Sangfor NGAF Review

What is our primary use case?
We are based in Pakistan and when it comes to firewalls we have partnerships with several companies - Sangfor, Sophos and Fortinet. I'm the director of technology and service.

What is most valuable?
Almost all vendors in this category have the same features, but the big advantage in Sangfor is that it's very easy to use. The graphical user interface is so easy that a child could configure it. The other nice thing about Sangfor is the price tag. Almost every customer is pleasantly surprised by the low cost. When you compare it with the networking and firewall leaders like Cisco, it's very good value.

What needs improvement?
These days there are lots of breaches and vulnerabilities which you can see if you do some research. Sangfor has similar issues with one or two products where customers have had problems. The company deaks with these things immediately and quickly brings out new firmware to solve the issue so I'm not aware of any deficiency in the solution. If a customer finds a feature lacking, we open a ticket to support and Sangfor comes up with the appropriate new firmware within 10 days. If you were to do the same with other vendors, it would normally take four to five months to get the new feature.

For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a very stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is good. You normally plan for a certain number of users in your environment so that you can size the firewall accordingly. Sangfor provides a buffer for growth of between 15%-30%.

How are customer service and technical support?
Sangfor has fabulous technical support, they are always there. If there's a problem in someone's environment, the data engineers usually visit there within no time to support them.

How was the initial setup?
The way it works in Pakistan is that we have Sangfor technical staff with us and they deal with the technical session, sizing and firewall recommendation, and ultimately implementation. The initial setup doesn't take long.

What other advice do I have?
It's important to note that the performance of the solution depends on the initial pre-working and sizing. The sizing is handled by the company and they know their product, so they normally size it very well. They also put in provision for future growth so there's never an issue of performance.

There's no such thing as 100% so I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises