SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 8, 2016) - CloudGenix, Inc., the software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) leader, announced today the preliminary results of the ongoing iWANT CloudGenix Challenge, a multi-round competition pitting CloudGenix against Cisco for the title of most powerful SD-WAN solution. After more than 30 challenges at locations across the United States, the CloudGenix Instant-On Network (ION) product emerges as the clear winner, beating Cisco in functionality, speed, ease-of-use, and cost savings.

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"Enterprises are waking up to the possibilities of dramatically simplifying their networks, lowering WAN costs by as much as 50%, and rapidly deploying cloud-based applications with SD-WAN," said Lou Fini, regional vice president at Forsythe. "However, not all SD-WANs are created equal. Unlike the alternatives -- traditional legacy packet-routed approaches -- CloudGenix provides an application-defined fabric that allows customers to set App-SLAs for performance, security, and compliance for application delivery to the remote office. Customers that take the iWANT CloudGenix Challenge see firsthand the benefits of an app-defined fabric, including more flexibility, enhanced performance and security."

For the Challenge, customers follow these steps to evaluate products from Cisco and CloudGenix:

• Set up and configure the WAN, including remote office locations and data centers. Ensure that multiple forms of connectivity, such as Internet broadband and MPLS, are used in active-active mode.
• Enable direct-to-Internet selectively for cloud-based applications (Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce.com, Box, etc.) with performance-based load balancing across other paths.
• Monitor network SLA and application SLA.

Despite Cisco's attempts to stifle the direct customer feedback from this Challenge, over 30 customers have now verified and reported the results of the bakeoff. CloudGenix with its Instant On Networks (ION) SD-WAN solution uniquely offers the ability to deliver cloud applications to the remote office with high performance and availability, eliminates the need for a large number of complex routing protocols, natively provides actionable intelligence on network and app SLAs, and dramatically simplifies networking.

Video showcasing the results of the Challenge from Cisco Live! earlier this year

Quotes from Recent Challenges
"My hands-on experience with CloudGenix was phenomenal. CloudGenix is the first polished product that I have seen in the SD-WAN space," said Matt Smith, manager of Network Engineering at FTI Consulting. "The navigation and configuration is intuitive and straightforward, while granting the engineer all the controls that are needed in a complex WAN environment."

One challenge participant, a network manager at an Arizona law firm, remarked, "[Cisco iWAN] feels like the 10-year-old technology it is."

Another participant, a network architect at a global pharmaceutical company, was impressed with the value and elegance CloudGenix brought to the table, and felt its analytics were "statistics on steroids."

A regional partner noted that CloudGenix does in one "go" what Cisco struggles to do with a combination of 50 different tools.

"As a non-profit serving the needs of families throughout the Hawaiian Islands, every dollar is crucial to put towards services," said a customer working at a nonprofit charitable organization based in Hawaii. "CloudGenix enabled our infrastructure to move forward with an internet based network for cost savings....Through CloudGenix, we gained critical application level control and prioritization to promote performance."

A technology consultant working in New York notes, "CloudGenix aligns with our core values -- the ability to provide a secure application defined fabric across best of the breed carrier and hardware suppliers...CloudGenix gives our clients the control and liberation to manage their networks in the most efficient way possible."

"CloudGenix enabled me to phase out my MPLS in international site, where it was too cost prohibitive to maintain," said a customer at an analytics and web intelligence firm in New York. "With CloudGenix, we can now leverage less expensive fiber connections with more bandwidth capacity, providing a compelling ROI that enabled my organization to enhance performance and reallocate that budget to our cloud initiative."

An investment banker customer confirms, "CloudGenix meets our need to deliver applications both directly to cloud and data center securely, without sacrificing performance."

"Each Challenge is an opportunity for CloudGenix to prove its superiority over Cisco, and so far, we've won every time," said Kumar Ramachandran, CEO of CloudGenix. "It's no fluke: CloudGenix ION is displacing traditional networking hardware, and is quickly becoming the high bar for SD-WANs."

The iWANT CloudGenix Challenge is an ongoing road show with competitions popping up in multiple cities around the country to showcase the best SD-WAN solution on the market. The Challenge is also being extended globally.

Here is a map where you can view locations where challenges have taken place, click on links to read blog posts about past challenges, and see where CloudGenix has scheduled future challenges. If you want to take the iWANT CloudGenix Challenge in your city or if you would like to take it remotely, please email IWANT@cloudgenix.com. For more information on CloudGenix, please visit www.cloudgenix.com.

About CloudGenix
CloudGenix is the software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) leader, revolutionizing networking by transforming legacy WANs into a radically simplified, secure, application-defined fabric and virtualizing heterogeneous underlying transports into a unified hybrid WAN. Enabling application-specific, service-level agreements (SLAs), CloudGenix controls network application performance based upon application-performance SLAs and business priority. CloudGenix ION (Instant-On Network) radically simplifies how WANs are designed and managed, enabling customers to build "networks without networking," and achieve more than twice the performance at less than half the cost -- leading to a much faster time-to-value once deployed -- and extending data center-class security to the network edge. Founded in 2013 by a team that has previously delivered industry-leading products in networking, SDN, cloud, security and web-scale applications, CloudGenix serves world-class financial services, legal, retail and technology organizations. The company is backed by Bain Capital Ventures, Charles River Ventures and the Mayfield Fund and has headquarters in San Jose, California.