We compared VMware NSX and Cisco Secure Workload based on our users' reviews in six categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Comparison Results: VMware NSX provides advanced virtual networking capabilities, a distributed firewall, and seamless integration with VMware Hypervisor. Nevertheless, it has areas that could be enhanced such as licensing clarity, compatibility with non-Windows operating systems, and user-friendliness. Conversely, Cisco Secure Workload is commended for its user-friendly interface, stability, and comprehensive solution. However, it faces challenges in terms of integration, a complex dashboard, and controversy surrounding data reduction. Cisco Secure Workload does excel in providing excellent technical support, particularly for networking products.
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"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."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"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."
"It's stable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"Some of the key features I find most valuable are the highly graphical user interface, virtualization of networks, and Microsoft application compatibility. It has all the functionality that we require."
"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."
"We are happy with the scalability."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"I have found the solution to be stable."
"The performance is good."
"The dashboard is comprehensive and easy to use."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It follows a certain structure and you won't miss a step. It's all on the same level, step by step."
"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."
"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 interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"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."
"It has an uninviting interface."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"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."
"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"VMware NSX should be able to scale for different customers, even the big ones. Its scalability needs improvement. Stability for it should also be improved."
"The solution is complex but for the key user, it's not really complex. You just need to learn the standards and mechanics for your specific product."
"There is room for improvement in VMware NSX's workload management, particularly in the orchestration layer and in managing workloads across multiple clouds."
"There are always issues integrating with Cisco."
"Our technical team is always looking for the solutions that they work with to offer more convenient integrations."
"Despite being somewhat behind in the cybersecurity field, VMware should develop a cloud and a red team to continuously monitor for new malware and ransomware."
"The engineering team has room for improvement. They should have have more of a Knowledge Base about different case studies and should develop more advanced features. These kinds of improvements will change the way things get done."
"The integration with other brands is not the best."
Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 9th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 13 reviews while VMware NSX is ranked 1st in Cloud and Data Center Security with 94 reviews. Cisco Secure Workload is rated 8.4, while VMware NSX is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Workload writes "A solution that provides good technical support but its high cost makes it challenging for users to adopt it". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware NSX writes "Allows for seamless micro-segmentation and the support is exceptional". Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Illumio, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco ACI and Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine), whereas VMware NSX is most compared with Nutanix Flow Network Security, Illumio, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco ACI and Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. See our Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX report.
See our list of best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors and best Microsegmentation Software vendors.
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