Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN)

Support business change without rebuilding the WAN.

Run SD-WAN as a cloud service, with sites and cloud resources managed from a single Cato fabric.

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Challenges

Today’s Challenges

Appliance-centered WANs make growth, performance, and troubleshooting harder.

Appliance cycles

Hardware-centered SD-WAN can slow site growth, updates, and capacity changes when every location depends on its own appliance stack.

Uncontrolled paths

Local link steering cannot control what happens after traffic leaves the site, so performance can vary across regions, clouds, and users.

Application experience

Delay, jitter, or packet loss can negatively impact voice, video, SaaS, and ERP experiences.

Operational sprawl

Separate WAN, branch, and remote access tools make it harder to isolate issues and can slow troubleshooting.

Appliance cycles

Uncontrolled paths

Application experience

Operational sprawl

Our approach

Run SD-WAN from the cloud.

Sites connect to the Cato Cloud and are managed centrally. IT can apply policy and service changes across locations from a single console.

Watch how Cato brings sites online, applies policy from the cloud, and provides IT visibility into site and application performance.

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Cloud service

Cato gives IT centralized policy, QoS priorities, and link-health context across sites and cloud resources.

Private backbone

After traffic enters a Cato PoP, Cato can carry it across the private global backbone to reduce reliance on best-effort internet routes.

Application priority

IT sets application priorities once, and Cato uses policy and path conditions to help critical traffic use paths that match current conditions.

How it works

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Capabilities

Connect

Optimize

Operate

Cloud service

Run SD-WAN from the cloud

Sites connect to the Cato Cloud and are managed centrally, reducing branch-by-branch appliance work.

Centralize policy changes

Reduce appliance life cycle work

Bring sites online faster

Shared fabric

Connect sites, clouds, and users

Cato gives sites, cloud resources, and remote users a single routing and policy context through the Cato Cloud.

Support branch and cloud access

Preserve transport choice

Avoid data-center hairpinning

Site rollout

Deploy new locations faster

Cato helps teams bring sites online without staging a full branch appliance stack.

Use local internet access

Manage setup from the cloud

Apply policy from one place

Application priority

Prioritize critical applications

IT defines network rules and QoS priorities. Cato uses those rules with link-health data to steer traffic across available paths.

Define QoS priorities

Use link-health metrics

Steer by policy and path health

Private backbone

Improve global performance

Cato carries SD-WAN traffic over a private global backbone, reducing reliance on rigid MPLS and unpredictable public internet paths.

Controlled middle mile

Reduce MPLS dependence

SLA-backed global backbone

Resiliency

Maintain continuity beyond just failover

Cato combines site-level path selection with backbone resilience, helping reduce disruption when links or providers degrade.

Route around brownouts

Use available paths

Reduce disruption

Visibility

Troubleshoot from site to application

The Cato Management Application provides IT with visibility into site, link, application, and traffic data. With Cato DEM enabled, teams gain deeper user-to-application diagnostics.

See site and app data

Find likely causes faster

Reduce finger-pointing

See it in action

Watch how Cato does it

Video

Customer Stories

Customers improve WAN performance and operations with Cato

See all customer stories

“

With Cato’s cloud-native SASE and converged SD-WAN, we eliminated our reliance on hardware, freeing us from upgrade cycles and lifecycle management while dramatically simplifying network operations and reducing ongoing operational overhead.

Chris Colla

CIO, B&G Foods

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Chris Colla

CIO, B&G Foods

With Cato’s cloud-native SASE and converged SD-WAN, we eliminated our reliance on hardware, freeing us from upgrade cycles and lifecycle management while dramatically simplifying network operations and reducing ongoing operational overhead.

Chris Colla

CIO, B&G Foods

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Jesper Hjørland

Service Manager for Network and Connectivity, Fiskars Group

We looked at a lot of SD-WAN and SASE solutions, but Cato’s was the only one that allowed us to use the same solution everywhere. It was also the simplest to deploy and manage and much more flexible than the other SD-WAN solutions we evaluated.

Jesper Hjørland

Service Manager for Network and Connectivity, Fiskars Group

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Willem-Jan Herckenrath

Manager ICT, Alewijnse

With Cato, we got the functionality of SD-WAN, a global backbone, and security service for our sites and mobile users, integrated together and at a fraction of the cost.

Willem-Jan Herckenrath

Manager ICT, Alewijnse

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Christophe Augros

CISO, Haulotte

With MDR and Cato, including SD-WAN, the security stack, and remote access, it’s way easier than before… We can do three times the security and network management work with the same resources compared to previous solutions.

Christophe Augros

CISO, Haulotte

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Global Director IT Ops & Cybersecurity

Global Specialty Chemicals Company

Our consultants compared Cato to other SD-WAN technologies and found the others had issues. Cato offered much faster delivery and could operate in every region we needed, unlike some of the other circuit vendors.

Global Director IT Ops & Cybersecurity

Global Specialty Chemicals Company

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See Cato SD-WAN in action.

See how Cato helps IT teams connect sites, apply policy from the cloud, improve application performance, and troubleshoot the WAN from a single platform.

What to expect