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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs OpenText Identity Governance 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Cisco Identity Services Engine boosts security, simplifies IT, reduces costs, mitigates risks, and enhances efficiency with long-term support.
Sentiment score
7.8
OpenText Identity Governance boosts ROI by preventing fraud, reducing audit costs, and enhancing access management and compliance efficiency.
Direct comparisons with Forescout reveal up to 30% to 40% difference in cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Cisco ISE customer service is praised, but tech support varies, with fast resolutions or delays and inconsistent expertise.
Sentiment score
7.8
Opinions on OpenText Identity Governance's customer support vary, with some praising expertise but others criticizing response times and overall effectiveness.
I rate the technical support as one out of ten.
Cisco support has pretty good teams for support and every time we had good answers and we could somehow solve the issues we had.
Sometimes it's challenging to identify which support team is responsible for certain issues, which is a significant concern.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Identity Services Engine scales flexibly for various environments, though virtual deployments and licensing necessitate careful planning and hardware selection.
Sentiment score
8.6
OpenText Identity Governance is highly scalable, effectively managing large deployments and receiving high satisfaction ratings for its performance.
Factors like architecture, business nature, and legal limitations such as GDPR affect it.
However, you can have some latency issues depending on where your devices are.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco ISE is stable and reliable, though occasional bugs occur, but technical support and proper management ensure performance.
Sentiment score
7.9
OpenText Identity Governance is stable and reliable, with minimal issues and infrequent support calls, receiving largely positive ratings.
The stability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is poor for certain use cases, like authentication.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is considered very reliable and stable.
Sometimes when we have upgrades or failovers with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), we had some minor issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek simplified Cisco ISE setup, improved integration and UI, refined stability, transparent licensing, and enhanced logging and analytics.
OpenText Identity Governance needs better connectivity, integration, modernization, and technical support, alongside improved interface, stability, and cloud deployment features.
The whole setup works well with Cisco access points and Cisco switches, but when you have multiple vendors in the environment, such as HP switches or access points like Aruba, you'll find they will not work well with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE).
Pricing can be more expensive compared to other vendors, and there is a significant price gap observed, which doesn't seem justified by some specific features.
The log capacity in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced because today natively on the ISE can only have a look at the logs from the day before.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco ISE provides three tiers; complex, costly pricing is offset by comprehensive features and potential discounts through partnerships.
Compared to other solutions like HPE ClearPass, Cisco is more costly, and the conversation suggests a possible forty percent price gap compared to competitors.
The license costs can range between $50,000 to $100,000 per year for enterprises.
The cost is about 100 million Ugandan shillings, which converts to approximately $30,000 per year.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Identity Services Engine enhances security via dynamic policy enforcement, seamless integration, and robust authentication for a zero-trust environment.
OpenText Identity Governance provides robust access evaluations, role mining, and automated processes, ensuring stability and effective large-scale governance.
There is value because it helps us secure the network and prevents certain things from happening which could cause financial loss.
This solution ensures organizations have secure environments and also supports robust policy enforcement, allowing control over who has access to various parts of the network.
The adaptability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) policy enforcement can fit to the site we have depending on which kind of devices we have on site and then the needs for authentication, granting access and then assigning each device into its correct network for segmentation.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
OpenText Identity Governance
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (31st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and OpenText Identity Governance aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 23.8%, down 29.1% compared to last year.
OpenText Identity Governance, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Management (IM), holds 0.7% mindshare, up 0.6% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)23.8%
Aruba ClearPass22.7%
Fortinet FortiNAC17.3%
Other36.2%
Network Access Control (NAC)
Identity Management (IM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Identity Governance0.7%
SailPoint Identity Security Cloud17.1%
Microsoft Entra ID11.0%
Other71.2%
Identity Management (IM)
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced device administration hindered by complex deployment and security limitations
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication. They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases. This will give them a roadmap for software-defined access (SDA) use cases and network segmentation. Threat detection capabilities are very weak. Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
JoelHercik - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature, capable solution that should be available as a cloud solution
They haven't really evolved the product to the cloud, so they don't have a cloud solution. It's just deployable in the cloud, so in some cases that holds them back in a competitive situation. I don't know if they're intent on taking their solution to the cloud, but if they do, that would be one improvement. It would allow them to be competitive down market in medium to small enterprises. I don't know if they care to address that market or not because it doesn't seem like they've made that move, but that would be one way for them to do that. As for additional features, I would suggest stronger integration. I think enabling more universal industry standard integrations would probably help them with different applications.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Wholesaler/Distributor
8%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise91
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?
Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...
What are the main differences between Cisco ISE and Forescout Platform?
OK, so Cisco ISE uses 802.1X to secure switchports against unauthorized access. The drawback of this is that ISE cannot secure the port if a device does not support 802.1x. Cameras, badge readers, ...
How does Cisco ISE compare with Fortinet FortiNAC?
Cisco ISE uses AI endpoint analytics to identify new devices based on their behavior. It will also notify you if someone plugs in with a device that is not allowed and will block it. The user exper...
What do you like most about NetIQ Identity Governance?
You can run reports and verify the access each user has. There is a process that runs automatically for access review. It sends an email to the manager and provides a task for the manager to review...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Identity Governance?
NetIQ Identity Governance is not flexible. Sometimes, filtering information to provide users with options, such as selecting the application to which they want to request access, can be challenging...
What advice do you have for others considering NetIQ Identity Governance?
The solution is worth using because of its flexibility, especially in integrating applications. However, the time required for integration varies based on the quality of documentation provided for ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
NetIQ Access Governance Suite, Novell Access Governance Suite
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, Beachbody, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Cisco IT, Derby City Council, Global Banking Customer, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, London Hydro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Molina Healthcare, MST Systems, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Reykjavik University, Wildau University
Western & Southern Financial Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: October 2025.
872,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.