Gartner: Customers High on Palo Alto, Aryaka, Fortinet, Silver Peak, Huawei WAN Edge Solutions

Five providers scored highly in Gartner‘s latest WAN edge infrastructure update.

Gartner Peer Insights unveiled its “Voice of the Customer” document for WAN Edge Infrastructure. The peer-based report uses more than 600 reviews and ratings from customers in 2020. Gartner listed 10 vendors, all of which have received 10 or more reviews.

Source: Gartner

Gartner named Aryaka, Fortinet, Huawei, Palo Alto Networks and Silver Peak (listed alphabetically) as its “Customers’ Choice” providers. These vendors hold an overall experience rating of 4.7 or more out of 5 and received 50 or more reviews.

Palo Alto landed the highest overall score with a sparkling 5.0. Moreover, 149 people left a review for Palo Alto, making it the most reviewed vendor. Fortinet scored a 4.7 from the ratings of 124 customers.

Breaking It Down

Gartner also asked customers to rate their vendor in five other categories. Palo Alto, Silver Peak (now owned by HPE) and FatPipe Networks earned the highest score for evaluation and contracting at 4.9. Peplink, Palo Alto and FatPipe earned the highest deployment score at 4.9. Open Systems and Palo Alto score highest in service/support at 4.9.

We should view the study with some caveats. For instance, each vendor differed in its number of reviewers. Citrix earned a 4.4 rating, but its 10 reviewers don’t guarantee much confidence in the result.

As you can see, Palo Alto did very well for itself. In addition, the company stood alone as the preferred vendor for large enterprises. Palo Alto entered the market last year after buying CloudGenix.

Source: Gartner

Gartner noted in its document that the wide area network market includes more than routing and WAN optimization appliances.

“WAN edge infrastructure now incorporates a wide set of network functions, including secure routers, firewalls, SD-WAN, WAN path control and WAN optimization, along with the traditional routing functionality,” the report authors wrote.

Other tidbits from the report include:

• Sixty-four percent of Open Systems’ 14 reviewers worked in the manufacturing industry.
• Forty-one percent of Fortinet’s 161 respondents hail from EMEA.
• Aryaka, Palo Alto Networks and Silver Peak were the top choice for North American customers.
• The Peer Insights report does not include VMware or Versa Networks.
• This year’s Customers’ Choice vendors look slightly different than last year’s. Silver Peak and Palo Alto replaced Cisco and CloudGenix. You’ll recall that Palo Alto acquired CloudGenix; however, Fortinet, Huawei and Aryaka were in the elite tier last year.

If you’re looking for an expert-based report, Gartner released its Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge last fall. VMware, Fortinet, Versa, Cisco, Silver Peak and Palo Alto all landed in the Leader quadrant.