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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
6.1
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (9th)
Omada Cloud SDN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
6th
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 August 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 9.1%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Omada Cloud SDN is 4.4%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI9.1%
Omada Cloud SDN4.4%
Other86.5%
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

"PBR has been beneficial for network efficiency."
"It scales very well. When you increasingly scale with it, it makes the product easier to work with."
"Instead of taking days or multiple days for a deployment of a server or application, they can do it immediately within minutes because all the configuration templates are already there in the control plane, which we can push immediately when the new server gets added."
"Building the ACI Fabric is its most valuable feature."
"It's improved the static configuration of our data center switching environment. But it's added some challenges to our ability to operationalize it and make it easier for people to manage."
"The scalability is great; this is the greatest feature of the technology, as it is a great improvement in scaling out and can greatly increase the overall scalability of the Fabric with multi-port and multi-site, making it a great product."
"The most valuable feature is the throughput that it offers."
"The most valuable features of Cisco ACI are micro-segmentation, the VXLAN, and the ACI flattening services."
"The solution enables us to monitor and help our customer with their connectivity remotely."
 

Cons

"For technical support, I would rate them a seven because it's a complex technology and the TAC people sometimes don't have much understanding of the product."
"It would be good if Cisco ACI had some cross-domain orchestrator that could rule all the pillars in the customer network or interconnect more easily with the compass environment."
"The learning curve is long. It's very difficult to learn Cisco ACI, and as a result, our customers usually have difficulty working with this solution."
"The ability for us to figure out the traffic flows, to enable some of the more segmentation parts of it, is really tough with what is built into ACI."
"Security and isolation based on the type of traffic"
"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."
"I would like to see a lot more integrations with the rest of the Cisco portfolio."
"The stability is not bad, but could be improved."
"The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The thing that I like the most from Cisco is the support and all the documentation that they have. We do have to pay for it though."
"Price is always an issue."
"The product is not cheap."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"It saves time and resources."
"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 tool is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
11%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
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?
Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.
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: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.