Aventri vs. Cisco Secure Web Appliance

eTouches seems to be well positioned to serve those needing event registration for small groups up to large conventions. Events with multiple sessions are very well organized and allows the planners to monitor registration and attendance with ease. One issue we have run into is the ability to give a discount to a specific registrant who signs up a group of individuals. We continue to work for a solution to this.

Incentivized

We have both scenarios where we can describe that. For example, in the HQ, where we have about 3,000 users, Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance is the ideal solution, because we can consolidate all the Internet access, policies, rules, etc. in the same box. However, if you have small offices with a few users, it's hard to justify one big and expensive box that could cost more than the whole office infrastructure.

Incentivized

• Manages class size limits very well.
• Provides information for hotel booking and transfers so that all this information is in one record.
• Unlimited number of pages for the website is invaluable - we looked at other programs with only 4 pages for the website and that just isn't enough for our clients.

Incentivized

• SMA gave us central control over multiple servers, simplifying management.
• Performance of the Appliance VM exceeded that of our old physical appliance-based solution.
• Convenient licensing for virtualized environments that allows easy scaling.

Incentivized

• Registration on the backend was confusing
• Sometimes the code would break and take a while to fix (adding images, extra text)
• Not intuitive for users

Incentivized

• I think that the interface could need updates to adapt it to a much more current system, achieve quick access to necessary tools and adapt the platform to a much more customizable and comfortable system to work with.
• It is undoubtedly a platform that is worth having, however, the license costs could be better adjusted to small businesses so that it can be accessed more easily.
• It could be a bit complex to use, the use of codes is quite extensive, it could be adjusted to something much more practical but just as efficient.

Incentivized

Because it's one of those products you almost don't realize it exists from the end user. From the administrator perspective, you can do everything on its web interface and it's very intuitive to manage, once you know the concepts behind identities, acls, etc. Also, once you build the control structure, I mean, you link 'local' groups with your own Active Directory groups, as we did here, you don't need to be managing those things on the appliance itself.

Incentivized

I had a few issues while onsite (over the weekend). The support information given to me was incorrect and I had a hard time tracking down how to get assistance while onsite (on a weekend). When you are onsite, issues are usually heightened and need an immediate response, and I didn't get that.

Incentivized

Our experience with Cisco's support was terrible. Other than the fact that they don't respond to service-related emails with urgency, they also keep on changing the policies that affected us. Recently, they came up with a new look for the same software, which was insanely slow. Renewal of keys for the old interface took months. Overall, the support was not very friendly from the users' point of view.

Incentivized

We loved CVENT and DoubleDutch, but it was much easier to have all the modules we needed in one platform, which happened to be Aventri.

Incentivized

At home I have a McAfee service that does similar tasks and helps manage the users of my internet. McAfee seems more user friendly and easier to set exceptions.

Incentivized

• Much more thorough reporting than previous provider.
• The ability for long term goal creation based on the objectives evaluated post conference.

Incentivized

• Security! Security! Security! We are financial company that work with very sensitive information. A lot of unsafe traffic was blocked on the Cisco IronPort WSA over years of using it. We did not earn on it but absolutely sure that we did not lose 'gazillion' of dollars being infected or scammed.
• Easy to configure and use, no need to teach new personnel how work with this product (hopefully saving time = saving money).
• Unfortunately the price of license subscription made financial managers push IT dept. to look for something cheaper.

Incentivized