I have been using ASL V2 at home for quite some time now and have found it to be a great product. As a network security professional, I have spent the last 4 years installing many network firewal/VPN solutions for both corporate enterprises and ISP's. I have worked primarily with Cisco PIX, Checkpoint, Netscreen, Sonicwall, and Watchguard products. When the market was booming and price was no object, selling these packages was never an issue, companies had money, and were dying to spend it. As the market and Internet boom slowed, I began looking for products that offered more flexibility and lower overall cost of ownership for some of my smaller, private business customers, yet offer all of the features of the larger competitors. I thought ASL fit the bill for this and have sold several jobs with the V2 product. I was trying to push this product into a few high end markets, especially when the HA project started and people began speaking about V3. Anyhow, now that I have seen the new price structure, I have to say that now its a tough time choosing between one of the big names and ASL. I would like to put together some cost comparisons between these products and others, so lets post some info and see if we get noticed here. For example Redundant Cisco PIX 515E vs. ASL
The 515E Redundant Bundle with Unlimited connections can be bought for roughly $10,000 with 6 interfaces. The PIX has a great reputation for stability and it has indusrty wide approval given the Cisco name. While it lacks some of the flexibility of the ASL product, I think it more than makes up for it with is stability.
To achive a similar setup with ASL, I'm looking at $4,995 for the Enterprise Unlimited License alone, plus hardware. For decent hardware, for example, Supermicro, Dell, similar, I figure $3-$4k for 2 rackmount units, and 6 interfaces.
While I will say here that on hardware alone, you could compare the 2, the PIX runs on a 200Mhz processor and 64MB of RAM, but unless you running VPN connection, that would probably never be an issue. So to me, it seems like its almost a neck and neck race, and in that case, I'm gonna have to go Cisco. They are a proven product, and are rock solid as far as stability. Besides, most customers that saw the 2 proposals side by side with similar numbers are going to go with the Cisco name.
I guess what I'm getting at is that ASL has decided to target the larger markets and I think is pulling away from small business/SOHO area. Thats fine, if thats the direction the comapnay decides to go in, but you had better have a ROCK solid product with top notch support and I think ASL lacks that. Building in so many features over the development process has made the product bloated and somewhat instable in my eyes. It fits the bill for home use, and for all those tweakers out there, but my customers don't want to hear about bugs.
What do you guys think????
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