Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs. Citrix SD-WAN (discontinued) vs. FireMon

The best case, what I recommend to others and to clients to use is Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN one for is the case when you have a huge number of branches or small offices or remote offices, you name it. Even home offices, you have a large number and you want this whole infrastructure to be extremely easy to set up and also to have everything almost the same, not to have deviations from the standard configuration. This is the sweet spot for introducing Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.

Incentivized

Any organization with a robust IT support network and with 100+ users, all the way up to international conglomerates with millions of workers. The only situation I can see where it might be harder is if you have a very small business with limited technical know-how. Otherwise, it's honestly the no-brainer choice.

Incentivized

FireMon is best used in a large environment (for example, I have >100
firewalls in my environment). It's best used when trying to improve
security posture and showing changes in firewall security over time. It
might not be the best choice for smaller environments or those that aren't concerned about security management.

Incentivized

• We are able to use a multiple different circuits to go into the cloud, so we are not relying on just one particular private wireless. We're relying on wine circuits, ethernet, ethernet out. So it provides us that flexibility where we didn't have that before. Provides security that is very robust and flexible and scalable and it provides us with, the biggest thing is redundancy, where we have backup. For example, we have a Starlink for nuclear power plants. If our main circuits go down, we have that. And without Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN it would be very hard to actually achieve, to accomplish true redundancy. So we're happy with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN in that regard.

Incentivized

• Excellent integration with the Citrix Cloud Connector makes it a breeze to use.
• Access control is locked down with biometric security and easy password creation.
• License usage is always 100% secure.

Incentivized

• Give good real time reporting for anyone making a change to any of our firewalls
• Provides good reporting tools that are out of box
• Provide good customization tools that is specific to our needs
• Upgrades are a simple process and support does relatively well with assisting us.

Incentivized

• I will say the way we use it now, and I think what happened was the way it was deployed, it was fine, but unfortunately over the course of the years we've gotten a little out of hand with our device templates and feature templates. I think if there's any form of feedback that I would give to Cisco is how do we find ways to improve the environment as it stands so we get to a certain point with the environment and then we don't know how to undo it or fix it or optimize the environment. Because right now we're in a position where we're playing a lot of catch up and clean up and if there was a way or some tool or feature that we can take advantage of that would allow us to optimize that environment where we will kind of corner ourselves into a lot of problems in the future. There's some feature or something that we could take advantage of that will allow us to optimize that environment and not let it get out of control pretty easily. That would be my suggestion.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the interface is a bit slow to load. That's honestly about it!

Incentivized

• Some features could be added to the existing functionality which include NAT rules usage
• Rule expiration normalization from firewalls rather than entering them in rule documentation
• .csv exports of the files from the firewall pane only gives usage for 30 days by default and that should be increased

Incentivized

I would rate SD-WAN highly because it has significantly improved network performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency for my organization. Its ability to optimize traffic dynamically, enhance security, and simplify management across multiple locations has been invaluable. With SD-WAN, we’ve reduced dependency on costly MPLS, improved cloud application performance, and gained greater control over our network infrastructure.

Incentivized

The shell is locked out and we can't run any general centos commands. The implementation and maintainence of the arch is very complex. Even with the right identifiers on log messages the log collection keeps failing. The warning messages on the device are ambiguous. The log messages on firemon are a bit confusing and don't show the exact issue.

Incentivized

The niche configurations are given equal focus as the standard use cases, which can make onboarding difficult in the beginning (ie why am I not using an entire tab of the portal), but aside from that part, the dashboard is relatively easy to navigate and apply the configuration. The metrics and analytics available are also nice to have in a single pane.

Incentivized

It save me time and I'm able to have the review - review the rule independently with using my time.

Incentivized

I think if we could afford, we could have HA inplace but we planned out outage and workaround to avoid any outages.

Incentivized

FireMon has been relatively stable overall. However, there have been a handful of times where we had issues with the console. For example, we couldn't update which devices to include in a security assessment. The initial suggestion from support was to just reboot it. It seems like there weren't many other options available such as to restart services before going to the extreme of a complete reboot.

Incentivized

It does slow down over the period but it's same with other product. you need to clear/reboot services.

Incentivized

I'm not sure we have the largest implementation of FireMon out there but we do have a few 1000 devices being probed by FireMon. Overall, the system's performance has been rock solid. The console refreshes quickly and reports are generated within an expected timeframe.

Incentivized

Al ser soluciones integradas del portafolio de soluciones de Cisco, el soporte es transversal a cada uno de los componentes implementados, teniendo el cliente la capacidad de resolver sus inconvenientes bajo una misma infraestructura que está totalmente homologada, satisfacciendo de esta manera, las necesidades del cliente asi como permitiendo, que este se concentre en su negocio. Since the Cisco SD-WAN tools are a part of Cisco’s broader portfolio of solutions, support cross-cuts to each of our deployed components, with our company as the customer having the ability to solve our problems through the same, approved infrastructure. Their support team easily satisfies the customer’s needs so that they continue to focus on business functions.

Incentivized

FireMon technical support is awesome! They respond quickly to our requests and they are well trained and very knowledgeable about the tool. Some issues have to be referred to the development team, but technical support largely provides solutions for any issues that we may have.

Incentivized

I was late to participate but my team was very happy with the outcome.

Incentivized

Implementation is fairly simple. Most issues can be resolved by referencing manuals.

Incentivized

We've used the old Cisco SD-WAN, which no longer exists. It was a lot more complex to configure what is now called Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. So they've definitely come a long way in that it is a lot less complicated to set up and template based.

Incentivized

After a lengthy vendor selection process we determined that CloudBridge was the best solution—although as always with demos it was difficult to tell if we'd really made the right decision. Since selecting CloudBridge—hough I have had lots of input from colleagues who use other systems—I feel very happy with our choice. The feature set alone is just far superior.

Incentivized

I has worked with AlgoSec and while they are very similar product, I find the FireMon is easier to understand and get rolling with. While both require some learning, FireMon is by far the easier one. Once you have an understanding of how things are arranged and labeled you can easily import firewalls and begin to work on them to improve them

Incentivized

I didn't take part of this decision but it always multiyear contract get best discount.

Incentivized

Really strength in scalability. Only thigs it's depends on some prototype Cisco product which you can't work with other Cisco products.

Incentivized

Firemon Is easily scalable and maintainable with any size team. Although it requires some tech debt, it is well worth the time to invest to ensure compliance is visible and reports are accurate. Although our environment is very large we do not fully utilize the scalability of the Firemon product.

Incentivized

• Our branch offices can connect to our enterprise network and the internet quickly and securely, which has helped to increase productivity and reduce downtime.
• We have been able to reduce our dependence on expensive MPLS connections, and instead utilize a combination of broadband and LTE connections, which are more cost-effective
• The centralized location improves network visibility and troubleshooting process

• Tremendous savings from high uptime percent.
• Keeping our remote users engaged and stable at work means we can hire anywhere on earth.
• Access control keeps our IT team from constantly being tied up with password resets.

Incentivized

• FireMon's Compliance Reporting provided an immediate and tangible benefit
• FireMon helps identify egregious or erroneous rules quickly across multiple platforms
• FireMon took our audit process from an Excel spreadsheet into a far more advanced process with readily available context for reviewers

Incentivized