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Perfect for highly-critical small to medium sized environments
December 15, 2020

Perfect for highly-critical small to medium sized environments

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches

Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches are used to power several small to medium-sized offices and other customer-facing endpoints that are highly critical to our organization. The resilience, reliability, performance, and flexible support options give us the assurance that business operations have reasonable mitigation against failure, bottlenecks, and extended periods of downtime.
  • Excellent throughput/performance.
  • High resilience/reliability.
  • Best-in-class enterprise support.
  • Pricing could be improved.
  • Feature set/performance at this price point is not as attractive as competitors.
  • Integration/interoperability with non-Cisco products could be improved.
  • Improved uptime
  • Improved scheduled/unscheduled maintenance times.
  • Improved assurance for critical business functions.
We have found that the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series were simple to install and configure. Your network infrastructure team will not need to become CCNA certified to figure out their way around these devices. Basic functionality and integration can be done without having to undergo a difficult learning curve. As a result, management and maintenance effort has also been reduced.
We have used ACLs for some sensitive areas and this has been effective in controlling the flow of information through these network segments.
We have found that Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series switches are highly optimized pieces of hardware that are perfect for their target environments. Smaller, simpler designs allow for more relaxed network room/cabinet requirements and PoE functionality have even allowed for micro-segmentation of CCTV and VoIP devices in certain areas without the need for additional hardware.
We have used 3Com and Broadcom switches in the past, and while they delivered more 'bang for your buck', they did not provide us with the level of assurance that we have gotten from Cisco products. In particular, higher failure rates and unsatisfactory support experiences led us to explore other options, and we eventually settled on Cisco.
The Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series of Switches are best suited for critical environments within an organization that requires highly available endpoints on a small to medium scale. Cisco products can be somewhat expensive compared to the alternatives, but these may not provide the level of assurance that Cisco is known for. Larger scale critical environments may benefit from the 3000x or 9000x series. For non-critical and/or low-budget environments, there are more cost-effective alternatives.