Cisco 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…
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Ipanema SD-WAN (discontinued)
Score 8.0 out of 10
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French company Ipanema was acquired in April 2015 by InfoVista, to expand that company's offerings into WAN optimization and became part of Extreme Networks portfolio, after the acquistion in late 2021. But the product line is discontinued, and no longer supported or sold.
We already had the infrastructure in place to use Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. Using products from other vendors would have necessitated using additional equipment or virtual appliances.
Nothing very specific to say about the concurrent products but there is lots of concepts differentiators and typically the range of hardware platforms etc... the concepts as well.
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN stands out for its robust performance, security features, and seamless integration with existing Cisco infrastructure. It offers advanced routing, centralized management, and enhanced network visibility, making it ideal for large-scale enterprises. Cisco's …
SD-WAN vs traditional routing is so much more advanced and interesting. Centralised management of devices makes everything easy to deploy, especially across hundreds of locations. The security is very similar, but I feel the network performance is improved and the setup is less …
Silver Peak is a pretty solid product as well. It does not offer as many customizations, but that also makes onboarding significantly easier. It's a tradeoff between the amount of supported features and the complexity of the dashboard. Similarly if you are willing to …
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is more sophisticated and has a wider range of functionalities than the Meraki SD-WAN solution. For Meraki SD-WAN you cannot configure all policies that it is possible for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. Meraki SD-WAN is more as plug and play solution. For 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.
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN isn't really a hardware product, so it's more like a concept. And so it's really hard to, this is kind of unique, so it doesn't really have a competitor per se.
Actually quite well, I will say. Like I said, I think the one thing that is probably holding us back is what do we need to do to clean up our environment now if we're able to do that right now, I think we wouldn't even be in this RFP process.
When we analyzed Meraki it was clear for us, that our company complexity and need required another level of maturity that was not present for there but it was for Viptela SDWAN now Cisco SDWAN.
Customer went through multiple vendors to address their issue related to application performance and WAN performance improvement. We went into discussion with Riverbed and Ipanema. Ipanema WAN Optimization solution fulfilled their requirements as some of the features like …
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.
Ipanema WAN Optimization solution is best suited for organizations where poor application performance and application visibility are the key challenges. It is effective where most of the customer sites are in areas where bandwidth upgrade is a challenge. Centralised management of devices through Web Server makes it easy to manage & control them.
I will say the ease of use. I know it's very much a template based with feature templates and device templates when deployed properly. I truly believe that the tool can be very, very effective and actually quite robust for us to leverage for globally because we manage a lot of distribution centers and it's all over the world and a different environment in each and every location and obviously across the global markets as well. We've got a wide range of use cases and how it would be very beneficial to each of our business units that we support.
The initial setup and configuration of the software can be somewhat complex, especially if you are not familiar with SD-WAN technology
It has many advanced features and capabilities and as so it can be difficult to find the specific setting or option that you are looking for in the interface
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.
No very intuitive for none trained customer, very complicated to assure a day to day operations if you don't have a strong knowledges on network routing OSPF BGP RIP etc... The different platforms and range of furnitures with specific options is very complicated for the integration and consolidation of the solution.
Initial setup of any SD-WAN is complicated and difficult because there is so much to do and it is so very granular. Because of this, Cisco has a number of free onboarding help setups. I worked one-on-one with a couple of engineers during our POC, and those relationships continued afterwards into the Pilot. And that's not even counting the Cisco TAC experience or the number of How-To videos and documents they have uploaded on their sites.
Some of the problem areas where I feel it wasn't easy enough like troubleshooting, digging deep with packet inspection, security. But Dynamic WAN Selection based on the AQS parameters give this solution an advantage on the other products. Newly added features like cloud application performance monitoring is simplified now.
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.
Customer went through multiple vendors to address their issue related to application performance and WAN performance improvement. We went into discussion with Riverbed and Ipanema. Ipanema WAN Optimization solution fulfilled their requirements as some of the features like teleengine, virtual ipbox extra are an advantage over the Riverbed solution.
It had a very positive experience, especially for the power plants that have actually already transitioned into Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. I think Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is a very powerful tool for them because again, it allows peace of mind for redundancy purposes. Most power plants are located in a very remote area where before they used to have only certain choices for circuits to get out. So this allows to integrate any choice that you have there, not just point to point. So no, it is been great. Again, we're still in the process of transforming the whole network into Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, so yeah, no, so far so good.