Overall Satisfaction with Cisco SD-WAN

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our company operates far from any reliable wide bandwidth connections and we have to rely
on a mixture of satellite broadband and limited dedicated broadband from sole mobile
operator that services the area where our organization operates. Before we switched to Cisco
SD-WAN we had a hard time managing network performance and applications. We increased
our user numbers dramatically but our bandwidth stayed the same; with dramatic user
expansion, our bandwidth became inadequate for our needs. After we implemented Cisco
SD-WAN, we managed to prioritize office applications (emails, SharePoint, etc.) and users
manage to perform their tasks faster and more efficiently. On the other hand we managed to
add LTE routers to boost our traffic. Thanks to Cisco SD-WAN, we did not have any security
breaches and feel confident in Cisco SD-WAN's security features. Since we implemented Cisco
SD-WAN, our business applications work faster, business continuity increased, and cloud
services became more available and usable for our needs. My network team also spends less
time adjusting and configuring routing tables and application routings. Instead of monitoring
traffic constantly, we let Cisco SD-WAN automatically adjust our traffic and as a result we
have improved performance overall--even some streaming services have started to work at
an acceptable level in our remote location. In the end we manage to provide better
connectivity for both our business and personal needs for users.
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Pros and Cons

 Before Cisco SD-WAN, our users even struggled to send emails with Microsoft 365
 Cloud applications, such as SharePoint, were not taking a long time to load and made
it impossible to collaborate
 Streaming services--even though video streaming does not work at desired levels,
music streaming started to work without interruption

 Outside help is not widely available

 Still needs some QoS
 Configuration might be easier

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Most Important Features
 Scalability
 Seamless integration
 Optimize services
 Security
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Return on Investment
 Managing to use business applications efficiently causes us to get more value from our
cloud subscriptions
 Able to use streaming services improved employees' morale and increased their
performance
 Able to combine multiple connections, helped reduce costs, and prevented us from
investing in only the most expensive WAN supplier
 Instead of relying on one supplier when one connection was down, we managed to
carry on with another broadband solution

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Alternatives Considered

 Fortinet FortiGate

Unlike Cisco SD-WAN, Fortinet does not perform well to prioritize our business applications.
Even though the Fortinet solution is cheaper, when it comes to monitoring and logging you
need to pay extra. Fortinet web filtering is not very efficient and lacks some features, even
though it is simple to configure Fortinet, when you configure Cisco SD-WAN, it performs
better than Fortinet.
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Key Insights
Do you think Cisco SD-WAN delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Cisco SD-WAN's feature set?
Yes
Did Cisco SD-WAN live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Cisco SD-WAN go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Cisco SD-WAN again?
Yes