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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Meraki SD-WAN

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Meraki SD-WAN is a cloud-managed solution that simplifies and secures wide area networking across branch, campus, and remote locations. Built on Meraki’s dashboard, it delivers centralized visibility, automation, and traffic optimization without the complexity of traditional WAN deployments. The solution improves application performance by dynamically routing traffic based on real-time conditions, integrating advanced security, and providing seamless multicloud connectivity. With support…N/A

    VMware SD-WAN

    Score7.3 out of 10
    N/AVMware SD-WAN (formerly VeloCloud) aims to deliver high-performance, reliable branch access to cloud services, private data centers, and SaaS-based enterprise applications. VeloCloud was acquired by VMware in 2018.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Meraki SD-WANVMware SD-WAN
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Meraki SD-WANVMware SD-WAN
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Meraki SD-WANVMware SD-WAN
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
    We have opted to move to VMware SD-WAN (VeloCloud) for a richer feature set.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
    user friendly, cheap and integrates well with other Meraki and Cisco products
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
    Different functionality
    Incentivized
    VMware by Broadcom
    Chose VMware SD-WAN
    At the time we made our decision to move forward with VeloCloud, Cisco Viptela and Cisco Meraki were the two players we compared against. Cisco's offerings were very customizable when using Viptela, but there was a big learning curve to implement. Meraki at the time was a lot …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware SD-WAN
    Price/quality ratio.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    69 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    69 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    69 Answers
    83%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    59 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    68 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Meraki SD-WANVMware SD-WAN
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Meraki SD-WANVMware SD-WAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (75 ratings)
    7.0
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.1
    (2 ratings)
    7.2
    (3 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.4
    (73 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Meraki SD-WANVMware SD-WAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    At our level, we had to optimize our 3 internet links (MPLS and LTE) with applications like O365, SAP, Microsoft CRM Dynamics and our collaborative work tools like Teams. We also had to ensure that both client workstations and servers could communicate with minimal latency with our Microsoft Intune infrastructure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    VMware SD WAN is a great solution for tying multiple locations together that are not physically located close. The link aggregation used in the technology allows for quicker failover to redundant connections, which makes the surface traffic seem to be uninterrupted. If planning to connect multiple locations while utilizing the existing internet, Veloclouds SDWAN provides stable and accurate aggregation of connections that provide a good sense of stability for the price.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • Meraki has been beautifully done for people who are actually very lean on the IT infrastructure as in resources wise. So Meraki is a very good solution to give them the simplicity on a single glass plan where they can actually have visibility over all their networks on a single glass plane by a click of button, they could actually see what's happening. They could actually do troubleshooting on the fly, including packet capture, which is such a smooth feature. Usually myself including I've been have an engineering background, all my ears packet capture, I've never seen that smooth and easy to operate that you can actually have a high level understanding or deep level depending on how much you want to go in with the click of a button. That's so beautiful. I mean everything for me Meraki is point of kind of a go ahead for everyone.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VeloCloud is excellent at automatically choosing the best internet connection based on speed and quality.
    • It provides a web based interface allows all our connections to be managed from anywhere in the world.
    • Because VMware has a strong history in networking and is a name I can trust, we are able to confidently invest in their technology.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • The platform itself is very feature-rich. One of the difficulties we find is that to do things, for example, in terms of monitoring and obtaining data, it's not consistent. There are multiple interfaces to get them, but you can't get the same data through all interfaces. So you end up having to try to find either the least common denominator or we have to build our own code that then mines through all the interfaces and that becomes very problematic.
    • The other problem we've found is that there are issues where the same amount of expected software quality isn't really there in all releases. Cisco breaks things out by like shorter or long-lived release trains. And the long-lived release trains tend to have good quality by the time you get to the second or third release within it. But then those are skips. There are like 12, 18 months skips in between those. So if you start releasing features on versions in between there practically to be safe, you have to wait until you know much later. So to be able to see new future capabilities as they come out and deploy those readily needs to improve, it needs to be much faster.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMware SD-WAN could provide cli access for troubleshooting
    • VMware SD-WAN boxes could have more ports
    • VMware SD-WAN box could have more applications to provide more health and visibility of the traffic passing through
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    Because so far the solution showed great stability during the time, easy to use and deploy. There is still room for improvements like adding a smarter way to manage the policies to apply to the tunneled traffic, today the way to configure and manage them is quite old style, It would be better an "object" oriented way to create them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    Its usable very well
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    VMware SD-WAN has great usability. We have had a positive experience with the solution. It has helped solved a number of issues with our network such as visibility in user usage, application usage, and prioritizing critical application network traffic. VMware SD-WAN user interface is also very easy to understand and configure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Fast and efficient. The only issue currently is that the support is only overseas support and not in South Africa, which causes delays in resolution for some cases. Escalating issues is quite simple and the opening of new cases from the dashboard is easy. I have never had a support issue that could not be resolved.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    There are still some glitches that need to be worked out. As an example, I rebooted a device at one of our branch locations and it just died. That should never have happened, and I've only seen this happen when a company needs to improve hardware on some of their lower-end models.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is way more easy to configure as they do not use a command line interface, but a graphical user interface. Cisco Meraki SD-WAN also has configuration templates, which allows for multiple devices configuration with much less effort than conventional command line interface devices. Monitoring is also a benefit over regular devices.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    At the time we made our decision to move forward with VeloCloud, Cisco Viptela and Cisco Meraki were the two players we compared against. Cisco's offerings were very customizable when using Viptela, but there was a big learning curve to implement. Meraki at the time was a lot simpler, but we needed the ability to customize some features in order to implement SD-WAN in our environment. VeloCloud was the perfect solution during our POC as it satisfied our needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    Being a cloud-first solution, Meraki Dashboard will scale as needed without any effort for the client. The Meraki cloud will provision (upscale and downscale) the resources as you grow or shrink in size. You only have to physically install the MX on your site, all the management is one through the Internet via Meraki Dashboard. Worth noting that you can fully-configure the MX prior to the physical installation on site.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Cisco Meraki SD-WAN gave us a new perspective on SDN, ZTP and other automation tools we didn't have before
    • The sizing of Meraki MX series cannot compete very large and robust networks, only if we use virtual appliances. In this case, I would recommend on other vendors like Fortinet
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Eliminate the cost of an MPLS circuit.
    • Ease of deployment: the amount of time saved when adding additional sites to the solution, especially when you have a profile already built and when you add a new VC you just associate that profile with that appliance. Again, in a matter of minutes, you can have a new site up and running.
    • Since there is not true firewall built-in, you would have to either purchase a third-party firewall or the virtual firewall that is supported by Velocloud.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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