One app to build and publish your personalised SD-WAN & SASE Network Security RFP with AI support

Over thirty curated SD-WAN & Network Security vendors & providers can respond directly to your RFP, get AI-scored comparisons, message instantly, book demos, provide proofs of concept, and supply global Internet connectivity pricing for a complete end-to-end business case.

Try our free RFP Builder

The 20 Pillar SD-WAN and SASE RFP Framework

Whilst the template above gives a quick overview, the best RFPs require understanding and descriptions of specific technical and operational areas. For example, the following framework has been created by us at Netify to break down SD-WAN and SASE evaluation into 20 pillars, each addressing a capability that vendors frequently misrepresent or overlook.

---

1. Platform Stability and Lifecycle

Platform stability refers to whether you're buying into a well-known vendor with proven platform or a newer product where features haven't been tested so extensively. As SD-WAN platforms handle essential traffic for your business, protecting against outages, performance degradation or unexpected behaviour is absolutely essential.

Key areas include how long solutions have been in production, how often vendor's provide support/updates, how long hardware models remain supported before reaching end-of-life and whether the vendor has a clear upgrade path that doesn't require complete replacements.

---

2. Deployment and Zero-Touch Provisioning

For predicting project timelines, costs and the likelihood of configuration errors during rollout, understanding deployment complexity is essential. The more complex, the higher the likelihood for errors. On the flip side to this, with zero-touch provisioning an appliance can be shipped directly to a remote site, plugged in by non-technical staff, and automatically connect back to the central orchestrator to download its configuration - meaning that one-off human errors can be minimised by reducing repetitive tasks.

You should ask suppliers to describe their zero-touch provisioning process from appliance unboxing to production readiness, including fallback procedures if initial connectivity fails.

---

3. Configuration and Change Management

Configuration management determines how easily you can deploy policies consistently across hundreds of sites, make changes without causing outages and maintain an audit trail for compliance purposes. For example, poor configuration management can lead to issues with inconsistencies between sites, increased operational overhead and introduces security risks.

One of the best ways to avoid these issues is through template-based configuration for similar site types and with version-controls/rollback capabilities. For this, ask how vendor's platforms handle template-based configuration for multiple similar sites and what approval/rollback mechanisms are available for policy changes?

---

4. Application-Aware Routing and Optimisation

Arguably the most-marketed SD-WAN capability, Application-Aware Routing (AAR) is essential for providing performance improvements to your business applications - however the quality of AAR varies significantly between vendors. You'll need to assess how each platform identifies applications beyond simple port and protocol inspection, whether it can distinguish between different SaaS applications using the same cloud infrastructure and how quickly it detects and responds to path degradation.

---

5. Network Segmentation

Segmentation should be in a mainstay in any given network system as it helps to minimise the impact of security incidents, meet compliance requirements and simplify policy management. You should ask potential vendors to describe their segmentation capabilities including maximum segments per device, how inter-segment traffic is handled and whether policies can be enforced consistently across branch, data centre and cloud environments.

---

6. Underlay Independence

Regardless of which vendor you choose, you'll want to know which underlays your chosen SD-WAN will work with. Underlay independence means the SD-WAN platform can work across any underlay, whether that's MPLS, broadband, 4G/5G, or satellite - meaning you're not locked into specific carriers or transport types and can optimise costs by using the most appropriate connectivity for each site.

---

7. Performance and Throughput

Whilst performance and throughput numbers are often a key selling point, we'd warn against believing all claims without greater context. For example, performance specifications can appear impressive but under the hood they can be being measured with encryption disabled, without security services active or using specific packet sizes that don't reflect real-world traffic patterns. Understanding true performance under load is essential and therefore you'll want to ask what the maximum throughput of appliances (with IPsec encryption and all security services enabled) are and how that performance degrades as you increase the number of overlays, segments or policy rules.

---

8. Monitoring, Visibility and Analytics

To identify and resolve network issues, understand usage patterns and demonstrate compliance in regulated industries, monitoring capabilities are a must - however as with many of these capabilities, visibility varies from vendor to vendor. Basic monitoring might tell you a link is down, whilst advanced analytics can predict issues before they impact users and provide detailed application performance metrics. Check with potential vendors what metrics their platform collects and at what granularity, how long historical data is retained, whether you can correlate network performance with application experience, what alerting and notification options exist and whether the platform provides API access for integration with your existing monitoring tools.

---

9. Out-of-the-Box Features versus Add-Ons

Some solutions can be marketed with a massive range of features, only for your business to implement and realise half of them are missing - understanding what's included in base licensing versus what requires additional purchases or subscriptions is essential for accurate cost comparison. For example, some vendors include a full security stack and optimisation features in their base SD-WAN license, whilst others charge separately for nearly every capability.

Key areas to explore include which features are included in the base SD-WAN license, what additional licenses or subscriptions are required for full functionality, whether there are different tiers or packages that affect feature availability and how licensing is structured (such as per-device, per-user or per-Mbps).

---

10. Support Model and SLAs

Support quality affects everything from initial deployment through day-to-day operations and incident response. Understanding what level of support you actually get and how quickly issues are addressed is important for planning operational resources, therefore you should ensure vendors provide clear details on their support tiers, including response time SLAs for different severity levels, access to engineering resources and how support costs are structured.

---

11. SASE and SSE Integration

As organisations move towards SASE rather than just SD-WAN, understanding how vendors integrate SD-WAN with security service edge capabilities becomes more important. Some vendors offer SASE built from the ground up with tightly integrated platforms where SD-WAN and SSE share infrastructure, whilst others provide SSE bolt-ons for their SD-WAN through partnerships with multiple vendors. This can lead to greater complexity when things go wrong as there can be finger-pointing or greater difficulty troubleshooting in the latter of these integrations.

We'd recommend that you ask vendors to explain how their SD-WAN platform integrates with SSE capabilities, including whether these are native or partnered, as well as how policy management works across network and security functions.

---

12. Cloud On-Ramp and Multi-Cloud Support

For most businesses, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps and cloud usage (including both PaaS and IaaS) has become the new norm. This has translated to cloud connectivity becoming increasingly central to SD-WAN deployments, but as per other elements, how vendors implement cloud on-ramps varies significantly. For example, native integration with cloud providers typically means better performance and simpler management than generic IPsec tunnels to cloud platforms and apps.

Some of the key points to tackle are:

• Which cloud providers does each platform natively integrate with,
• Whether it supports multiple clouds simultaneously,
• How it handles cloud-to-cloud traffic,
• Whether it can leverage cloud provider backbone networks,
• How application steering decisions account for cloud-hosted resources.

---

13. AIOps and Self-Healing Capabilities

By utilising AIOps and automation capabilities, businesses can significantly reduce operational overhead by detecting issues, identifying root causes and implementing remediation automatically. Given, these capabilities range from basic automated alerting through to sophisticated predictive analytics and autonomous remediation, it's important to select a vendor that caters to your business' requirements.

To do this, ask vendors what types of issues the platform can detect automatically, whether it can predict problems before they impact users, what remediation actions it can take autonomously, how it prevents false positives from triggering unnecessary changes and what visibility you have into automated actions and their results.

---

14. Remote Users and Client Software

With the rise of remote workforces, supporting remote workers has never been more important. However, supporting remote workers the likes of feature parity with site-based deployments, ensuring all user's have the same experience and you minimise your operational and administrative burden. If you need to support remote workers, consider these key areas for SD-WAN - how resource-intensive it is on endpoint devices, whether remote users receive the same application steering and security as site-based users, how the client handles transitions between networks and what management and troubleshooting capabilities exist for remote endpoints.

---

15. Middle-Mile Optimisation

Middle-mile optimisation refers to how the SD-WAN vendor's network infrastructure handles traffic between your sites. Vendors with extensive private backbone networks can offer predictable performance, whilst those relying primarily on public internet provide less control over the path your traffic takes. Ask vendors what percentage of traffic between sites traverses your own backbone infrastructure versus public internet and what performance SLAs can you provide for inter-site connectivity?

---

16. Licensing and Commercial Models

Licensing complexity can make it difficult to forecast costs accurately or compare vendors fairly. Understanding not just the upfront price but how costs scale as you add sites, users, bandwidth or features is essential for budgeting.

Get vendors to explain their licensing model in detail, including what's covered in base pricing, how costs scale with site count or bandwidth requirements and what flexibility exists for mid-contract changes.

---

17. Environmental Sustainability

For businesses want to achieve environmental sustainability (either from corporate responsibilities or regulatory requirements), cutting down on device power consumption is only the beginning.

Begin by asking vendors for appliance power consumption figures, whether virtual or cloud-native deployments are available to reduce hardware footprint, the vendor's hardware recycling and disposal programmes, their own operational carbon footprint reduction commitments and if they have any relevant environmental certifications.

---

18. API-First Architecture and Integration

API access determines how easily you can integrate SD-WAN with your existing tools, automate operations, and extract data for custom analytics or reporting. Strong API support enables infrastructure-as-code approaches and integration with security and monitoring platforms.

You should ask vendors to describe their API capabilities, including what operations are supported, authentication mechanisms and any limitations or rate limits that apply.

---

19. Supply Chain and Hardware Sourcing

Understanding where hardware is manufactured, what alternative supply chains exist and how the vendor manages supply chain risks can be the difference between concern and pre-planning around potential disruptions.

To know how you'll be able to plan ahead, check where appliances are manufactured, what are typical lead times and what alternative sourcing or sparing options exist for business continuity.

---

20. MSP and Partner Enablement

If you're working with a managed service provider or system integrator, understanding how the vendor enables and supports partners affects implementation quality and ongoing operations. Strong partner programmes typically mean better-trained staff and more established operational processes.

Key areas to explore include what training and certification programmes exist for partners, how the vendor supports multi-tenant management for MSPs, whether partner margins are competitive enough to sustain quality service delivery, what co-management capabilities exist between you/your MSP and how the vendor handles escalations involving partners.

---

---

How Netify Simplifies This Process

The Netify RFP Builder implements this framework as a guided workflow - you select which pillars matter most to your organisation, the platform generates structured questions and vendors respond directly within the system. By providing more standardised questions, responses received are automatically more aligned to your requirements and make comparison more straightforward.

The key benefits of using our app centre around our pre-structured vendor-neutral questions that cover all 20 of these pillars, with questions setup to create a standardised response format and the ability to invite SD-WAN and SASE vendors directly to respond, alongside integrated FAQs and messaging to allow quick and easy clarifications without email chains.

Example RFP Sections in Detail

The following examples show how you can build sections of your RFP with sufficient detail to allow for meaningful vendor responses.

Scoring and Comparing Vendor Responses

Once responses arrive, you'll want to evaluate them with as little bias as possible - therefore it's important to ignore potential marketing terms you've heard and focus solely on the RFP response and its fit for your requirements. One way you can do this is by creating a scoring matrix that maps requirements (with higher scores for more important features) to vendor responses.

For technical requirements, score on a scale such as fully meets, partially meets, does not meet, or unclear/insufficient response (assign point values like 3, 2, 1, 0 respectively) and multiply by the requirement's weight. For commercial evaluation, consider not just headline pricing but total cost of ownership (including hardware, licensing, underlay services if bundled, professional services for deployment, ongoing support and maintenance and costs to scale if your requirements grow).

For vendor stability, assess factors such as years in business, financial health, customer base size and retention rates, whilst also referencing qualitative data such as customer feedback.

Conclusion

Creating an effective SD-WAN RFP is made easier with our 20 pillar framework that ensures you dig into areas where marketing claims can often obscure what you'll actually be getting.

Whether you build your RFP independently using this guide or leverage our Netify RFP Builder platform, the key is maintaining consistency in how you gather and evaluate vendor responses. Focus on structured questions, clear requirements and systematic scoring to help you make decisions based on actual capabilities rather than sales presentations.

Frequently Asked Questions