Cisco Secure Workload vs VMware NSX comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Cisco is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.5, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.7. Cisco holds a 13.6% mindshare in CDCS, compared to VMware’s 13.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

3,375 Views
2,273 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware NSX

Read 102 VMware NSX reviews

4,611 Views
3,165 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

VMware NSX

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

VMware NSX and Cisco Secure Workload are competing products in the network virtualization and security space. Based on data comparisons, VMware NSX is favored for its comprehensive feature set in managing complex network environments, while Cisco Secure Workload is recognized for its strong threat detection capabilities.

Features: VMware NSX offers network virtualization, micro-segmentation, and multi-cloud security. These features provide adaptable SDN solutions for diverse environments. Cisco Secure Workload provides robust security analytics and workload-centric protection, ensuring deep visibility into application behavior.

Room for Improvement: VMware NSX could improve by enhancing its integration capabilities with non-VMware products, simplifying its complex interface, and reducing the learning curve for new users. Cisco Secure Workload may benefit from refining its user interface for easier navigation, enhancing scalability for larger environments, and providing more detailed analytical reports.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware NSX integrates seamlessly with existing infrastructure and offers comprehensive deployment guides. It's well-suited for complex environments but may challenge less experienced users. Cisco Secure Workload is praised for straightforward deployment and strong customer support, making it accessible to new adopters.

Pricing and ROI: VMware NSX requires a significant initial investment but offers considerable ROI due to its scalability and network management capabilities. Cisco Secure Workload's pricing is perceived as high yet justified by its effective security features, delivering consistent security returns.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX

January 2025

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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 Secure Workload

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

6th

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)

VMware NSX

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

2nd

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Network Virtualization (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (8th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (8th), Network Automation (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 13.6%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware NSX is 13.8%, down from 22.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

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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DanielBass

Senior IT Strategy Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Improves network security with micro-segmentation but setup is complex

I value the ability to dynamically configure our network on the fly using VMware NSX. This flexibility is a huge advantage because it allows us to avoid static configurations that come with traditional hardware setups. Additionally, the micro-segmentation feature is beneficial for adhering to strict security regulations from our security department.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"It's stable."

"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"It is a stable solution...The solution's initial setup process was easy."

"The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the high bandwidth."

"The product has valuable features for security and network extension."

"The most powerful feature of VMware NSX is the micro-segmentation that allows us to separate the different protocols our application works with."

"The most valuable feature is the integration with the firewall."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to create, develop, and deploy servers in minutes to hours, rather than days."

"One of the big improvements between the NSX-V and NSX-T is that in NSX-T you are no longer dependent on V-Center anymore."

"It operates on a logical level, providing a comprehensive and centralized way to manage your network resources."

More VMware NSX pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"The ticket support response time from VMware could be improved. Often, callbacks are delayed, which can be problematic if the servers are in production."

"A room for improvement in VMware NSX is that it has some security vulnerabilities, which means my company has to apply the patches every once in a while."

"We've have had good and bad experiences with them. We don't always find them to be so impactful. Sometimes the support guy isn't so on top of resolving the issue and it can take a while to sort out."

"The vendor should integrate a basic load balancer in future versions"

"There is room for improvement in VMware NSX's workload management, particularly in the orchestration layer and in managing workloads across multiple clouds."

"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."

"It lacks full knowledge of physical side of the network topology."

"We would like tenant segmentation available in future releases."

More VMware NSX cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The price is based on the virtual desktop infrastructure(VDI) side and also is dependant on the size of the environment. The price is expensive and it could attract more purchasers in smaller organisations if it was reduced."

"There is a license required for this solution and there is also a support license available. The price of the solution could be better."

"The price of VMware NSX is optimal. Additionally, the price of the solution can be negotiated with the vendor. Many areas of the solution can impact the cost, such as features, time for onboarding, and support needed."

"The price is significantly high and it can be a hurdle for many potential users."

"The solution is reasonable at the local level."

"The price could be better. We pay for the license every three years. The last time I checked, it cost around three million pesos in the Philipines. Most of the expense will go towards implementation and renovation."

"VMware has always been geared towards enterprise and their pricing options are a bit high. Their price is higher than other options in the market."

"This solution requires a licence."

More VMware NSX pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware NSX?

The product has valuable features for security and network extension.

See all answers

Comparisons

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 20% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 12% of the time

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 8% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Nutanix Flow Network Security vs VMware NSX

Compared 22% of the time

Illumio vs VMware NSX

Compared 20% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs VMware NSX

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco ACI vs VMware NSX

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs VMware NSX

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware NSX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

February 2025

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware NSX

January 2025

Download VMware NSX product report

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration

VMware Nicira, Lastline Defender

Overview

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“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. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

VMware NSX is a sophisticated solution utilized for micro-segmentation, network security, software-defined networking, and private cloud construction. It aids in the transition from physical to virtual infrastructure, ensuring efficient network virtualization and security of production workloads.

VMware NSX empowers organizations to manage network functions, implement distributed firewalls, and enhance security within virtual environments. Crucial for disaster recovery and load balancing, it supports cloud-native application development and enterprise clients. Its ease of use, scalability, and seamless integration with existing VMware solutions ensure streamlined network management and swift deployment. Despite its extensive features, areas like pricing, routing functionality, and compatibility with certain platforms require attention.

What are the key features of VMware NSX?

Ease of Use: Simplifies network management with an intuitive interface.
Scalability: Adapts to growing infrastructure needs seamlessly.
Micro-Segmentation: Enhances security by dividing networks into smaller, manageable segments.
Integration: Seamlessly works with existing VMware solutions and third-party applications.
Dynamic Routing: Optimizes network traffic efficiently.
Security Options: Offers robust firewall features and security measures.
Automation: Facilitates quick deployment through comprehensive automation capabilities.
High Bandwidth: Ensures high-performance network operations.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Network Security: Superior protection for virtual environments.
Efficient Disaster Recovery: Reliable support for business continuity.
Reduced Deployment Time: Fast implementation and configuration.
Improved Network Management: Centralized and streamlined control of network resources.

VMware NSX is widely implemented across industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Organizations in these sectors utilize it to bolster security, enhance network efficiency, and support cloud-native applications. By extending on-premise networks into provider spaces and managing virtual access networks, VMware NSX significantly optimizes infrastructure operations.

VMware

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

City of Avondale, Lumeta, Kroll Ontrack, Heartland Payment Systems, Baystate Heallth, Exostar, Tribune Media, iGATE, NTT Communications, Synergent, California Natural Resources Agency, Bloomington Public Schools, Columbia Sportswear, Join Experience S.A, Schuberg Philis

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX

January 2025

Free Report: Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX

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