Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs VMware NSX 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
8.3
Prisma Cloud improves security by automating compliance, reducing alerts, and increasing efficiency, despite high costs and initial challenges.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware NSX saves costs by reducing network needs, enhancing security, and achieving ROI within a year when deployed effectively.
Prisma Cloud has reduced our runtime alerts by 25 percent through the nature of developers being able to fix their own code by shifting the responsibility of identifying misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.
The return on value is in the securing of the applications that we are deploying, as well as through a better understanding of the types of issues in the type of environment.
Before, we had a few staff members who monitored our environment, but now the alerting and other processes happen automatically, so there is a good ROI in terms of resources.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Prisma Cloud's support is responsive and knowledgeable, though some users face delays and communication issues, varying by region.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware NSX support is generally reliable but varies in responsiveness and expertise, with improvement needed in certain regions.
The presales team was very proactive and helped us in every aspect we needed to resolve our queries during implementation and they provided knowledge to our team internally.
They have remained engaged to drive resolution of issues that we have found.
When we raised an issue to high priority, they answered faster.
Our technicians have a good support experience from the company.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Prisma Cloud offers scalable management across multi-cloud environments, excelling in integration and enterprise growth, despite some functionality challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware NSX is scalable across large infrastructures, praised for adaptability, hardware independence, and seamless integration in various environments.
How flexible is the tool as far as working with different cloud environments goes? And it is perfectly fine in that regard.
It's very scalable and very easy to use.
Aporeto is now available in AWS where it efficiently deploys, manages, and secures applications at scale on various platforms including Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, and Mesos, among others.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Prisma Cloud is stable and reliable, with high ratings for scalability and minimal impact from occasional glitches or disruptions.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware NSX is stable and mature, praised for robust performance and dependability, despite occasional minor upgrade issues.
The ability to log in and get near real-time data on our cloud environment is very good.
A pre-announcement or pre-testing of the alerts would be a better way for them to do this, instead of creating 50 or 100-plus alerts.
I cannot recall any downtime with the solution.
 

Room For Improvement

Prisma Cloud needs improvements in UI complexity, pricing, customization, integration, identity management, and support for more cloud environments.
VMware NSX needs enhancements in integration, automation, deployment, and support to address complexity, pricing, and user-friendliness challenges.
API security is an area that is definitely growing, because almost every web application has tons of APIs connecting to other web applications with tons of APIs.
It is scanning everything rather than giving us the ability to be real granular in choosing which agents can scan which repositories.
Their support needs to be improved. It is by far one of the worst support that I have seen.
 

Setup Cost

Prisma Cloud offers flexible licensing, valued for its features and consolidation, with costs based on consumption and workloads.
VMware NSX pricing is higher than competitors, complex, and may discourage smaller organizations due to potentially unused features.
There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees for Prisma Cloud.
Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us.
They gave us some good discounts right at the end of the year based on the value that it brings, visibility, and the ability to build in cloud, compliance, and security within one dashboard.
VMware NSX is a little higher in price compared to the competition.
 

Valuable Features

Prisma Cloud enhances security with multi-cloud integration, automated forensics, CI/CD integration, and comprehensive visibility across hybrid environments.
VMware NSX offers micro-segmentation, automation, scalability, and integration, enhancing security and flexibility across virtual environments and clouds.
Aporeto is designed to combine metadata from the orchestration layer, the container, the operating system, and the AWS instance identity document.
The most valuable feature is that the rule set is managed and that it can be run on a regularly scheduled basis.
The Inventory functionality, enabling us to identify all of the resources deployed into a single account in either AWS or Azure, or into Prisma Cloud as a whole, has been really useful for us.
The most powerful feature of VMware NSX is the micro-segmentation that allows us to separate the different protocols our application works with.
 

Categories and Ranking

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (1st)
VMware NSX
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (8th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (8th), Network Automation (5th), Microsegmentation Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Data Security solutions, they serve different purposes. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is designed for Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and holds a mindshare of 19.5%, down 21.0% compared to last year.
VMware NSX, on the other hand, focuses on Network Virtualization, holds 46.7% mindshare, up 45.8% since last year.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
Network Virtualization
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes
Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.
Santi-Lara Garcia - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates perfectly but must be purchased as part of a bundle package
The solution is only sold as part of a bundle and not as an individual product. Some customers only need vSphere or NSX for their use cases, but account executives focus on bundles so this is a problem. Account executives need to talk with both systems and security staff to get a full picture of the environment's requirements. For example, systems staff have no need for the solution so they will never deploy it.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks ?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
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 VMware NSX?
The product has valuable features for security and network extension.
 

Also Known As

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
VMware Nicira, Lastline Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. VMware NSX and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.