We compared Cisco ACI and Cisco Secure Workload based on our users' reviews in six categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Comparison Results: Cisco ACI is known for its complex setup but offers easier configuration and management once deployed. Users appreciate its simplicity, automation features, and scalability. However, concerns were raised about the GUI, pricing, integration with other systems, and technical support. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Workload has a moderate setup process and a user-friendly interface. However, there are areas for improvement in terms of integration and dashboard usability, and controversies surrounding data retention. In summary, Cisco ACI primarily focuses on network infrastructure management, while Cisco Secure Workload emphasizes security scoring and vulnerability identification.
"One significant attraction for clients in Iran is the robustness of multicast solutions, which has been a major driver for them to migrate to Cisco ACI."
"PBR has been beneficial for network efficiency."
"The best part of Cisco ACI is the server deployment and integration."
"In a very general way, the ease of access, ease of use, and ease of connecting the system is a valuable feature in itself. The solution doesn't really increase detection rates as that is not what it was created for. Threat prevention comes in from other devices that might be connected into the Cisco ACI that monitors external traffic. It maintains what end-of-life products would be doing and offers other opportunities to unify solutions."
"The scalability is great. This is the greatest feature of the technology. It is a great improvement in scaling out. It can greatly increase the overall scalability of the Fabric with multi-port and multi side, making it a great product."
"Automation is its most valuable feature."
"The stability is quite good."
"You can integrate Cisco ACI well with VMware."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"Where there is room for improvement from ACI is for Layer 2 and Layer 7 packages. Normally, when you're updating your ACI fabric or you're introducing new Layer 4 to Layer 7 devices, there are some constraints, there are some limitations... When you are doing device packages you will not have the functionality of ASM. It's like WAF, web application firewalls. So you need to configure it manually."
"The firewall has room for improvement because there is no central inspection yet on Cisco ACI."
"The only drawback that we are seeing is the user interface is still a little complex and difficult to use. It needs a more user-friendly interface."
"The product needs to be more visible on the Internet and have the ability to be integrated into more software developments."
"I would like for them to develop integration with AWS."
"Training for this product is available from institutions but it is not available online where you can get users trained easily."
"We have had two calls with technical support. They are not the best. We opened a case to diagnose issues and it's taken weeks to get someone on the case and to move forward."
"I would like for ACI to manage all of the devices."
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."
"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."
"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."
"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."
Cisco ACI is ranked 2nd in Cloud and Data Center Security with 97 reviews while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 9th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 13 reviews. Cisco ACI is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Workload is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco ACI writes "Stable, easy to extend, scalable, and has a host-based routing feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Workload writes "A solution that provides good technical support but its high cost makes it challenging for users to adopt it". Cisco ACI is most compared with VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Nuage Networks, Juniper Contrail Networking and HPE SDN, whereas Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Illumio, VMware NSX, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine). See our Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload report.
See our list of best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors.
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