Our primary use case of this solution is for routing.

How has it helped my organization?

Cisco has helped improve my organization in the was that it actually helped us to get the communication between on-prem and cloud to become smoother since we got it.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is its routing abilities.

My experience with purchasing through AWS Marketplace was pretty smooth. We pay the same license cost as we do for long-term devices. We chose to procure via AWS Marketplace because that's the option we have. If we wanted to price something in AWS on every PC, we would have to go to the Marketplace and buy it. There are different versions available, so this is the version that has the capabilities that we wanted to explore. That's why we use Marketplace. The cost is a little higher at this point in time; but, we'll see how it goes.

What needs improvement?

They have an online registration that happens after they pick up block months. If they could decrease to yearly or something, sometimes the device is not cell phone accessible. That becomes an issue or challenge for us. If that can be improved, that would be really great.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have at least more than 60 CSRs deployed and the scale works well. Scalability has not been an issue.

How is customer service and technical support?

The technical support from Cisco is good. I would rate them at least a nine out of ten, if not ten out of ten.

Which solutions did we use previously?

We chose Cisco because the license cost is not that high and it's easy to consume on AWS. It gives access to so many variables that can be used, and even again, on Prime we're using the same one.

I would like to see them have an offline license. The moment you instant ship a device the license never goes off unless you destroy the device in the cloud.

How was the initial setup?

Integration has been pretty smooth. We're still exploring some automation capabilities to configure. Cisco doesn't have it in-house; but, we're trying to make it ourselves.

It integrates well with the other products we're using. We have it with multiple windows like Palo Alto, Arista and it easily integrated with them.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at Arista alongside Cisco. We didn't end up choosing them because of the cost of the license, the bandwidth, and the support to different routing protocols. Considering what we have on-prem we wanted to match that and we started deploying it in the cloud.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight and not a ten: first, because we don't have automation available in-house and they give us the ability to deploy it on the cloud. Second, because of the license issue that we had with it. Other than that, everything is perfect.