Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Cisco ACI and Cisco Secure Workload are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Cisco ACI is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9, while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.5. Cisco ACI holds a 5.5% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Cisco Secure Workload’s 14.0% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Cisco ACI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco Secure Workload users who would recommend it.

Cisco ACI

Read 101 Cisco ACI reviews

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383 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

3,314 Views
895 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco ACI

Cisco Secure Workload

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Cisco ACI and Cisco Secure Workload are competitive products in the network infrastructure and security domain. While Cisco ACI is renowned for its infrastructure management capabilities, Cisco Secure Workload gains an edge in the security domain with its extensive control over workload protection.

Features: Cisco ACI simplifies network provisioning, provides seamless policy enforcement, and integrates efficiently with top automation tools. Cisco Secure Workload offers granular workload visibility, advanced threat detection, and ensures compliance monitoring.

Room for Improvement: Cisco ACI could enhance its integration capabilities with newer cloud platforms, improve ease of deployment, and simplify its initial setup process. Cisco Secure Workload can benefit from improved scalability, a more intuitive interface, and enhanced support for data center integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Secure Workload is recognized for its easy integration and proactive support, which facilitate rapid deployments. While Cisco ACI's deployment process can be complex, it provides extensive documentation and support to assist users. Both products feature highly responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco ACI's initial setup incurs higher costs due to its infrastructure focus but offers substantial ROI through improved network efficiency. Cisco Secure Workload requires a moderate investment, yielding quick returns via enhanced security measures. Despite the higher expense, Cisco ACI's comprehensive features justify the cost, while Cisco Secure Workload provides excellent ROI with its specialized security focus.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload

June 2025

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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 Cloud and Data Center Security

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)

Cisco Secure Workload

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (13th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 5.5%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 14.0%, up from 12.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Provides scalability, ease of migration for future DC moves, multi-tenancy and programmability

Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms. To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything. I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more. We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.

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Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution."

"I recommend Cisco ACI due to its reliable tech support, timely updates for security, traffic management, and ease of management."

"One significant attraction for clients in Iran is the robustness of multicast solutions, which has been a major driver for them to migrate to Cisco ACI."

"We can support policy based on our intent, then that gets rendered into the policy that we will be using for Fabric."

"Because of its automation feature, when you configure scripts for Cisco ACI, it reduces human error."

"The centralized configuration is its most valuable feature."

"I like using WebEx Board."

"What's most valuable in Cisco ACI is that it isn't like the legacy infrastructure where you have a lot of complexity in a TTR architecture. What I like most about Cisco ACI is that you can control those devices from a single console, even if you have three hundred devices. You can manage the entire infrastructure from a single point of contact, so Cisco ACI is a time saver. Another exclusive feature of Cisco ACI is its API interface that lets you enhance automation within the environment. You can manage your entire data center from a single interface through Cisco ACI. If you want to upgrade three hundred devices in one click, you can do that, and within one hour, all three hundred devices will be upgraded. I also like that Cisco keeps enhancing the product by adding different features, so there have been five major releases of Cisco ACI. Another valuable feature of the solution is that it's more user-friendly than Aruba and Juniper."

More Cisco ACI pros

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"It's stable."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them."

"The CLI needs to be improved."

"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."

"The user interface should be made easier."

"I would like this solution to be integrated with Pure Storage."

"My complaint about this is: We purchased the ACI gear, but to do monitoring, to do stats, to do telemetry statistics, etc. we have to purchase another product from Cisco."

"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."

"I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything."

More Cisco ACI cons

"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 integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

"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."

"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."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"It has an uninviting interface."

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Cisco ACI could be expensive if you're not a gold partner. If you're a gold partner, you'll get reasonable pricing, but to become a gold partner, you must cross several layers. For example, at least twenty engineers within your organization have to be certified, with each certification priced at £2,000 minimum, so this would make some companies think twice about the product. If you're going for Aruba and Juniper products, on the other hand, you can quickly get the partner status, and you can start selling the product. As a gold partner, you can get up to seventy percent discount on Cisco ACI, for example, while an ordinary partner gets ten percent off. Cisco ACI is expensive for both customers and partners, but I'm rating pricing for the product as four out of five because even if the price is costly, you get a lot of benefits from the product. Cisco ACI isn't the best, price-wise, but it's still a good solution. If you're in a small organization, you may be unable to afford it. Cisco ACI is best for enterprises but not SMBs because Cisco ACI and its required resources are expensive."

"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."

"It saves time and resources."

"If you compare the licensing and total cost of ACI, it's cheaper than NSX because of the licensing fees. If you are going for full NSX features it will be too expensive, especially the next-generation firewalling feature."

"I don't believe there is any licensing required."

"The cost is fine."

"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."

"We bought a package for hardware, software, and support. At that time, Cisco was simply selling that package to distributors, then we opted for it directly."

More Cisco ACI pricing and cost advice

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco ACI?

The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware NSX vs Cisco ACI

Compared 20% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco ACI

Compared 14% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco ACI

Compared 10% of the time

HPE SDN vs Cisco ACI

Compared 10% of the time

Juniper Contrail Networking vs Cisco ACI

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco ACI Competitors

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 21% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 17% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 17% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI

June 2025

Download Cisco ACI product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

June 2025

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

No data available

Cisco Tetration

Overview

Cisco ACI automates data center networking, centralizing management and configuration of diverse network environments. It's used for micro-segmentation, replacing legacy networks, and deploying software-defined networking.

Cisco ACI enables seamless integration with cloud platforms and multi-site connectivity. It ensures high availability and redundancy, supports network-centric applications, enhances security, and facilitates agile service implementations across different regions and data centers. The platform offers high throughput, ease of configuration, centralized management, and programmability. Users find value in its single management interface, policy-based routing, Service Graphs, and simplified deployment. Cisco ACI also excels in scalability, automation, low latency, and supports data center expansion efficiently.

What are the key features of Cisco ACI?

High Throughput: Ensures fast data transmission and network efficiency.
Ease of Configuration: Simplifies setup and changes to network configurations.
Centralized Management: Provides a single interface for managing the entire network.
Micro-Segmentation: Enhances security by isolating network segments.
Integration with VMware: Seamlessly integrates with VMware environments.
Scalability: Easily expands to accommodate growing organizational needs.
Automation Capabilities: Reduces manual tasks through advanced automation.
Policy-Based Routing: Optimizes network traffic based on set policies.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating Cisco ACI?

Seamless integration with cloud platforms and multi-site connectivity.
High availability and redundancy ensuring consistent service uptime.
Enhanced security with micro-segmentation and policy-based control.
Agility in service implementations across regions and data centers.
Efficiency in network management with centralized control.

Organizations in industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology implement Cisco ACI to modernize data centers, improve security, and streamline network operations. Its capabilities support expanding infrastructure, integrating with cloud services, and managing complex network architectures with minimal effort.

Cisco

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“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. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload

June 2025

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