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.
"All the features provided by Cisco ACI including orchestration to layer seven, service training, load enhancements and firewalls."
"Cisco ACI's best features include its network-centric approach and micro-segmentation."
"We had different networks and combined them with ACI so we could have the control of one controller-based network. Also, everything is combined now."
"Cisco ACI can separate networks with a buoy interface. That is the most valuable feature."
"There are many features which are useful, like the automatic completion of the VXLAN."
"Virtualization and integration with VMware is the most valuable feature."
"The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management. Other solutions, like traditional solutions and pricier solutions—or even fabric and PAT—you have to do many configurations on a box-to-box basis, With Cisco ACI, you go on the AP and do some "next, next finish" installer."
"Automation is its most valuable feature."
"It's stable."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"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."
"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 provides multiple-device integration."
"The additional features I would like to see included in the next releases are support for our policy-based routing. There are endpoint issues that are there now in the code. Hopefully, these will get fixed in the future code."
"Compared to VMware, it needs more virtualization technologies."
"They should improve the GUI, make it simpler. They also need to improve its integration with other automation tools."
"I would like them to simplify the way you configure the Fabric. The process is quite complex. This can be a barrier to entry. For anything, where it should take two or three steps, you have ten steps"
"The ACI user interface is complex and Cisco should improve it."
"The tool's initial deployment is complex and takes five hours to complete."
"If I lose the connection from one side to the core, I can't use the other side to go to the core. I hope in the future, this will be fixed."
"Cisco should provide more examples of code in their website. Something that other people can use. There is a great place in the development area."
"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."
"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."
"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 emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"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."
"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."
Cisco ACI is ranked 3rd 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.
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