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Cisco ACI vs Megaport comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th)
Megaport
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
7th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 15.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Megaport is 3.0%, up from 2.8% 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.
HimanshuGupta2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined connectivity offers flexibility but requires enhanced visibility
We are a reseller of products and provide services and products to our end customers, using solutions like Megaport.  Depending on the customer requirements, we sometimes need to combine different solutions or rely on our in-house capabilities Megaport simplifies the connectivity process. It…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most useful feature in the ACI is a feature called Service Graph."
"The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management. Other solutions, like traditional solutions and pricier solutions—or even fabric and PAT—you have to do many configurations on a box-to-box basis, With Cisco ACI, you go on the AP and do some "next, next finish" installer."
"It is very stable. It works 100 percent of the time."
"The best part of Cisco ACI is the server deployment and integration."
"The features we find most valuable is the integration with the virtual switches of our UCS platform."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that it is eay to manage. We can automate and it can be scripted. Virtual ACI is very good."
"Once we have it running, it should be easier for us to program our IT rather than going case-by-case, by switches and different elements, or program it by hand."
"The pricing model of Megaport is appealing, along with its flexibility in providing connectivity to end customers."
 

Cons

"We're still in the process of doing the migration. We haven't migrated completely all of our applications out of our legacy into it yet. It was challenging at first, but getting easier now that we're starting to get into it."
"The interface is sometimes slow. I receive a lot of weird errors when I try to install apps, such as contract apps, which should give me a nice visualization of all the contracts. However, it just doesn't load, etc."
"The GUI is not easy to use."
"The way the objects are oriented on it are not as straightforward as they should be."
"It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them."
"It is challenging for people who don't understand the programming language, making it difficult to migrate. With technology, there are two verticals. One is hardware driven and the other is software driven. Most people in our domain understand networking, but they don't understand programming. When we migrate, some programming is required."
"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."
"Before version 5, you could manage your firewall or load balancer from the AP. It was very basic and now they removed the whole features in the new version, so you cannot manage your load balance or firewall from your AP on L2, L4, and L7 services."
"There are no notable complaints from customers regarding Megaport, and there hasn't been any identified need for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price is always an issue."
"The pricing and licensing are both high, particularly if you want a high level of functionality. It would be great if the price and licensing cost could be decreased."
"Once you sign for the start kit implementation, you have to go all the way through to the implementation, even if you are experiences issues."
"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."
"The product is not cheap."
"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Megaport?
The pricing model is one of the features I personally like about Megaport.
What needs improvement with Megaport?
There are no notable complaints from customers regarding Megaport, and there hasn't been any identified need for improvement.
What is your primary use case for Megaport?
We are a reseller of products and provide services and products to our end customers, using solutions like Megaport. Depending on the customer requirements, we sometimes need to combine different s...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Aon, News Corp Australia, Fujitsu, NEC, Virgin Australia, Zettagrid, JB Hi-Fi, blueAPACHE, CloudLogix, Data Solutions Group, Spectrum Networks, Virtutel, Cloudscene, G-Core Labs, Servers Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Aviatrix, TP-Link and others in Software Defined Networking (SDN). Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.