Comparing Cato SD-WAN to other SD-WAN solutions for a retail chain

Hi everyone, I've been tasked with evaluating SD-WAN solutions for a retail chain client. They have around 200 stores, each with a couple of POS terminals, back-office machines, and IP cameras. Currently, they're on MPLS, and the cost/agility pain is real.

We're looking at several major players, including Cato Networks, and I wanted to share my initial architecture/cost comparison notes and get your thoughts. The main requirements are reliable connectivity for transactions, secure guest Wi-Fi segmentation, and centralized management without needing a huge NOC team.

**My initial breakdown:**

* **Cato's Model:** Their cloud-native, global backbone is appealing. It collapses SD-WAN and security (SWG, FWaaS) into one, which simplifies our stack. The pricing is per edge device/site plus a bandwidth pool. For 200 sites, the operational overhead seems lower.
* **Traditional SD-WAN Vendors (e.g., Cisco, Fortinet):** Often involve managing on-prem controllers, separate firewalls, and potentially more complex stitching of services. Capex might be higher on hardware, but we have more control over the data path.
* **Cloud-first Options (e.g., native AWS/Azure VWAN with third-party):** Could work if we were all-in on a single cloud, but our stores are physical and we need a unified fabric.

**A specific cost/ops concern:** With a traditional model, a store firewall upgrade or security policy change might require pushing configs to 200 devices. Cato's model, being SASE, centralizes that policy in the cloud. Less Terraform/Ansible management for the edge, but are we trading off flexibility?

Has anyone here migrated a similar distributed retail environment to Cato or another SD-WAN? I'm particularly interested in:
* Real-world latency/throughput on Cato's backbone compared to a well-tuned traditional SD-WAN.
* How the "all-inclusive" security stack actually performs vs. a best-of-breed approach.
* Any gotchas with the pricing model when usage spikes (e.g., during holiday sales, video uploads).

I'll share a simplified diagram of what we're thinking for Cato's architecture below. Would love your war stories or data points.

```hcl
# Not actual Cato config, but a Terraform-like structure to conceptualize
resource "cato_site" "retail_store" {
count = 200
name = "store-${count.index}"
subnet = var.store_subnet
appliances = 2 # For redundancy
services = ["pos-traffic", "cctv-backhaul", "guest-wifi"]
}

resource "cato_security_policy" "retail_policy" {
default_action = "block"
rule {
name = "pos-to-hq"
source = cato_site.retail_store[*].id
app = "pos-app"
action = "allow"
}
}
```

Looking forward to the discussion.

-- Amy