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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ACisco Catalyst SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network solution designed to simplify and optimize enterprise network connectivity in complex digital landscapes. It enables organizations to connect any user to any application, whether on-premises, in data centers, or across multiple clouds, with integrated capabilities for multicloud support, security, predictive automation, and enhanced network visibility—all built on a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)-enabled…N/A

    LevelBlue USM Anywhere

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AThe LevelBlue USM Anywhere XDR platform (replacing the former AlienVault USM) delivers threat detection, incident response, and compliance management.

    $1,075

    per month

    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Essentials
    $1,075
    per month
    Standard
    $1,695
    per month
    Premium
    $2,595
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    LevelBlue
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    133 Answers
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    116 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    135 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    109 Answers
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft Defender XDR
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
    Score8.6 out of 10
    InsightIDR
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    VMware SD-WAN
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Microsoft Defender XDR
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (150 ratings)
    9.8
    (390 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (4 ratings)
    7.2
    (18 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (67 ratings)
    6.7
    (34 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.4
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.3
    (15 ratings)
    7.3
    (25 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.3
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (38 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.3
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    It's great for connectivity. I think if you're looking at. There's a lot of players out there that do SD- WAN, you can do hosted solutions, you can do your own. If you're looking to do it yourself, I think this product works out well. I do know it's hosted elsewhere by some other companies, but for us, we want the control and we don't have a huge amount of sites, so being able to control that's important and the data that we can get out of the product, we can see just seeing the application experience through Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, really gives us good information.
    Incentivized
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    LevelBlue
    At this point I'm saying a 4. While the marketing material make it appear to be easy to use and it was relatively easy to set up, as previously mentioned, each event description is based upon the individual asset making it nearly impossible for the administrator to be a SME for each asset. For example, if one of the assets reporting is a router, the administrator monitoring alerts would need to know what the various events are that can be triggered as an event for the particular router; however, if the asset is a workstation, the administrator would need to know the various events that are triggered for workstations.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • 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
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    LevelBlue
    • AlienVault USM is simple and easy to deploy. Sensors can be deployed in as little as 15 minutes through the setup wizard.
    • The USM UI is easy to understand. I've trained multiple analysts who are able to perform their duties on their first day, in part because of USM Anywhere's ease of use.
    • Top-notch built-in compliance templates and reporting features.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Cisco
    • 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
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    LevelBlue
    • Personally, I've wished I could purchase a service that would configure AV for my environment. I get a lot of traffic on a daily basis and I almost need to hire an analyst that just works on AV.
    • Some of the filters when looking for a specific alert aren't that easy to use.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    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
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    LevelBlue
    The centralized logging and retention for PCI compliance was our main driver, and it is meeting that need. Otherwise there has been enough frustration with the lack of documentation and the need to customize through the CLI that I would be open to alternatives.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Cisco
    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
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    LevelBlue
    Once you are able to navigate the different panels, finding what you need is quite easily. Before getting used it it can be a bit of challenge . Each panel is quite well laid out and the filtering search capabilities are quite strong.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    I think if we could afford, we could have HA inplace but we planned out outage and workaround to avoid any outages.
    Incentivized
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    LevelBlue
    We do have issues with maintenance on the AlienVault USM as the disk fills up from time to time with other data sources. Sources for scanning logs and net flow data isn't calculated in regular disk maintenance and can easily fill up our disk if we do not keep an eye on it with some custom Nagios plugins. The system does properly trim logging data from logging sources properly.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Cisco
    It does slow down over the period but it's same with other product. you need to clear/reboot services.
    Incentivized
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    LevelBlue
    With the latest release of AlienVault USM overall performance has not been an issue. We have noticed single source events per second does not scale well with the overall system. 2,000eps on a vmware system with a single source produces delays of up to an hour for us. Pages, reporting and even raw log searches are rather quick though.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Cisco
    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
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    LevelBlue
    The support we received from alienvault was excellent. They went above and beyond in making sure everything was working as it needed to be. They REALLY want their product implementation to be a success and our security goals be achieved. They are like a member of our security team.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    I did not have any experience with "in person" training directly. The free online classes offered for a half a day are based on the actual training offered. These little teasers are very good and well worth your time to learn a few quick and dirty ways of getting more information from your SIEM
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    It was very well organized and helpful in using the product to the fullest extent. The instructor allowed time for folks who were involved with managed services to receive tuning tips in order to better support their customers. In addition, the course materials were automatically updated when the new version came out.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    I was late to participate but my team was very happy with the outcome.
    Incentivized
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    LevelBlue
    AlienVault USM was a very simple to implement and get up and running. We started with a trial version and had that up and going within an hour of receiving email instructions from the sales engineer. We never had to contact support to get the system up and going. It was extremely easy to convert over to a full license once we started with a paid version.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    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
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    LevelBlue
    Splunk's ES is a paid add-on on top of an already pricey product. Finding a MSSP that supports Splunk and isn't a 6 figure annual commitment seems unlikely. LogRhythm did not have a cloud-based solution when we were considering SIEMs. Fantastic product though and have a good MSSP base. Devo did not have a MSSP partner base when we looked. Their product is fantastic too. AlienVault USM has good partners to choose from as well as an affordable cloud model, that's why we chose it.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cisco
    I didn't take part of this decision but it always multiyear contract get best discount.
    Incentivized
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    LevelBlue
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Cisco
    Really strength in scalability. Only thigs it's depends on some prototype Cisco product which you can't work with other Cisco products.
    Incentivized
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    LevelBlue
    The AlienVault USM is not very scalable. Some scalability can be achieved by installing additional sensors, but this only offers 500eps per sensor and is still overall limited by the installation type of VM or physical. We have also noticed the EPS (events per second) is rated overall and not towards a single source. A single source on a very healthy VMware partition tops out at 2,000eps for us, no matter how we configure it. Maybe this is a problem of the 5.2 release?
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • 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
    Read full review
    LevelBlue
    • Once you hit the 150 asset mark, you have to jump to their unlimited license. There is no middle ground. We were only 10 or so assets above the 150 so we had to chose to either not monitor those assets or pay the price of the upgrade.
    • AlienVault brings all the information to one place which makes it much quicker to track down problems.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots