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Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Customer service for Cisco ACI is mixed, with good responsiveness overall but inconsistent support and regional variations.
No sentiment score available
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
3.9
Cisco ACI needs better training, intuitive setup, improved GUI, enhanced security, flexible policies, and better tech support and integration.
No sentiment score available
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Cisco ACI is highly rated for scalability, ease of expansion, flexibility, centralized management, and adaptability for medium to large enterprises.
No sentiment score available
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
4.0
Cisco ACI is costly but valued for quality in data centers, with mixed pricing opinions and concerns about licensing costs.
No sentiment score available
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Cisco ACI is considered highly stable and reliable, especially from version 4.2, with minor, manageable bugs and high user ratings.
No sentiment score available
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.4
Cisco ACI enables centralized management, streamlined configuration, and seamless VMware integration, excelling in scalability, automation, and low latency.
No sentiment score available
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Microsegmentation Software (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 10.9%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 17.8%, up from 14.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides scalability, ease of migration for future DC moves, multi-tenancy and programmability
Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms. To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything. I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more. We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about Cisco ACI?
The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?
The product provides multiple-device integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?
CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, provid...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Tetration
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.