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Cisco ACI vs Omada Cloud SDN comparison

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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 Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Omada Cloud SDN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
7th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 8.9%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Omada Cloud SDN is 3.8%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI8.9%
Omada Cloud SDN3.8%
Other87.3%
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

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.
Gavin Cotton - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at Attune
Reasonably priced, easy to deploy, and enables remote monitoring
The implementation is quite straightforward. It works every time. The setup is very easy. I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten. The deployment can be done very quickly. The time taken for deployment depends on the setup. Generally, it can be up and running in a few hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 most valuable features of Cisco ACI are micro-segmentation, the VXLAN, and the ACI flattening services."
"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."
"We can implement customer requirements more quickly."
"Cisco ACI is highly stable; I've deployed it at six or seven data centers, and we've never had any issues with stability."
"This solution is easy to configure, and it is done in an object-oriented manner."
"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."
"The most valuable feature is the throughput that it offers."
"The solution enables us to monitor and help our customer with their connectivity remotely."
 

Cons

"Technical support needs to be more helpful. It's rare that you get a knowledgeable person."
"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."
"The initial set up was complex. We had to deploy 120 leads. Migrating from Legacy Cisco network to ACI was complex."
"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."
"We would like to have faster services and problem monitoring for our customers."
"I wish that if I had to open up an additional tab, I wouldn't have to log in every single time."
"The initial setup of this solution is not straightforward. We had our standard configuration running, but when we moved to ACI it was a completely different dimension."
"Our company had a lot of issues with the starter kit."
"The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"The product is not cheap."
"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."
"Cisco's pricing is very expensive."
"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"The tool is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
13%
Retailer
11%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco ACI, I observe that it is on the more expensive side, although discounts sometimes make it more affordable. Overall, it is recognized as a pr...
What advice do you have for others considering Omada Cloud SDN?
As a current user at home and a pro reseller, I can highly recommend Omada Cloud SDN. For usage at home, it maybe a little bit technical but you can forget many issues like unnecessary add-ons you ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Aviatrix, Megaport and others in Software Defined Networking (SDN). Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.