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Cisco ACI vs Omada Cloud SDN 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 Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th)
Omada Cloud SDN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
4th
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 May 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 15.5%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Omada Cloud SDN is 11.8%, up from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

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.
Gavin Cotton - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Cisco technical support is great."
"I like features like policy control and micro-segmentation."
"The most valuable features include microsegmentation, L3 Out features, and the common tenant and tenancy model."
"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."
"Virtualization and integration with VMware is the most valuable feature."
"The best part of Cisco ACI is the server deployment and integration."
"The most valuable features are the automation with the different systems for the software development and the ability to provision switches in hours rather than days."
"The scalability has been great. It is very easy to scale."
"The solution enables us to monitor and help our customer with their connectivity remotely."
 

Cons

"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."
"From my point of view, troubleshooting issues relating to ACI can be a little bit complicated to perform."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see some sort of way to baseline the system in a network-centric fashion."
"The CLI needs to be improved."
"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."
"Its graphical user interface (GUI) is not as user-friendly as it could be."
"The error messages should be improved. Sometimes we want to remove an error message so we acknowledge an error and we would then like to remove it but there's no real way of doing that. If we need to do it, we need to open a tech case. That could use improvement."
"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"
"The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."
"It saves time and resources."
"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 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."
"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing."
"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"The tool is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Omada Cloud SDN?
The tool is reasonably priced. There is no licensing fee.
What needs improvement with Omada Cloud SDN?
The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling. The tool should not be visible on the ceiling.
What is your primary use case for Omada Cloud SDN?
We implement the solution for our clients so that they have Wi-Fi in their villas. We manage the tool for them.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Aviatrix, TP-Link and others in Software Defined Networking (SDN). Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.