Which Cloud OnRamp Solution Serves Partners Without Cisco SD-WAN?

Why the Answer Is Correct

Cloud OnRamp for Colocation is the Cisco SD-WAN Cloud OnRamp deployment model that hosts shared Catalyst SD-WAN controllers and WAN Edge instances inside a colocation facility, so multiple tenants can attach to the fabric from one neutral location. The Cisco Cloud OnRamp for Colocation solution guide explicitly scopes this offer to "without Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN but still need connectivity to their customers", and adds that they do not want to install routing appliances at their own sites. That is exactly the scenario in the question: a partner or vendor with no SD-WAN equipment of its own that still requires customer reachability. The partner terminates into the colocated fabric instead of deploying SD-WAN routing appliances on-premises, which is the defining benefit of Colocation OnRamp.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Cloud OnRamp for IaaS automates the deployment of SD-WAN WAN Edge routers into public cloud regions such as AWS, Azure and GCP — it presumes the customer already owns a Catalyst SD-WAN fabric and is extending it into IaaS workloads. Cloud OnRamp for Multicloud is about optimizing and automating backhaul from existing fabric sites to multiple cloud providers, again an overlay on an SD-WAN fabric the partner in this scenario does not have. Cloud OnRamp for SaaS optimizes the user-to-SaaS application experience through direct internet access and Cloud OnRamp probing, which has nothing to do with giving a partner connectivity to its customers. None of these three remove the need for SD-WAN routing appliances at the partner's site the way the colocation model does.

Community Comment Notes

Rachant quotes the Cisco guide almost verbatim, noting that the target is partners and vendors "without Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN but still need connectivity to their customers", and links the Cloud OnRamp for Colocation solution guide PDF. ihateciscoreally points to the same document and notes the matching text appears on its second page, calling it answer C. westh4m1234 independently reaches the same conclusion, describing Colocation as the fit for partners who must avoid installing SD-WAN routing appliances on their sites. thepistol offers a competing A answer with a rough option-by-option breakdown, but his one-line descriptions of IaaS and Multicloud actually confirm those features are cloud-deployment and cloud-backhaul functions rather than a partner attachment model.