Cisco Catalyst 8000V SD-WAN & Router - PAYG - DNA Advantage

We are a system integrator and a Cisco Select Partner, deploying all the Cisco portfolios like SD-WAN, switching, firewall, access point, and then Secure Access, our cybersecurity product. We have been a partner at Cisco for the last 8.5 years, dealing with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.

The features I find most valuable in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN are based on our customer requirements, as the SD-WAN solution now has two solutions: Viptela-based SD-WAN and then Meraki-based SD-WAN. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN has detailed features, and Meraki is a better solution, but compared to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, some features are not as detailed.

From the visibility perspective, I find that we are able to monitor and manage the entire branch and user-level activities, providing better visibility. We can integrate with cloud-based solutions, such as Secure Access, and get all the information regarding who is accessing from branch to headquarters, source to destination, the servers, and all related data. We can monitor and manage who is accessing and what traffic is flowing, covering all the necessary aspects.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN can be improved in minimal ways, because they have updated it now, and the updated version is really good. The only concern is the cost; compared to others, the cost is higher, but the features are the same as a superior product, so we are expecting that cost. Some customers feel the cost is high, as not all users utilize all the features. They want some limited functionality, and we have two or three models of licenses only, where they need to buy either one license version or another. They are not using all the features, so they end up paying for everything.

The pricing is the only concern regarding Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN; otherwise, all aspects are good.

8.5 years

I see the competition to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN mainly as the Palo Alto product, specifically the IRON product, which is the SD-WAN device similar to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. It features a centralized dashboard, management, large-scope deployment, and visibility, making them a competitor. Other products are available, but they are not at that much of a competitive level; Silver Peak is one example.

Cisco does optimize the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup with the previous solution being Viptela Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, which has now changed to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. We can now integrate Secure Access with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN devices, allowing us to do all the policy optimization and distributed distribution functions.

I think the operational efficiency of Cisco in my IT environment is a good aspect compared to Palo Alto, which is another competitor in enterprise-level solutions. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN has some more features, enabling us to integrate with multiple platforms to monitor, manage, and adapt a single point of management. I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10.

I am using Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN in my company and I recommend it to my customers as well.

The most valuable features of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN include their support, which is really good compared to other vendors because we do deal with other vendors, and I have seen FortiGate. I don't think they will ever be able to match up to what Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN offerings are, that is for sure.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup, and it is good in enterprise setups as well. We have deployed it for our manufacturing customers and it is pretty stable.

In terms of troubleshooting capabilities, end-to-end visibility affects my organization's ability to detect issues aggressively with their products, especially the software-defined networking stack for the LAN and WAN, where we have seen issues being detected much more aggressively, allowing us to resolve issues faster. Their AI features are really decent, so overall, it is a good solution.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is good, but from a cost perspective, they need to think through and see how they can materialize and reduce costs, especially the hardware.

Overall, I would rate Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN good, although they should start innovating more towards the AI landscape where we are seeing very high traction. At the SD-WAN level, they are fine, but they need to catch up, especially HPE post-acquisition of Juniper. When comparing Meraki versus Mist, Mist has better features, so those are some areas they need to catch up.

To make Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN closer to a 10, I think cost is the first primary factor. The support and fundamental help assistance, especially during onboarding, could be much easier to enable small businesses to take it up.

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN for three years.

The product is pretty stable.

In terms of scalability, I would put Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN around eight on a scale of one to ten, as it scales well with the growing needs of my organization. We have used it in multiple diversified topologies and it has remained stable, being tested through time.

From a scalability point of view, I don't see any concerns because we take into consideration their product-wise limitations when we are buying specific modules or things, so I think we are good over there.

I would rate their technical support a ten.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN depends on the channel partner who is providing the support, and their channel partners are pretty stable and quite good.

The initial setup for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is very easy and pretty straightforward because their documentation is pretty detailed, so we haven't seen or run into issues.

I see HPE as good competition to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.

HPE is cheaper.

To make Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN closer to a 10, I think cost is the first primary factor. The support and fundamental help assistance, especially during onboarding, could be much easier to enable small businesses to take it up.

Go ahead with your questions about Cisco products.

Everything remains as is with these products. No changes.

I purchased my Cisco products directly from Cisco.

I would rate this review a 7 overall.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is for WAN connectivity only. When customers have a lot of workloads available on cloud and they need use cases like direct internet access, encryption, and better centralized control and centralized management of their complete WAN environment, those use cases generally fall under Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.

When customers are distributed across different locations, all the management, control and data plane are specific to those branches. From the management perspective, from the life cycle management or upgrade and update, we need to work on each and every branch. Once Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is deployed, all of that can be done from a centralized location using the different management and control tools that Cisco has. Additionally, from the distributed perspective, if they want to access any application from the cloud, they would have to backhaul to their central data center and then access their applications on cloud. With Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, direct internet access can be configured and they can reach out to the respective cloud locations directly. Zero-touch provisioning is something that can be implemented where you just create the formats and accordingly provision the new sites with zero-touch. You just bring the device and it will be automatically configured from the centralized management tools. There are multiple such features where Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN solves problems for customers.

One valuable feature is the scale at which it can be deployed for big enterprises. The application-aware routing they provide is another important feature. They have over 4,000 signatures of applications where the system can identify those applications and accordingly create the profile so that those applications can be given the best possible route depending on their requirement.

Since we have a centralized control and a centralized management plane, for a distributed organization that has a lot of different offices, we can have complete visibility from a single point of connect. Accordingly, we can do the provisioning and configuration everything from a central place. This is a very useful architecture for an organization that is distributed or has multiple offices across different geographies.

Having complete visibility into the complete Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN fabric helps not only to troubleshoot but also from a traffic engineering or capacity planning perspective or to ensure that proper uptime is maintained because we can proactively sense the issues in the network. This could be related to any malfunctioning at the product layer or it could be related to the sizing.

All of those things actually add to the operational efficiency where we have vManage, vController, and all these tools to have centralized management, zero-touch provisioning enabled for the complete fabric. This actually gives real-time telematics of all devices. We can have complete visibility into the network on a real-time basis. That way we can ensure that we have better uptime for the overall Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN fabric.

If they can have better firewall features as their competitors have, such as Fortinet and Versa, that would help to place this solution better so that we can address security related things. If they can have all the IPS, IDS, everything built on all the edge devices, whether physical or virtual, that could be one improvement.

Actually, if customers are existing Cisco customers, if Cisco can be more flexible to leverage the existing investment, that could be another important aspect to save on cost and be more competitive from a pricing perspective. Overall, the pricing or the segment that Cisco deals with is a bit premium, which they charge a bit premium against the competition on the licensing, hardware, and services.

The implementation is not straightforward. You need a specialized partner or specialized people who can implement this. It can be simplified a bit from that perspective as well.

Mostly the way we implement the policies for a big environment requires a lot of things that we need to take care of. If that can somehow be improved, because they have different components, like they have vManage, they have vSmart, and vBond and all these components have to work with a certain flow that they need to follow.

I have been using this solution for around 8 or 9 years now.

Once it is set up, as I mentioned there are certain complexities in the initial configuration, but once it is customized or commissioned properly, then it is very smooth. We have a lot of visibility into the fabric and it performs well. For example, with zero-touch provisioning, if we are adding new sites, we can do it with a few simple clicks. That way it is very flexible.

I think recently they have changed their licensing which was earlier on a per device bandwidth basis. Now licensing has gone in the new routing direction. Otherwise, it was a problem where we had to define the bandwidth for every router. I think it is one of the most costly solutions in this segment when we compete it with players like Fortinet. The cost is at the higher side.

Cisco is more advanced since they have more granular based insights of the network. They have a dedicated controller unlike Fortinet where they have the control plan mostly built with the edge devices. That way we have a more granular way to implement the policies than Fortinet. If we are dealing with a very big network, then Cisco has an advantage of managing the big networks.

Cisco TAC is one of the best. They are technically qualified and responsive.

There are many scenarios where we replace MPLS with the internet because now we have the flexibility to migrate to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and we do not need private connectivity such as MPLS. This cost optimization on the circuit is one part where we can leverage on all the available bandwidth unlike in MPLS or the traditional way where we have one active link and one passive. Here we can leverage on all the available transport and we can leverage on any type of connectivity because it is transparent to the transport that we are using, whether it is 5G, LTE, MPLS or whatever. Since it has centralized management from the operations perspective, it certainly adds value because now we can manage things from a centralized point. Earlier we were taking days to upgrade and update the edge devices, but from the centralized vManage or vControl, we can do it in a few hours. That way we can capture all these ROIs and can create a matrix and then share or present it to our customers.

All their network products include LAN, WAN, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, and firewalls. As a Gold Partner, mostly the controller part is on cloud in most cases, while the edge device is on-premises. We sometimes purchase virtual firewall and virtual router to extend Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN fabric to these hyper-scalers. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN has been in use for a year and a half, which is when we first started deploying it. We are now finalizing that deployment in our environment and are almost exclusively switching over from our old SD-WAN solution to the Cisco-based one.

I appreciate the control that we have with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. With the previous solution that we had, we could not build independent tunnels to each SD-WAN appliance, as they were all aggregated. Now we have considerably more freedom. We no longer have to speculate whether one thing going down means we lose an entire region of the firm; instead, everything is site-by-site based.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN helps us specifically through the control of policies. With Catalyst, we are able to build out these policies at a regional level. Rather than relying on a centralized location, we have been able to distribute this across the country. We are able to target bigger regions and optimize traffic flow for those specific regions instead of being locked into whatever the previous vendor was providing us.

For our environment, there are some bugs with how we interpret data in terms of circuit usage, for example. This has been on our to-do list for a while because it has been broken. We have not been able to get it to work quite right specifically for our environment. We have been trying to get support and push for that resolution because for our metrics, it is valuable. Having a blank screen instead of this data can be intimidating, so we are trying to get that fixed.

I have been working in my field professionally for about three years.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN has been fine for the most part. We tend to play it safe and use versions that have been tested more thoroughly, rather than necessarily old versions. Issues we might have run into stem from us being out of date, such as wanting to implement and use something that was actually on a newer version that we just had not had time to upgrade to.

I would rate Cisco's operational efficiency in my IT environment very highly. At this point, we are almost an entirely Cisco-based organization, and everything that we operate on for the most part is Cisco-based. We have good support from Cisco, and I think we are happy with how everything is going.

Before, our solution was VMware VeloCloud, which was then purchased by Arista recently, and that is what we are switching away from.

I was not involved with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing too much. We did run into some licensing issues in the beginning, but it was through the vendor and the provider that we were using, not necessarily a Cisco thing. If that had not been involved, the process would have been smoother.

The increased uptime with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN has been a return on investment.

We have been focusing on fast deployment and then going back to tweak policies and figure out which features we want. I would rate this review a 10.