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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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
102
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 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 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

Rahul Khandelwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables streamlined data center management with automation and application-centric design
The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application. That's helpful, and it's good for one-time implementation. The automation capabilities are really helpful. We deployed one data center using Terraform, and after deployment, many automation features are available, which can be very helpful. Based on my experience, Cisco ACI provides substantial capability; you can design your network accordingly and it's part of the SDN family, providing many benefits to the organization, especially when moving from traditional network infrastructure. Many organizations are actually using the old traditional Nexus infrastructure or some old data center devices. It gives you significant control and one-time implementation capabilities, and it also provides better performance and security. Functionality-wise, Cisco ACI provides integration using automation. We implemented it through Terraform, which was easy. Those features are available, so I don't think any new features are needed right now; something new could come up, but they have implemented many improvements over the years.
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 ability to integrate with other systems is the most valuable feature."
"In a very general way, the ease of access, ease of use, and ease of connecting the system is a valuable feature in itself. The solution doesn't really increase detection rates as that is not what it was created for. Threat prevention comes in from other devices that might be connected into the Cisco ACI that monitors external traffic. It maintains what end-of-life products would be doing and offers other opportunities to unify solutions."
"The routing of traffic is one of our main focuses when utilizing Cisco ACI."
"One area where it has an advantage... is that you're able to reuse a specific integration. If you add another server, you can use a specific integration and assign it to another port."
"Centralized management and control of the entire data center environment and its architecture."
"PBR has been beneficial for network efficiency."
"Cisco ACI's best features include its network-centric approach and micro-segmentation."
"It is easy to use because you have all the information coming from the same technology."
"It helps with DDoS defense and OWASP for SQL injections and cross-site scripting."
"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."
"This solution is a bot management tool that provides extensive capabilities for Cloud Armor."
 

Cons

"Its graphical user interface (GUI) is not as user-friendly as it could be."
"An area for improvement in Cisco ACI is security, which Cisco needs to enhance in the solution. Though Cisco ACI uses a whitelist model, you must purchase an external product, such as a security firewall solution, to make whitelisting work, which the customer could find expensive. For example, you're a customer who has Cisco ACI, and the solution doesn't have IP-based filtering, so as a customer, you've purchased Cisco ACI. However, you still need to buy another product for security, and some customers wouldn't like that. However, some customers prefer to go with Cisco ACI because of its scalability and flexibility versus other solutions such as Juniper and Aruba. Technical support for Cisco ACI also needs improvement, particularly in product knowledge."
"The initial setup was not straightforward. We adopted an agile strategy, starting small and expanding to multiple data centers."
"Compared to VMware, it needs more virtualization technologies."
"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."
"The first setup was difficult because it is a very different discipline than other traditional network deployments. The terminology is very different, so the first time can be difficult."
"Cisco needs to enhance their technical support and pay more attention to regional support."
"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."
"I believe Google Cloud Armor can benefit from enhancements of AI and automation."
"There are some discrepancies within billing, which makes the product average."
"There are some discrepancies within billing, which makes the product average."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The good thing about Cisco is that you can trade in your old products to replace them with ACI."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco's pricing is very expensive."
"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."
"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
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
11%
Retailer
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.