No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Network Virtualization
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Cisco Enterprise Network Fu...
Ranking in Network Virtualization
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Virtualization category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 26.7%, down from 45.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization is 9.1%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Virtualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI26.7%
Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization9.1%
Other64.2%
Network Virtualization
 

Featured Reviews

Sulaiman Olubiyi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Automation Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Network automation has simplified secure multi-site connectivity and reduced daily operational effort
I believe Cisco ACI could improve by incorporating something related to agentic AI, where it can execute tasks based on particular evaluations or loop engineering, enhancing fault identification or suggestions based on each tenant's configuration. Additionally, I think they should ensure that the documentation is comprehensive. I appreciate that Cisco provides documentation, and their support engineers are helpful in case of any issues. In terms of governance and security regarding Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, I think what we call evals or evaluations is important, whereby the engineer can evaluate the functionalities of the AI in Cisco ACI, preventing it from making deletions or modifications on its own. Therefore, there should be evaluations or guardrails incorporated into the development capabilities. Regarding accuracy and reliability of output for Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, it hasn't met my expectations. What we need is something called RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation. If Cisco can implement that to utilize customer-specific data instead of general knowledge, while ensuring data privacy under GDPR laws, I think that will result in very good, reliable output.
Majdi Sabbah - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant Sales Engineer at BT Al-Saudia
Versatile, offering flexibility and scalability
I rely on Cisco Enterprise NFV for various sectors like government, campuses, and hospitality. It is a crucial foundational layer that is mandatory before delivering other services The most valuable feature is its user-friendly management dashboard. It is easy to use and covers everything in one…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cisco ACI has positively impacted my organization by making management easier, significantly enhancing our data center networking, helping in cost savings, and allowing our network development team to integrate with the APIs to establish automation-driven workflows for observability, fault alerts, and monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that it is easy to manage; we can automate and it can be scripted, and Virtual ACI is very good."
"The security component is its most valuable feature."
"The good thing about ACI is its integration with the different hypervisors, as it supports VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM and can integrate with the virtual environment of Hyper-V, VMware, and KVM very well while its automation also helps deploy and do the integration very easily in the virtual compute part of the network."
"The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We just moved from one platform to another."
"Now, our customers have tiers of management that have meetings with about the simplest tasks because it has to be approved from upper management and senior management and by the time it gets to the engineer that's going to deploy it, it takes way too long. With the solution, they can delegate a person who would be in charge of running the ACI as a whole, and it will be much faster because it doesn't have to go through the whole chain of command for the simple task of deploying one little machine on one port in the data center."
"It is a complete re-write of everything that you've ever thought of from a networking standpoint, and it can simplify your life if you do it right."
"The most valuable feature is the data center communication."
"Scalability is not a problem."
"Routing, switching, and wireless network security are the valuable features of Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization."
"It is easy to manage, easy to maintain, and stable, and if you set up everything alright, it will give years without any issues."
"Cisco is in our portfolio, which is one of the reasons that we keep working with them."
"The most valuable feature is its user-friendly management dashboard."
"Network Security is one of the most valuable features of Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization."
"The support system that they have in place is very good and they are easy to reach."
"Overall, I feel that this is a good product and I recommend it."
 

Cons

"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."
"The CLI needs to be improved."
"It would be good if Cisco ACI had some cross-domain orchestrator that could rule all the pillars in the customer network or interconnect more easily with the compass environment."
"It would be nice if I could specify network-centric in my design, and the system would organize and set itself up in that way."
"If you don't have visibility and you want micro-segmentation and you don't want to pay, then ACI is not your solution."
"The GUI is not easy to use."
"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing. For half the cost, I can obtain the same service with another product."
"At first, the setup was really complex because we did everything with the GUI first. We had to figure out how to do that and it was frustrating because we had a lot of errors which didn't really tell us anything because we're used to other kinds of messages from the old school networking."
"This is a software solution, which is less stable than a hardware solution by definition."
"It would be helpful if they offered modularized upgrades, such as additional memory or a faster processor."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the cost. The SDN hardware especially is much too expensive, specifically 799 and 9000, which act like a spine and those spines are connecting to the leaves."
"I would like to see the principle scan introduce more models, to help with scalability issues."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing compatibility with other solutions and vendors."
"The solution's orchestration part could be improved."
"One of the things that can be improved is trimming all mobile numbers so that it aids in swiftly acquiring information for tablets or any necessary solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It saves time and resources."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"It's expensive but the product is very good. I have never found another partner like Cisco with a solution like this and with great support."
"This is an expensive solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product is not cheap."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization is an expensive solution."
"There is a separate charge for support."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Virtualization solutions are best for your needs.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?
Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco NFV
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.