I also evaluated Nutanix, but we went with Cisco because we wanted to use one vendor from network to server.

We considered VMware NSX, but some believe that VMware is vulnerable, so we stuck with Cisco. 

We only looked at Cisco because we have all of our routing and switching infrastructure with Cisco. 

I've evaluated VMware NSX, but it can't compete with Cisco ACI. Cisco ACI is a hardware-level product that can support terabytes and petabytes of data at the same time, which VMware NSX can't do because it's a virtual environment with limited throughput and scalability.

If you're planning to apply terabytes of traffic in VMware NSX, you'll find it hard, and the solution will eventually choke after some time.

Cisco ACI has the best scalability. Cisco also has categories where particular hardware will be recommended based on your requirement, for example, whether you have petabytes or terabytes of data.

We considered Cisco, Juniper, and VMware. Cisco rose to the top because of the support. It wasn't just the sale; they were going to be around afterward. We have a relationship there, that we trust.

If I compare ACI to a VMware NSX-T type solution, I don't know if there's a differentiator there compared to NSX. I will say that NSX has much higher numbers of differentiation, as they have visibility into the workload at the hypervisor. Having used ACI, we were looking at solution sets that will give us specific capabilities beyond that. The value of NSX is it will give you the visibility component.

Cisco is the only company that we seriously considered.

The number one reason we chose it was that eventually, we will doing some sort of SD (Software Defined) access. When a user gets on the network and they connect, they'll have a persona. We'll know who they are. We'll know what to allow them into. A lot of that'll be controlled through ACI on the data center side.

We didn't have SD access. We're still going in that direction. It's going to be a while.

We evaluated Cisco ACI vs VMware.

Now, I don't want to switch to another solution. I want to use this one, because it is the only solution that we tried for our use cases to unclog holes, resources, and work loads.

It was Cisco ACI vs VMware NSX.

Eventually, the client chose Cisco ACI because they had more experience with Cisco and they still had a lot of physical infrastructure to handle.

We are using VMware NSX in our environment as well. We had a customer that was using both NSX and ACI in their environment.

The good thing about NSX is that it has really strong support for the virtualized environment. And now the security is an integral part of their network solution, with the Distributed Firewall and the Edge Firewall. But it has some of its own issues because in a virtual environment, when you have big data centers where there is a lot of traffic coming in from the routing site, it's usually not up to that mark. Cisco has better visibility into that. If I compare it with ACI, ACI has a very strong routing component, but it has its own shortcomings.

In terms of rating NSX, I'm going to be biased because I work in ACI. I like NSX as well, it is a great product. It has a lot of flexibility because you can use existing servers and install NSX on them and It works pretty well. I rate NSX at six out of ten. The reason I rate it a little bit less than ACI is because its only native, strong support is for VMware. ACI has native support for Hyper-V and VMware.

I do not know who was on the shortlist.

For me, Cisco is the best solution.

We chose ACI because we have worked with Cisco for a long time and felt that there was no reason to change at the time.

We also looked at VMware. 

We did not evaluate other options because we'd have to reevaluate what we currently use for Cisco. None of our staff is trained for anything but Cisco. Cisco was the only product we looked at.

Because of timeline issues, we were focused to use Cisco products and did not consider any other vendors.

We did not consider any other vendors. Because in the network environment, we can only buy Cisco or Juniper. However, Juniper does not have a solution for us.

We're a Cisco shop so we weren't going to another avenue. We already have our partner for purchasing, all these relationships were established so it wasn't really much to choose in that regard. It was more of a design decision, 9000 or ACI. Originally, we said all ACI but then as we started really getting into the design and having deep conversations with our Cisco account team and the Advanced Services Team, they told us it makes sense to do some 9000 and leave some things as ACI. This is the route we're taking. 

We also evaluated IBM.

With the Cisco ACI technology, the programmability enables interaction. The other solutions are not really built for programmability. They don't interact with their databases directly, where Cisco ACI makes this possible. This is one of the many reasons that our organization selected it.

We also looked at VMware NSX. We went with Cisco because they are the most cost effective compared to the other options. 

As an integrator, we are using the following vendors:

• Cisco for the networking side.
• VMware for the server side.
• F5 for load balancers.
• NETSCOUT for visibility.

VMware is one of ACI's competitors. We considered VMware because we also have it in our infrastructure.

We chose Cisco ACI, because VMware is just focusing virtual infrastructure and microsegmentation. The idea was to use Cisco for the physical infrastructure and integrate with VMware for the virtual infrastructure.

Prior to choosing Cisco ACI, we evaluated Juniper. 

Arista was one of the main alternatives that we evaluated.

We evaluated solutions from Cisco, VMware, and HP. Cisco's solution, from a software perspective, may be slightly behind, but from a hardware perspective, it's the most scalable and best to support.

We're a Cisco shop, so we did not evaluate solutions from other vendors. We already have our partner for purchasing, and all of our relationships were already established. For us, it was simply a design decision between Cisco 9000 and ACI.

We were only considering Cisco. ACI is such a complex solution that I am not sure that are any competitors which can match the product's complexity.

Our network is entirely Cisco, so we did not consider any other vendors.

We only thought about Cisco because they are our primary vendor for network solutions.

I don't think there were considerations of any other products when we went to upgrade as it was just an upgrade from the previous architecture.

Three years ago when we were starting with this process, the industry said that software defined networking was the way we had to go. At the time, this is the only solution that was available.

I was one of the proponents of this solution.

We evaluated VMware NSX. When we compared the technical solution of ACI and NSX, how the traffic flows from physical to virtual and virtual to physical, there were many parameters which we compared, some of which were critical.

We also looked at Juniper but their solution isn't stable so we didn't go with them. 

We also looked at Juniper and Fortinet.

We chose Cisco because we trust them. Cisco give us a very high level support and technical information.

I wanted an easier way to manage segmentation. Cisco offered this and this is also what the resellers were showing me as well. That this was going to be the future of the system. 

Cisco was the main vendor that I chose. We were also looking at Juniper and HP, but they did not have a similar situation. It was kind of a no-brainer.

We investigated different products and found that ACI can be used with different workloads (e.g., legacy permits) or with different systems, like Microsoft Hyper-V. Cisco ACI is more flexible as a product.

We also consider Juniper, but we decided on Cisco because Juniper's system scalability and stability are not good.

The only real competitor to this product is VMware NSX.

We always use Cisco. They are our main vendor. We didn't have any competition to compare. 

We also considered Juniper.

There was only one logical way to go, and that was with the Cisco ACI.