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Cisco ACI vs Google Cloud Armor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
Google Cloud Armor
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Google Cloud Armor is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AnupChapalgaonkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Bot management tool enhances defense capabilities against DDoS and SQL injections
This solution is a bot management tool that provides extensive capabilities for Cloud Armor. It helps with DDoS defense and OWASP for SQL injections and cross-site scripting. We can rewrite these rule sets for DDoS protection. Integration with Cisco WAF is possible. It is scalable and integrates with Google's Kubernetes for easier scaling processes. It includes AI features like auditing and logging for troubleshooting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the data center communication."
"Having a lot of racks and switches with a single point of configuration which can be done with automation on one platform using one API. This makes everything work faster."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the Call Manager."
"The most useful feature in the ACI is a feature called Service Graph."
"I rate Cisco ACI nine out of ten due to its impressive features."
"With ACI, if you need more capacity you can just buy more and plug them in without needing to do anything else. All of the sudden that infrastructure is there for me to use, configure, and add stuff to."
"This solution is a bot management tool that provides extensive capabilities for Cloud Armor."
"We utilize Google Cloud Armor alongside our Cloud Load Balancer to safeguard against DDoS attacks. This setup acts as a local Layer 7 proxy provided by Google, allowing us to predict and mitigate DDoS threats effectively."
"It helps with DDoS defense and OWASP for SQL injections and cross-site scripting."
 

Cons

"Where there is room for improvement from ACI is for Layer 2 and Layer 7 packages. Normally, when you're updating your ACI fabric or you're introducing new Layer 4 to Layer 7 devices, there are some constraints, there are some limitations... When you are doing device packages you will not have the functionality of ASM. It's like WAF, web application firewalls. So you need to configure it manually."
"It needs more features for integrating with third-party vendors."
"I would like to be able to test the upgrades in a simulation before implementing them in production because not everyone has a lab."
"We are waiting to see what happens with the cloud. We want to see if it will scale better."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see some sort of way to baseline the system in a network-centric fashion."
"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"
"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."
"It is still not mature and has room to grow. As with any product out there, it requires time to develop."
"There are some discrepancies within billing, which makes the product average."
"I believe Google Cloud Armor can benefit from enhancements of AI and automation."
"There are some discrepancies within billing, which makes the product average."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing are both high, particularly if you want a high level of functionality. It would be great if the price and licensing cost could be decreased."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"There are no additional costs. We only have to pay for a support contract apart from the license."
"We have seen time improvement using the product."
"Price is always an issue."
"Once you sign for the start kit implementation, you have to go all the way through to the implementation, even if you are experiences issues."
"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."
"The product is not cheap."
"I would rate the pricing of Google Cloud Armor around 7 on a scale of 10. As for the licensing costs, I'm not directly involved in billing, so I don't have specific details on that aspect. We have a partner agreement with Google, which gives us a discounted price for using Cloud Armor."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 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.
What do you like most about Google Cloud Armor?
We utilize Google Cloud Armor alongside our Cloud Load Balancer to safeguard against DDoS attacks. This setup acts as a local Layer 7 proxy provided by Google, allowing us to predict and mitigate D...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Armor?
We have to maintain the solution with the least cost. One to two people are fine, one being an SME and one being a senior SME.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Armor?
There are some discrepancies within billing, which makes the product average. We have not proceeded with the ROI analysis right now, so I cannot comment on it.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Google Cloud Armor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.