on their end. The only stability issues are on the circuit and not on Versa's end. Sometimes the line is cut, so the customer will have an issue. But we don't have any issues with Versa.

In terms of scalability, it doesn't matter if the company is large, medium, or small. We can use it for small and big companies - there is no limitation there. It is not always the company size that matters. When we go to a market segment and a big company, they may not know Versa at all. They may know VeloCloud better.

I can say that I am satisfied with customer support but I'm not quite sure because it is my colleagues who manage this part of support. We have our technical support that manages Versa, the circuit, and all the vendors who are also on our platform.

In terms of the initial setup, I can't answer that because I am just from the sales side, I don't do the installations, my colleagues do it. What I see from the customers that have installed Versa is that the initial step on the starting configuration is very easy. A half hour or hour. My colleagues who use it here in the company manage it and they have a full version for the configuration.

The issue that is difficult for us is when a customer needs firewall features included and he already has a firewall in place that he asks us to replace and to install the features from Versa. It is very complicated for us because it means more time to install since we need to export all the other features that already have rules in the firewall and to put them in Versa. That takes time.

Regarding the price, we can make do with its price today, but I am seeing from our competitors that this market is becoming very aggressive. We lost some projects because we didn't have any strategy to deal with the price. We think that when we discuss the quality of the product the price won't be an issue, so we do not propose it as "low-cost" for this reason.

Currently I propose Versa. That's the platform for my strategy. However, the market is not ready to propose a solution to a customer that's managed by an ISP. So, in the beginning they investigate VeloCloud, Cisco and Fortinet. But in the end they select Versa because it is small and easy for customers, and it has many features that are very interesting to the customers.

Today, when we look back, it was the right decision to choose Versa and our customers are very happy that we only propose this solution.

We always propose only Versa solutions in our quotes for our customers when we have a new project. I only recommend Versa. VeloCloud was the first one to market and for customers that is very important. Customers ask me for a comparison between VeloCloud and Versa since VeloCloud was the first one on the market and he wants to be sure that if he goes with Versa it will not be a mistake.

For me it's not enough just to be first on the market. I know Versa, but I know it's not enough. VeloCloud solutions are more public for companies and buyers than Versa is.

These are the only two products that we validate that are in the regular network - Advantec and them.

On a scale of 1-10, where one is the worst and 10 is the best, I would rate Versa Flex an 8.

It is not a ten because it has a lot of features on the equipment and it is really heavy on the portal. It's not really friendly. Maybe they could do something different for users or administrators to have a friendlier portal.

It's an SD-WAN solution. It's a feature-rich network router, which gives you, at the site, WAN optimization. 

It gives you firewall features, so security features, and it also gives you the capability of VPN as a feature, so all your services are hosted at the site, and you can access it remotely. These are some top features. There is QS, which it also offers. Basically, it is an all-in-one, feature-rich SD-WAN router.

It's multi-tenancy, which is an excellent feature. On the same CPE, we can have multiple organizations running simultaneously, which is nice. Everything is controlled centrally from the data center, from the head end, which can be remotely, and you can remotely push configs on it.

The Versa Director, which is the GUI, is what we mostly use to provision to do any type of configuration.

The initial setup is simple.

The solution is scalable.

It's stable. 

It's relatively new.  I'm primarily in the testing part. I find bugs day in and day out. There are a few particular bugs that could be improved and dealt with.

We don't get the performance value Versa has promised for one of the devices that Versa recommended, the CSG device. In the next release, they are saying they will fix that. However, most of my bugs already have a fixed version release, so they are going forward with it. 

The VPN feature is relatively new. It came out two releases ago, and they're still fixing that up. There are still some gaps there, so the RAS feature is definitely getting better, yet there are still some gaps.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is actually quite buggy as it is relatively new. 

However, it is stable. The older features, like the next-gen firewall, stateful firewall, application-aware routing, AAR, and SLA monitoring, these type of features were the first-gen features and are very stable. They work as expected.

It is very scalable. That is the main feature of SD-WAN. It's extremely scalable and it is very easy to reuse templates and bring up multiple sites at once.

Technical support is beneficial and very knowledgeable. They understand issues very well. They come back with the fixes. We are very satisfied with them. 

I have done the implementation multiple times. For me, it is quite easy. It is not so complex if you have the right people to do that initial training.

The deployment of the entire environment might take about two weeks or so if you have the right people, environment, and devices. Within a month, you'd be able to have everything set up if everything is in place.  

How many people you need to deploy the solution depends on the scale of how big you want it and how many customers you're going to have. With a server, I can just build the entire thing on my own. That said, it depends on the scale and the environment that you're going to build it on.

We did the entire deployment internally. There is documentation that can support you that and there is also the Versa support team that helps a lot.

I'm not aware of the licensing costs. 

We are a customer and an end-user. 

I was in a different company before working with SD-WAN before. This is a new company for me. We don't have live customers yet. 

If you're going to start using it, it's best to pick up a feature at a time and follow the documentation carefully. Try to configure it yourself and understand what's happening exactly. It's just a lot of hands-on work that really helps to understand what is going on with Versa with the CPE. That's how I learned that solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Among our clients, there are roughly 30-50 employees using this solution. 

Versa Titan is very flexible. It integrates well with third-party devices. 

Our customers are very satisfied with this solution. They have not mentioned any areas for improvement. 

Versa Titan is stable. 

Their technical support is very good. Their response times are good. They provide us with very clear information — it's excellent. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. Deployment took a few hours. 

Deployment only required two engineers. 

We pay on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of ten.

We mostly implement this product for our clients.

There are many great aspects to the product. 

It's flexible. It's possible to have it on a universal CPE. The CPE is a small server or device that can be installed on the client's premises which the FlexVNF software can be installed onto. It doesn't have to be a vendor-specific CPE. This can help users reduce costs. Other solutions don't offer such flexibility.

One of the interesting things about the solution, which is not an easy feat, is that they offer a multi-tenancy solution at the CPE level.

They also allow for the integration of their solution as a provider with other security vendors, like Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Forcepoint. With other vendors, they stick with their own security appliances or images. This solution, however, really does try to integrate with everything.

In terms of support, they are very focused on SD-Wan technology. They are not working on multiple technologies. This ensures your business is very focused. It allows you to be very focused on your support and ensures your level of support will be very high. The customers will be satisfied with the results. 

The development is fast because they are only focused on one direction. Of course, SD-WAN not only means that you are optimizing the routing and the speed of the internet but also it allows you to optimize the security. Users can have better, more advanced security features. 

They are focusing on integrating their security features right now. They are growing quickly in this direction. That means they're giving a lot of attention to the security within the product. It's making it a more complete product without forcing you to just use Versa.

Overall, it's nice and very user friendly. That's what makes it so successful. They give you complicated features but with a very simple user interface, and that's been a big success for them.

The support needs to be improved. 

The interface does still need enhancements to make it even easier to operate in the future. They have complicated policies that need to be applied.

We've been using the solution for about one and a half years now.

If the setup is done properly, the solution is quite stable. There's no need to worry about bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash.

It is easy to scale. The solution has considered various roadmaps and focused on future growth for organizations. Some features may not be active just yet, however, they are in the roadmap.  They are looking at, for example, delivering Ethernet over two or three layers, over the internet, which is very interesting and is, in my opinion, revolutionary.

The solution benefits huge companies, more so than smaller ones. Currently, various product features are capable of fulfilling any big enterprise requirements. They are trying to get the certifications from international security communities like Gardner. Their focus is more so on the larger scale organizations and they are trying to compete with companies like Cisco, Palo Alto, etc. Since it is meant for bigger companies, it can get pretty big itself.

Their support is okay, but they need to grow it out faster. They need a better mechanism for getting quick responses to clients and to hire more people on the support level. The gold standard is Cisco, and they should try to be more like that. 

They have a very focused product and because of that, they need a very focused support staff. They should have different people who are specialized on different aspects. They don't have to spend a lot of money to do this, they just need to ensure they have the right people in place to answer questions.

It seems a bit unfair to judge them in totality, however, as I just had one instance with them so far. 

The solution's initial setup is complex in that it's not plug-and-play. You won't face zero-touch provisioning with this solution. Instead, there will be a staging process. It requires certain commands and you need to run it on Linux or Unix.

The solution has some issues with staging, and, if you compare it to other products, you'll see other vendors are much more straightforward. Zillow Clouds and Meraki are two good examples of a straightforward setup.

For myself, I have a technical background. These things are interesting for me, and I'm happy to do it, but on the commercial side of things, the customers don't really want to deal with difficult setups. Usually, however, it's the partner that provisions for the client, so the client never has to really deal with these issues. If you are a partner or a supplier, you'll end up doing this part yourselves. So, for those that know the product, it can be considered straightforward.

After that, users will enjoy a lot of features. 

It only takes about one hour to deploy the solution. I handled the POC myself and I've done some extensive training. I didn't feel comfortable in staging Versa devices. This was a problem. For comparison, if you would like to stage a VeloCloud device, it may take from you 10 minutes, whereas Versa could take about an hour.

If you are facing complications, you need to spend time understanding them before doing the provisioning. It will take some effort to understand the staging process, but it's worth it to take a step back. 

I handled the POC myself and I've done some extensive training, so I was able to handle all the provisioning and staging. We found we struggled a bit with our engineers figuring out how to write everything correctly. Unlike other deployments where it's a very straightforward couple of clicks, if you make a mistake in provisioning there is a receipt required, and you need to call the engineer from your Versa vendor to help troubleshoot problems.

In the end, it's not only about cost. A lot of big enterprises don't care about the cost. They care about having a single point of contact to take care of their security and internet routing optimization. Having one support ultimately reduces costs, as there would only be one maintenance contract and one device.  

We have a lifetime implementation. We're using the latest version of the solution.

It's a good product for high-end and large enterprises, but smaller enterprises might not be a good fit.

I'd just advise that especially surrounding the initial setup, a new company needs to ensure they have the right support in place. Companies need to make sure their SLA's are very clear so they can get the support they need from the outset and into the future. Compare companies and be clear about the requirements and you will have an easier time.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd give it full marks, however, I do believe that they can continue to improve on the existing product in various ways. 

It's a purely internet-based solution. That means the customer already has their Ownned up-link(s), which we call DIA(Direct Internet Access). That means the customer brings their own connections to set up the virtual SD-WAN network and just use our white-box solution. On top of it, we set out an SD-WAN appliance which can be controlled by the setup on the CTG side.

Versa FlexVNF helps customer uses existing infrastructure to quickly complete the SD-WAN deployment through software appliance. Except for the edge hardware equipment used in customer case(s), SD-WAN provider no need invested in any hardware inside, but completely uses the existing Cloud platform.

Versa FlexVNF supports multi-tenancy, which is very important for ISP's TCO in running a SD-WAN network. Meanwhile,Versa FlexVNF is purely software based solution that help CSP(cloud service provider) upsell SD-WAN business.

We need to think about how to leverage the MPLS-VPN customers, so to integrate the SD-WAN network. We are thinking about how to make customers consolidate the loads to an SD-WAN network so that the customers can have a bigger chunk from the SD-WAN plane.Under the trend of Digital Transformation, enterprise customers looking for lower price with border bandwidth. In the designed direction,customers can have critical data be transferred by MPLS-VPN network while non-critical data or some labeled traffic can be transferred by the SD-WAN network. Considering the uncertainty of the economic situation, perhaps more companies will seek to expand data pipe based on the original network instead of building a new network. For new business areas which requires more flexible contract term,and shorter provision time, SD-WAN integrated with MPLS-VPN would be a important direction.

I have been using Versa since 2017. 

The stability has been quite good. It's a purely software-based solution, so it can easily be scanned or installed in a virtual environment. It's very adaptive to those environments.

Good and stable

It is generally stable but when we have trouble with deploying or configuration we encounter certain issues. Their support is helpful and they respond in a timely manner. 

The price is consist of several aspects but it makes sense for the market.

For the SD-WAN solution, it's not just the pricing for accreditations from the solution side. We need to combine the hardware and the connections, even managing service ourselves. Customers need to have a integrated solution from a skilled engineer team, but not just to judge if the solution providers are fair or not. But generally, when we compare with other brands, I think this solution is lean and agile.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. There's no brand that can rank a 10. A ten from my perspective, means good enough to ramp-up. Eight is the highest that can be scored amongst the choices of SD-WAN brands. I think the SD-WAN products Versa has have great space to improve. For example, automation. We are saying it's an SD-WAN solution, but it's not fully automatic for the service provider side. It requires a skilled managed service team to handle service delivery, even senior technical team involved.Their expertise is very important in customer solutions deploy and operation.

It takes a lot of manpower to go to market which is why I'm not fully satisfied. Also, currently, we have to treat the solution as an isolated direction to go with. If the customer has invested a lot in their network, like Cisco, Huawei, or even Juniper, the customer needs to abandon their current invest. In that case, we hope that Versa will allow the customer to leverage their current and past investments.