Gartner magic quadrant update

Cisco partner confidential

Cisco’s Response to the Gartner WAN

Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrant
(SD-WAN) and Critical Capabilities
Report 2019
Cisco® SD-WAN moved from the Leaders to the Challengers quadrant
in the WAN Edge Infrastructure category. Cisco has identified a range of
factual errors as well as the exclusion of the Viptela vEdge platform (the
biggest selling SDWAN product in the market) from consideration.
The Magic Quadrant (MQ) and Critical Capabilities (CC) reports are
used by customers who are considering SD-WAN. Expect competitors
to push these reports to disadvantage the Cisco SD-WAN position in
deals. The Cisco team has identified a range of factual errors as well as
inconsistencies that conflict with other Gartner reports. For example,
Gartner has not incorporated data from our 6-year-old Viptela vEdge
product in its positioning, and instead has only factored in the Viptela
integration on ISR that has only been shipping for a year. This response
guide covers the essential elements of those reports and describes how
to tackle the major issues with customers head on and proactively.
The main highlights from the reports are:
• Cisco SD-WAN has moved from Leader to Challenger quadrant in the MQ.
• Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki and Viptela have been given a joint
rating on the MQ, but separate scores on the CC.
• 40+ vendors were evaluated as part of the process.
Cisco SD-WAN has been number 1 in other market share
in recent reports by IDC and Gartner. Why has Gartner decided
to move Cisco from Leader to Challenger quadrant?
Gartner has penalized Cisco SD-WAN for reasons of stability and
scalability of the Cisco IOS® XE SD-WAN software. But there are important
inconsistencies in the Gartner research. The following points address
these inconsistencies:
• Number 1 in market share: Cisco had its strongest year of execution on
SD-WAN, a fact recognized by both Gartner and IDC in recent reports
when listing Cisco SD-WAN as number 1 in market share (Ref: Gartner
& IDC reports) but this isn’t reflected in the Ability to Execute axis of
the MQ.

• Cisco SD-WAN powered by Viptela has a lower score for scalability,

small platform flexibility and small footprint WAN.

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Gartner magic quadrant update
Cisco partner confidential

• Cisco has the largest SD-WAN deployments in terms of scale:

CHALLENGERS LEADERS
Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) is rated low on scalability, yet Cisco has the most
customers with 1000+ site deployments, including, as one of the largest,
Circle K, with 11,000+ sites. Additionally Gartner’s “SD-WAN Solution
Comparison” ranks Cisco highly on scalability.
VMware
• Viptela is suitable for retail deployments: Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) is
Fortinet Silver peak rated low on small-footprint retail WAN, but Cisco has the most dominant
deployments in retail across the globe. Some examples are Circle K, Gap,
Cisco
Loblaw, Woolworths, Lululemon, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, Shell,
Huawei Citrix Wawa, and Dillards (protected under NDA).
Versa
Juniper networks Cloudgenix
• ISRs can support SD-WAN with a software upgrade: The report
Oracle (Talari networks) mentions a hardware upgrade of ISRs to support Cisco IOS XE, yet this is
Aryaka needed in only a minority of cases where IPS and URL filtering are needed.
Nuage networks HPE (Aruba)
• Cisco is the leader in Intent-based networking: Cisco has been rated
ABILITY TO EXECUTE

Fatpipe networks Cradlepoint

Peplink Riverbed
Barracuda
Teldat
NICHE PLAYERS
COMPLETENESS OF VISION
• vEdge omitted from report: Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) powers hundreds
of thousands of customer sites (protected under NDA). Ninety percent
of these deployments are on the vEdge platform, which has not been
factored into the research. vEdge has been in the market for more than
5 years, while the Integrated Services Router (ISR) has only 14 months in
production. Yet only the ISR platform with Cisco IOS XE SD-WAN, which is
10 percent of the deployments, has been factored in.
• Contradictory research: Gartner’s just-published research “SD-WAN
Solution Comparison” has scored Cisco’s SD-WAN solution as strong on
several metrics, such as scalability, which contradicts the MQ.
low for vision, when in fact our vision was lauded by the 2018 report.
Cisco has the most compelling software defined vision and is now looking
to connect the SD-WAN to SDA and ACI with Multi-Domain. Again, we
believe Gartner has not fully understood our strategy.
VISIONARIES
• Meraki SD-WAN has proven application performance capabilities.
As of September 2019 © Gartner, Inc Gartner rated Meraki low on application performance, but in fact it is a
proven feature used by many global enterprises.
Why has Gartner stated that there is confusion in positioning across
Cisco SD-WAN platforms?
Cisco has two SD-WAN solutions that span the two distinct sets of
customer requirements: Meraki® for lean IT and Viptela for rich IT. Cisco
SD-WAN (Viptela) is a single architecture supported by many platforms
such as vEdge, Integrated Services Routers (ISR), Aggregation Services
Routers (ASR), Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS), and cloud.
Solutions are recommended based on the customer’s requirements and
vision for security. This is clearly explained in our SD-WAN positioning
guide. However, Gartner sees the ISR, ASR, vEdge, and ENCS as separate
products, which is not the case.

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Gartner magic quadrant update
Cisco partner confidential

What are the positives for Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki in What advice can we offer customers who are concerned about
these reports? the report?
• Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki ranked among the top or middle third Be very clear. Cisco’s SD-WAN solutions are the market leading technology. No
of all WAN Edge vendors evaluated by Gartner across all use cases. competitor has successfully deployed the installed base. We remain extremely
• Specifically, Meraki ranked among the top third for the use cases of Small confident in positioning Cisco’s SD-WAN solutions. Nearly every customer who
Footprint Retail WAN and Security Sensitive WAN; and among the middle has multiple branch locations will be either evaluating or fully deploying
third for the Large Global WAN and Midsize/Regional WAN. SD-WAN this year, and we need to ensure they fully evaluate Cisco’s offer.

Why has Gartner stated that there are stability issues with Cisco IOS With new competitively-priced ISR 1100 platforms running Viptela, the Cisco
XE SD-WAN? DNA EA offers, and the richest SD-WAN portfolio in the market, now is the
time to sell our SD-WAN solution with confidence and get ahead of these
Cisco’s integration of SD-WAN software, Cisco IOS XE SD-WAN, was conversations with your customers!
launched in August 2018. Cisco acknowledges that in early deployments
for certain use cases, some customers with Cisco IOS XE experienced Emphasize the inconsistencies in the report:
stability issues. But Cisco does have customers with complex deployments, • The report doesn’t factor in the 90 percent installed base of vEdge
such as BBVA, with 1100 sites running in production, half on vEdge and half (the number 1 ranked SD-WAN solution in the market).
on ISRs. Additionally, Johnsonville Sausages just presented at ONUG 2019
• The report contradicts other Gartner reports.
about its enterprise’s live upgrade to Cisco IOS XE SD-WAN by flashing
5-year-old devices. Also highlight our unique advantages:
Why did Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki get a low rating for • Cisco is ranked number 1 in SD-WAN market wins by Gartner and IDC.
Application Performance?
• Cisco offers an end-to-end, multidomain, intent-based networking
Meraki doesn’t agree with Gartner on this rating or their definition of architecture, with SD-WAN being a critical part of it.
“application performance”. Meraki has been delivering strong capabilities
• Cisco is one of the only SD-WAN vendors with fully integrated enterprise
to solve real customer challenges around application performance. Meraki
security, and the Cisco Umbrella™ solution is the best in its class (Gartner
offers the majority of features defined by Gartner under application
does rate Cisco highly on this).
performance, such as WAN optimization and real-time path optimization for
VoIP through the partnerships. We believe the additional capabilities through • Cisco has the most diverse deployment options on physical, virtual, and
partnerships (e.g. Teridion) were not considered since they are not native to cloud, along with options for on-premises or cloud security.
the Meraki platform. This would be inconsistent. For example, both VMware • Cisco’s newest 1100-4G, 1100-6G and upcoming 1100-4GLTE ISR
and Silverpeak partner with third parties to offer security capabilities (also platforms maintain the vEdge architecture.
identified by Gartner as a critical capability), yet, as leaders in the MQ, their
Important resource list
partnerships did not adversely impact their positioning.
• IDC Business Study of eight Cisco SD-WAN customers.
• Gartner “SD-WAN Solution Comparison” of four top vendors.
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Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R) C07-743095-00  11/19