Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Oracle SD-WAN (Talari)

The firewalls management is made easy through its very good management software. It has a lot of features such as VPN, ATP, IPS, Real-time log views, Active Directory integration, Virus Scanning of traffic / file downloads, High Availability Failover, Qos / Traffic Shaping, and a nice quick glance dashboard.

Incentivized

Although things like high speed are not available in Talari (I think none of the SDWAN providers offer this), Talari devices provide good security and are easy to manage

Incentivized

• Increased level of network protection against threats.
• Visibility and control of applications that users access.
• URL Filtering to block unauthorized or prohibited websites on the internal corporate network.
• Protection against diverse malware at the edge of the network.
• Firewall redundancy with another backup appliance.

Incentivized

• Failsafe- ability to aggregate low cost link and increase enterprise WAN bandwidth and also provide safe failor over in case of link interruption, with almost zero drops. In a lab test for voice it works perfectly for voice.
• Config Change without system interruption (change config and apply it during Maintenance windows).

Incentivized

• Very complex and steep learning curve to get up to speed.
• Multiple ways to configure for the same service or feature. Takes time to determine "your" customized build.
• Interface can sometimes be clunky when trying to determine how it's organized or arranged. Again, steep learning curve.

• Talari Aware management solution very complex to set up useful dashboards
• Management interface seems overly complex (7.3), though this was supposedly improved in 9.0

Incentivized

Easy enough to use and configure using the management UI. Reporting from the web filter is a little clunky, and not very user friendly. To be perfectly honest, once it's set up and running, there isn't a lot to do from the day-to-day side of things, which is not a bad thing.

They are very quick to answer the phone and I think I haven’t waited more than 5 minutes in the queue and if you have to hang up they actually call you back when it’s your turn in line. They have a secure tunnel that you can open for them to get into your device and help you with basically anything. It’s pretty magical if you ask me.

Incentivized

So far so good. I have no problems with support; they were able to deliver a good service to us every time we needed it.

Incentivized

We used a much alder Cisco ASA router that was chocking our bandwidth and it couldn’t really be compared. It was clunky and horrible at best. Our WatchGuard was overly complicated and difficult to manage and required a version matching thick client installed locally to manage the firewall. The Barracuda solved a bunch of issues from both of these devices and allows me to really save time and money with its easy to configure the interface and inexpensive yet quality device and interface allow me to feel like I am getting a great value for my security.

Incentivized

While I haven't looked at Silverpeak in a long time and haven't used any of the other big players, this product is a dedicated SD-WAN solution, so no need to get a combination device, unless that's important. We will likely implement SD-WAN through our next firewall platform refresh as a backup to Talari.

Incentivized

• Really neutral given we came from the x series. The move to the x series was a huge positive in terms of time spent managing and the ability to get what needed to be done, well done. The move to the NG was just the next step.
• I will say the one thing, in terms of value, that is given is the firewall admin application. This one program saves a ton of time in configuration versus using the web-based configuration. You can only pick one, and for me, it's a no brainer - turn the web-based config off and use the app.

Incentivized

• For lower-bandwidth requirements (100's of Mbps) it is very cost-effective vs. the other big names
• Hardware is reasonably priced

Incentivized