Cisco SD-WAN vs Fortinet SD-WAN: Comparison

Cisco vs Fortinet for SD-WAN: Two Philosophies

The SD-WAN market is dominated by two vendors: Cisco (35% market share, with Viptela technology acquired in 2017) and Fortinet (20% market share, growing at +40% per year). Their approaches are fundamentally different. Cisco uses four separate components (vManage, vBond, vSmart, and cEdge). Fortinet integrates everything into FortiOS (firewall + SD-WAN + VPN + IPS in a single appliance). This guide compares their performance, TCO, and use cases.

Architecture

Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela)

• Four components: vManage (orchestration), vBond (ZTP), vSmart (OMP control plane), and cEdge (data plane on Catalyst 8000 or ISR).
• Overlay: proprietary OMP protocol for distributing routes between edges.
• Security: separate Umbrella (cloud SASE) or Firepower (local NGFW) solutions.
• Licensing: Network Essentials, Network Advantage, and Network Premier.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

• A single component: FortiGate (integrated firewall + SD-WAN + VPN + IPS + AV).
• Overlay: standard IPsec with FEC and packet duplication.
• Security: included natively (UTP bundle).
• Management: FortiManager + FortiAnalyzer (centralized).

SD-WAN Performance

• Cisco Catalyst 8200 (€3,000): 250 Mbps SD-WAN. FortiGate 60F (€700): 6 Gbps FW + SD-WAN.
• Cisco Catalyst 8300 (€6,000): 2.5 Gbps SD-WAN. FortiGate 100F (€2,800): 10 Gbps FW + SD-WAN.
• Fortinet delivers 5-10× more throughput at 50% lower cost.

TCO Across 50 Sites

• Cisco: 50× C8200 (€120K) + vManage/vBond/vSmart (€25K) + 5-year NA licenses (€150K) + Umbrella/Firepower (€60K) = €355K.
• Fortinet: 50× FG-60F (€35K) + FortiManager (€10K) + 5-year UTP (€140K) = €185K.
• Difference: Fortinet saves €170K over five years (-48%).

Mature Orchestration

Cisco vManage is more mature for very large deployments (500+ sites). Fortinet FortiManager also scales to 500+ sites but offers more recently developed orchestration granularity. Cisco has a slight advantage for 500+ sites. For fewer than 500 sites, Fortinet wins on simplicity and price.

Use Cases

• Multi-site SMBs and mid-market companies (5-200 sites): Fortinet, without question. 50% lower TCO.
• Large enterprise with an existing Cisco environment: Viptela (alignment with available CCNP SP expertise).
• Very large global deployment (500+ sites): Cisco for its orchestration maturity.
• Single-vendor SASE: Fortinet FortiSASE is more cost-effective than Prisma SASE.
• End-to-end Cisco ecosystem: Viptela for integration with SecureX, Meraki, and Umbrella.