Fortinet FortiGate vs. Silver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
FortiGate
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
FortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
Silver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Silver Peak's WAN Optimization brand and appliances were discontinued after the company's acquisition in 2020 by HPE. Similar capabilities are supplied now under HPE's Aruba brand.N/A
Pricing
Fortinet FortiGateSilver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FortiGateSilver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Fortinet FortiGateSilver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Features
Fortinet FortiGateSilver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Fortinet FortiGate
8.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Silver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
User Ratings
Fortinet FortiGateSilver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Fortinet FortiGateSilver Peak WAN Optimization (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
We reviewed many different vendors product offerings, we found the Fortinet FortiGate to best fit our needs. We upgraded from a previous firewall, the migration was a fairly easy process. We were also able to consolidate multiple firewalls into one unit using vdoms. It's been helpful to have one pain of glass, one support contract and easy to work with support. These firewalls are feature rich which is great, but the support contracts are expensive.
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It works fantastic when you want to reduce network cost and get the same result than with an MPLS. It's less appropriate for big companies with a lot of small sites.
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Pros
  • It is the most reliable NGFW that we have ever been touch with it.
  • You can easily upgrade the firewall cluster firmware without user attention!!!
  • User IDentity based feature is fantastic and intrusion prevention just works with least false-positive possible.
  • Very reachfull and intuitive GUI, just love it
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  • WAN Acceleration.
  • Improves application performance.
  • Reduce bandwidth costs.
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Cons
  • When we switched to Fortinet Fortigate, it took some time getting used to and become familiar with the new interface. Being used to strictly command-line interfaces, a full GUI-based firewall was something brand new. Careful planning had to be done when creating rules to ensure we didn't miss anything. However, once we got used to the new GUI interface, going from one Fortinet product to another was simple, as Fortinet used the same interface for all of its devices.
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  • Managing more and more routers can add complexity with templates.
  • Documentation around internal routing protocol they use is confusing.
  • Boost add-on was oversold by pre-sales team and not helpful during testing.
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Likelihood to Renew
Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
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Usability
The user interface shared among many simultaneous users is very easy to get around. With shared favorites among users, most tasks are easily bookmarked and can quickly be found and edited. Their strategy for web filter integration is easy to understand and manage as well. With some general direction, setup and maintenance were easy to do and easy to teach others in the organization to do as well.
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Reliability and Availability
We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
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Performance
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
We live in Turkey. Fortinet's Turkey office [dealt] constantly with us in our every problem or our experience. In addition, global support teams also supported every ticket we opened in every problem we encountered. They support innovative approaches and evaluate and offer solutions. In this context, they were very supportive of the problems we encountered in previous versions.
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They need to improve their Spanish communication.
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In-Person Training
I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
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Alternatives Considered
One of the biggest advantages over competitors that Fortinet FortiGate leverages well is its remote virtual private networks options. Licensing is included with Fortinet FortiGate units at no extra cost. We find that the telemetry is easier to compile and most importantly communicate with non technical members of staff. The Fortinet FortiGate unit is also extremely stable for long periods of time without showing signs of needing a reboot.
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We currently have almost all Cisco Meraki and would have loved to keep the product portfolio the same. Silver Peak was far cheaper and offered far more features. A lot of our evaluation showed that NGFW offers SD-WAN but it is not a full-featured deployment. Silver Peak is by and large better at being able to use both links at once, offer failover, QoS, and central reporting.
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Scalability
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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Return on Investment
  • SD-WAN : Can't stress it further that we are very happy with this functionality and outcomes in the org. We have multiple WAN and MPLS links and traffic switching becomes an important in order to utilize the best performing line.
  • QoS : We use QoS for almost all internet traffic, be it Web browsing by users, IOT segment, Application based traffic policy and VIP and normal user based bandwidth allocation.
  • SSL and IPSec VPN, both features are fully used to it absolute capacity. IPSec tunnels with multiple sister companies across globe.
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  • Able to get rid of MPLS
  • No more router hardware costs
  • Able to use both WAN links instead of one being only failover
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ScreenShots