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Cisco ACI vs Juniper Contrail Networking comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th)
Juniper Contrail Networking
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
4th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 13.1%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper Contrail Networking is 6.6%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

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.
TA
Smart configuration management eliminates the need to worry about managing the network's configurations
Based on my experience in the Indian market, there are four to five areas that need improvement. First, there is a lack of marketing and awareness about Juniper, making it difficult to reach end-users and deliver solutions. Second, Juniper's education and awareness centers are costly and not easily accessible like Cisco's resources and their understanding of users' requirements. The information is not easily available on online channels like Youtube. Third, Juniper needs to promote its Mist integration better, and pricing is also a significant factor. Finally, Juniper needs to address the market's specific requirements, such as the SME sector, and offer more lower-priced products like a lower-end segment switch. In summary, improving marketing and sales, education and awareness, Mist integration, pricing, and catering to specific market requirements are areas that need improvement. I just want a good feature in the SD-WAN. Juniper should consider integrating its firewall experience with its SD-WAN devices to create a complete package. With everything moving to the cloud, companies require intelligence and security solutions for their on-prem infrastructure. Moreover, Juniper should integrate its SOC solution into its Mist portal and SD-WAN devices, including IPs, IDS, web and content filters, and messaging. This would provide a complete product and give Juniper an advantage over competitors such as Cisco. I believe that with a bundle that includes SOC and UTM flavors in their Mist portal, Juniper can make a significant impact in the market.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Because of its automation feature, when you configure scripts for Cisco ACI, it reduces human error."
"The most valuable features are the ease of setup for redundancy, as well as centralized control."
"We can support policy based on our intent, then that gets rendered into the policy that we will be using for Fabric."
"Micro-segmentation is the solution’s most valuable feature."
"It has benefited my organization by saving us a lot of time."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the Call Manager."
"The most valuable feature is the data center communication."
"It has made it much easier to deploy and make changes in the data center versus the previous infrastructure, which was NX-OS based."
"Juniper Contrail Networking is a stable solution."
"After we finished setting Contrail up, it seemed stable enough. Still, we never tested it in a real environment, so we don't have enough information to say whether it's stable with a given number of users and appliances. We have tested it in a lab environment, but we haven't tested enough to say that the platform is stable."
"Contrail automates the excellent communication between virtual appliances."
"It provides proactive alerting in a single dashboard solution."
 

Cons

"It would be better to introduce some wizards to guide you through the whole configuration process instead of clicking through a bunch of menus with no concrete path. It is too easy to forget one or another if you configure it this way."
"It could benefit from an orchestration tool that makes deploying services easier."
"The firewall has room for improvement because there is no central inspection yet on Cisco ACI."
"They should make it easier for the network people to do automated solutions."
"The learning curve is long. It's very difficult to learn Cisco ACI. As a result, our customers usually have difficulty working with this solution."
"The product needs to be simpler. There is too much complexity in ACI. 80 percent of its features are of no use to us. We could do with a simplified version."
"The GUI is not easy to use."
"We are waiting to see what happens with the cloud. We want to see if it will scale better."
"Juniper Contrail Networking is difficult if you do not have a certificate for Juniper. Juniper is a different type of configuration or operation than Cisco."
"Juniper needs to address the market's specific requirements, such as the SME sector, and offer more lower-priced products like a lower-end segment switch."
"Visibility, especially for the top of the platform, is a nightmare. The top was documented incorrectly and really complex to complete. In the end, it worked but only after several weeks of work with the support of a Juniper solution engineer in Holland."
"Concerns were raised about the complexity of involving networking components like MX routers, which often required expertise beyond the scope of software engineers. As a result, users encountered challenges in achieving comprehensive understanding and troubleshooting of networking issues within the Contrail environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"Pricing for Cisco ACI could be expensive if you're not a gold partner. If you're a gold partner, you'll get reasonable pricing, but to become a gold partner, you must cross several layers. For example, at least twenty engineers within your organization have to be certified, with each certification priced at £2,000 minimum, so this would make some companies think twice about the product. If you're going for Aruba and Juniper products, on the other hand, you can quickly get the partner status, and you can start selling the product. As a gold partner, you can get up to seventy percent discount on Cisco ACI, for example, while an ordinary partner gets ten percent off. Cisco ACI is expensive for both customers and partners, but I'm rating pricing for the product as four out of five because even if the price is costly, you get a lot of benefits from the product. Cisco ACI isn't the best, price-wise, but it's still a good solution. If you're in a small organization, you may be unable to afford it. Cisco ACI is best for enterprises but not SMBs because Cisco ACI and its required resources are expensive."
"Price is always an issue."
"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."
"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"The good thing about Cisco is that you can trade in your old products to replace them with ACI."
"Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Juniper Contrail Networking is low-cost for small and medium-sized businesses. Cisco and Palo Alto solutions are more expensive."
"There are many vendors in the wireless market that offer better pricing, solutions, and management skills compared to Juniper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 Juniper Contrail Networking?
It provides proactive alerting in a single dashboard solution.
What needs improvement with Juniper Contrail Networking?
Juniper Contrail Networking enables the utilization of tier-two appliances and the creation of virtual networks or appliances. This is facilitated through the use of filtering devices. Additionally...
What is your primary use case for Juniper Contrail Networking?
We use the solution to host many services for multiple clients. We aim to transition from hosting Cisco clients to utilizing virtual appliances. Therefore, we intend to virtualize their infrastruct...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Contrail Networking
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Lithium Technologies, Orange Business Services, Cloudwatt, Symantec, Cloud Dynamics, CloudSeeds
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Juniper Contrail Networking and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.