We compared Cisco ACI 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: Cisco ACI is known for its complex setup but offers easier configuration and management once deployed. Users appreciate its simplicity, automation features, and scalability. However, concerns were raised about the GUI, pricing, integration with other systems, and technical support. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Workload has a moderate setup process and a user-friendly interface. However, there are areas for improvement in terms of integration and dashboard usability, and controversies surrounding data retention. In summary, Cisco ACI primarily focuses on network infrastructure management, while Cisco Secure Workload emphasizes security scoring and vulnerability identification.
"Because we can use automation processes with this platform, we have been able to free up our IT department's time."
"Their technical support is very good. We had a problem and Cisco gave us the best engineer to resolve the issue."
"Micro-segmentation is the solution’s most valuable feature."
"It has benefited my organization by saving us a lot of time."
"The most useful feature in the ACI is a feature called Service Graph."
"It's improved the static configuration of our data center switching environment. But it's added some challenges to our ability to operationalize it and make it easier for people to manage."
"This solution is easy to configure, and it is done in an object-oriented manner."
"The basic functionality that is the most useful is creating a virtual network on a physical device."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"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."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"It's stable."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"We had issues in the first deployment when we tried to finish the migration from traditional networking to Cisco ACI."
"Cisco ACI is a highly complex solution. The initial deployment is just a few clicks, but understanding how an ACI works and interacts with routing, switching, and virtualization takes a lot of knowledge. The interface isn't necessarily hard to use, but the technology is complicated. If you want to understand how it works and how to configure it, you should study hard."
"There should be an alternative "ACI Light" solution for smaller-sized enterprises."
"ACI's blade servers could be more flexible, and its storage interface is a little too complex because they use some third-party storage solution."
"Quality Assurance could be better, and there are a lot of bugs in each release. We discover these bugs when we upgrade the ACI environment, sometimes resulting in downtime. In the next release, I would like to be able to manage hybrid cloud networking. So currently, if you have an ACI environment running on-premise or Epic in the cloud, we can handle it with the NexSys dashboard. But if Cisco can integrate SD WAN-related features, through which we can do multi-cloud networking, that will be an awesome feature. It should be more flexible."
"I believe there's room for improvement in terms of ACI's integration with various technologies."
"The initial set up was complex. We had to deploy 120 leads. Migrating from Legacy Cisco network to ACI was complex."
"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."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"It has an uninviting interface."
Cisco ACI is ranked 2nd in Cloud and Data Center Security with 97 reviews while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 9th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 13 reviews. Cisco ACI is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Workload is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco ACI writes "Stable, easy to extend, scalable, and has a host-based routing feature". On the other hand, 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". Cisco ACI is most compared with VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Nuage Networks, Juniper Contrail Networking and HPE SDN, whereas Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Illumio, VMware NSX, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine). See our Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload report.
See our list of best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors.
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