Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Formerly NG Firewalls vs Cisco Meraki SD-WAN

I would say a small business with a basic firewall and security needs would be a perfect fit for the Barracuda CloudGen firewall. I know that they soon end up leaving the NG models and are moving forward with the F series firewall. I think the F series is a much more difficult to manage device and doesn’t offer simplistic configuration or use and lacks cloud control so I don’t understand the move on Barracuda’s part to nix a great easy to manage the firewall. I do think that the NG line is maybe too simple for bigger businesses and would lack some main features that they would require.

Cisco Meraki SD-WAN can be adapted to any type of scenario. Everything depends on the needs of the business and the complexity in terms of routing and treatment of links, but nevertheless, where it is best adapted is for the retail and hospitality sector. Where I would not recommend it is for service provider scenarios or where it is required to have [...] more granular control of the quality of the service.

• The management software is excellent. It make it much easier to manage the firewalls than some of the other vendors.
• Watching real-time traffic is easy to do when trying to troubleshoot a users issues getting to a particular service.
• Support from Barracuda has been excellent. We rate their phone and online remote support as being the best in the business.
• We like the QoS and Traffic shaping of the NG Firewalls. They help is manage our limited bandwidth, so that business critical resources are available over lesser critical resources.
• Integration with Active Directory makes it easy to identify users activities in logs.

• Ease of configuration
• Cisco Meraki SD-WAN over VPN/auto VPN as opposed to using a dual connection over the public internet
• Application shaping within Cisco Meraki SD-WAN

• Very complex and steep learning curve to get up to speed.
• Multiple ways to configure for the same service or feature. Takes time to determine "your" customized build.
• Interface can sometimes be clunky when trying to determine how it's organized or arranged. Again, steep learning curve.

• Customized, esoteric configurations were very hard to get connected and configured.
• We had hoped to configure all sites filtering in one place, but each site has to be configured separately. this is prohibitive with a large number of sites.
• Network visibility does not work as well as I would like.
• The MX appliances do not work well with voice VLAN when using the appliances as a small office router/switch.

Easy enough to use and configure using the management UI. Reporting from the web filter is a little clunky, and not very user friendly. To be perfectly honest, once it's set up and running, there isn't a lot to do from the day-to-day side of things, which is not a bad thing.

I could go on and on about how good Barracuda's support really is. I have yet to have a problem they didn't help me fix and I always learn something when talking with them. The story that best describes my overall experience with Barracuda's support is this: When I first put in the xSeries they had a problem with a policy route. There was a bug in the code and in the one situation I was it, it just would not work. I went up the levels of support and they couldn't fix it. Well, next thing I know I am on the phone with 2 of the guys that programmed the thing and they work out the solution in no time and get me going. That is support. That is what I have come to expect from Barracuda. If the tech on the phone doesn't know the answer, they do not stop until they find it. Grant it, I also have to admit I do not call support with every problem, I try to work it out on my own first as that is how I learn best, so when I do call support it is going to be complicated.

Fast and efficient. The only issue currently is that the support is only overseas support and not in South Africa, which causes delays in resolution for some cases. Escalating issues is quite simple and the opening of new cases from the dashboard is easy. I have never had a support issue that could not be resolved.

Our Cisco firewall was always difficult to make any changes against. It had no user-friendly GUI interface. We were calling technical support most of the time whenever we needed to make any changes. The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall has a GUI interface which we are looking forward to getting better acquainted with as we move off of our old Cisco. Of course, Barracuda's technical support is always there and is top notch!

Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is a way better option due to the fact that there is only one point of management and the way how you can integrate the entire network. A very important focus point is the security of the network from the beginning to the end. The visibility of the traffic and the way you can trace any failure and report it

Because [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN has fulfilled the required functionality with the easy deployment of the configuration of new sites and growth, in addition to one of the integrations that Meraki has in general as a platform and the centralized management of everything through a single Dashboard. [...] The best thing is that [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN is included from the enterprise licensing of the MX.

• We saved multiple thousands of dollars the first year out with the firewall in maintenance fees. We paid for the firewall and 3 years of service and still saved money.
• The ease of management allows me to do my job more efficiently. I save a lot of time when doing my day to day job because I can get to my firewall virtually anywhere.
• I feel a lot safer and my business more secure knowing that I have configured things the way they need to be and it was simple and not overly complicated.

• All positive impacts. Easy to deploy, easy to manage. Z3 defects are rare.
• ROI in 18 months.
• All our hubs use Z3 embedded Wi-Fi.