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 #4 with an average rating of 8.7, while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.5. Cisco ACI holds a 5.7% 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

4,013 Views
1,126 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

3,434 Views
2,325 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco ACI

Cisco Secure Workload

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 849,686 peers since 2012

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

4th

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

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (14th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 5.7%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 14.0%, up from 12.5% 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.

Read full review

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

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In legacy networks, managing changes requires individual tickets for each device. ACI's single pane of glass management through APIC is a big advantage. So, single-tenant management is a plus."

"This solution allows you to do everything quicker and more efficiently."

"The biggest benefit has been that it has improved communication between my endpoints in the data center."

"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."

"There are many features which are useful, like the automatic completion of the VXLAN."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that it is eay to manage. We can automate and it can be scripted. Virtual ACI is very good."

"PBR has been beneficial for network efficiency."

"Cisco ACI's best features include its network-centric approach and micro-segmentation."

More Cisco ACI pros

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

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

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

"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."

"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 only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."

"Scalability is its most valuable feature."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"There should be an alternative "ACI Light" solution for smaller-sized enterprises."

"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."

"Cisco ACI would benefit by providing the option to integrate easily with DNAC in their next release."

"The initial setup was a bit complex. ACI was just out at that time, and there wasn't support at that time."

"Cisco ACI would be improved by providing a cloud offering; otherwise, it risks becoming a niche product."

"We're still in the process of doing the migration. We haven't migrated completely all of our applications out of our legacy into it yet. It was challenging at first, but getting easier now that we're starting to get into it."

"Our problems with Cisco ACI are mainly related to the contracts and how to manage them easily in the platform. Cisco also needs to improve the log files and the complexity of the graphical interface."

"We have had two calls with technical support. They are not the best. We opened a case to diagnose issues and it's taken weeks to get someone on the case and to move forward."

More Cisco ACI cons

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

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

"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."

"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."

"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."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."

"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."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."

"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."

"The good thing about Cisco is that you can trade in your old products to replace them with ACI."

"There are no additional costs. We only have to pay for a support contract apart from the license."

"The cost is fine."

"Price is always an issue."

More Cisco ACI pricing and cost advice

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

"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 pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

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

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud and Data Center Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

26%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

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 15% of the time

HPE SDN vs Cisco ACI

Compared 10% of the time

Illumio 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 19% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 18% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 17% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 10% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI

April 2025

Download Cisco ACI product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

April 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

April 2025

Free Report: Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Secure Workload report.

See our list of best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors.

We monitor all Cloud and Data Center Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.