Cisco ACI vs Symantec Data Center Security comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Cisco is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8, while Broadcom is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0. Cisco holds a 3.7% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Broadcom’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco ACI

Read 106 Cisco ACI reviews

6,425 Views
3,341 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Symantec Data Center Security

Read 12 Symantec Data Center Security reviews

2,532 Views
1,545 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Cisco ACI

Symantec Data Center Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Cisco ACI and Symantec Data Center Security are leaders in the network management and data security markets, respectively. While Cisco ACI has the upper hand due to its comprehensive automation and integration capabilities, Symantec excels in detailed policy enforcement for infrastructure protection.

Features: Cisco ACI focuses on network automation, centralized management, and microsegmentation, ensuring seamless integration with virtual environments. It also supports vast tenant networks and scalability. Symantec Data Center Security offers robust hardening capabilities, detailed policy enforcement, and intrusion prevention, crucial for safeguarding infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: Cisco ACI users encounter complex configuration processes, a steep learning curve, and limited integration flexibility with third-party products. Enhancements are needed in both documentation and technical support. Symantec Data Center Security requires improved reporting, better third-party integration options, and a more user-friendly interface to enhance policy management and usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco ACI provides deployment flexibility across various environments, though feedback on technical support is mixed. Symantec also supports diverse deployment scenarios but similarly faces criticism regarding technical support responsiveness. Cisco's extensive support structure surpasses Symantec’s, which struggles with complex issue resolution.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco ACI is recognized as an expensive solution with mixed opinions on its value, despite operational savings through automation. Symantec Data Center Security, although costlier than some competitors, promises potential ROI via operational efficiency and security enhancements. Both solutions improve efficiency and reduce downtime, but Cisco ACI's pricing may limit accessibility for smaller businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security

November 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 920,939 peers since 2012

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

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

106

Ranking in other categories

Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)

Symantec Data Center Security

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

11th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 3.7%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Data Center Security is 3.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco ACI	3.7%
Symantec Data Center Security	3.7%
Other	92.6%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Sulaiman Olubiyi

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.

Read full review

Muhammad Ejaz ul Hassan

CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Continuous server hardening has protected critical legacy workloads and simplified security control

Symantec is lagging on the reporting side. I have been working for 10 years and I have identified many gray areas. As a user protecting your infrastructure, you need to sell the value to your management. Management buys the tool for preventing threats, and it works for them. However, you cannot sell it because every solution needs to show what happened in the last few years or how you will be protected in the future. Reporting is the most important thing for the CIO level, not the admin level. I have seen Symantec really lag in this area. I am creating my own tool to build a dashboard to share with the CIO level because they want to know what happened last week, last month, and last year. These reports will tell you about activities. Symantec changed the licensing when Broadcom acquired the company. The question of who will provide support became unclear. Support has now changed and they are making money. I have seen that most of the time when you ask implementation questions, they do not answer you. If you have a problem, they give you a low-level engineer at the first level. This delays resolution. Support has to be better.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has benefited my organization by saving us a lot of time."

"This solution is faster than what we had previously."

"I rate Cisco ACI nine out of ten due to its impressive features."

"The centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature."

"The features we find most valuable is the integration with the virtual switches of our UCS platform."

"Cisco support is way better than the competition in my experience."

"The main benefit is the simplicity of the deployment."

"The most valuable features are the ease of setup for redundancy, as well as centralized control."

More Cisco ACI pros

"The granularity of applying the policies is valuable."

"The monitoring in the management console allows us to find out what is going wrong, and it gets reports even before the user reports it."

"Symantec Data Center Security, as a name, represents the perfect solution if you want to harden your servers."

"The advantage of Data Center Security is its ease of use and that it serves as a single unified platform, where I can apply all my security policies to protect that server."

"The most valuable feature is the endpoint protection system."

"Overall, this is a pretty good product."

"The real strength lies in its straightforward approach, offering just two key policies: prevention and detection."

"The ability to finely control permissions and restrictions on servers or assets through a customizable rule set is a key strength."

More Symantec Data Center Security pros

Cons

"Biannually, there is a new design delivered by Cisco. Thus, you are always running behind the new design, and it never stops. With Cisco ACI, this has been a nightmare."

"Frequently, customers become discouraged after transitioning from traditional networking due to its complexity, and they struggle with the steep learning curve necessary to appreciate Cisco ACI's capabilities fully."

"Compared to VMware, it needs more virtualization technologies."

"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."

"The interface is sometimes slow. I receive a lot of weird errors when I try to install apps, such as contract apps, which should give me a nice visualization of all the contracts. However, it just doesn't load, etc."

"I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything."

"The challenging thing about Cisco ACI was we had to put a lot of effort into providing the customer the full picture, new standards, and new technology that they had to use. This was more challenging than deploying the product."

"They should improve the GUI, make it simpler. They also need to improve its integration with other automation tools."

More Cisco ACI cons

"Since the acquisition of Symantec, our customers have not been satisfied with this solution."

"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."

"A user or administrator making the policy in the DCS should have a very thorough knowledge of the operating system or policy making. You have to be very specific about the data structure."

"The product blocks certain processes, even after allowlisting them."

"Agent management is a challenging task."

"The support is very bad. They're not fast at all. Trend Micro's support is much better."

"I think that technical support in general is not really capable of doing their work. They don't have enough knowledge to provide quick solutions, so we usually try to resolve problems within our team."

"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."

More Symantec Data Center Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."

"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing."

"The cost is fine."

"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."

"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."

"Cisco ACI costs depend on how many sites you have. One simple site with a simple installation, including two leaves, two spines, and some fibers, would cost $200,000 to $300,000 for the licenses. The solution is a bit expensive, but it's a good investment if you want your data centers to work without interruption."

"Price is always an issue."

"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."

More Cisco ACI pricing and cost advice

"The product is a bit costly."

"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."

"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud and Data Center Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

17%

Construction Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	89

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Symantec Data Center Security?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Symantec Data Center Security?

As a partner support, we handle all Symantec products for various clients. Currently, we work with DLP, Symantec Endpoint Protection, Data Loss Prevention, Data Center Security, Email Security, and...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Data Center Security?

I am still a Symantec partner. Price rating is five out of ten. Symantec Data Center Security is a perfect solution, but it needs to elaborate its functionalities and functions to the market. Peopl...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware NSX vs Cisco ACI

Compared 14% of the time

Juniper Contrail Networking vs Cisco ACI

Compared 8% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Cisco ACI

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Cisco ACI

Compared 7% of the time

Nuage Networks vs Cisco ACI

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco ACI Competitors

VMware NSX vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 16% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 16% of the time

Sysdig Secure vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 13% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 13% of the time

TrendAI Tipping Point vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 2% of the time

More Symantec Data Center Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI

November 2026

Download Cisco ACI product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Center Security

October 2026

Download Symantec Data Center Security product report

Overview

Cisco ACI provides centralized management of data centers offering automation, flexibility, and integration capabilities for enhanced network efficiency. It streamlines application deployment and network management with programmability and scalability, supporting multi-tenancy and security integration.

Cisco ACI empowers data centers with advanced infrastructure management through automated system controls, micro-segmentation, and tenant isolation. Its programmability simplifies network operations, enabling seamless interactions with VMware and other APIs, while the Service Graph facilitates traffic redirection. Although users find its complex interface challenging, they appreciate ACI's adaptability in component addition, which ensures future scalability. Enhancements are desired in cloud integration and ease of use. Licensing concerns and demand for better third-party product integration are noted, alongside aspirations for comprehensive technical support and cloud platform compatibility.

What are the key features of Cisco ACI?

Centralized Management: Streamlines control of network operations from a single point.
Micro-segmentation: Enhances security through precise traffic segmentation.
Tenant Isolation: Allows distinct network environments for enhanced resource separation.
Programmability with APIs: Offers customization and simplified network management.
VMware Integration: Ensures seamless operation with VMware environments.
Service Graph: Redirects network traffic efficiently for optimal performance.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Cisco ACI?

Operational Efficiency: Reduces manual network configuration efforts.
Scalability: Supports future growth with flexible infrastructure adaptability.
Cost Savings: Multi-tenancy and automation contribute to reduced expenditure.
Infrastructure Control: Enhances management of both physical and virtual network elements.

Cisco ACI is implemented extensively in data centers, enhancing network configuration, and supporting application deployment across sectors. It simplifies system migration and supports multi-site connectivity, enabling centralized control and automation in both virtual and physical environments.

Cisco

Symantec Data Center Security provides comprehensive server protection with features like hard disk protection, file integrity monitoring, and centralized management, making it suitable for securing legacy systems and preventing unauthorized access.

Focusing on server integrity and data protection, Symantec Data Center Security delivers robust intrusion prevention, system lockdown, and specific control over server access. With a customizable rule set, it enhances server hardening by fine-tuning access controls without relying on IPS signature detection. While offering significant advantages for managing legacy infrastructure, it also requires improvements in platform metrics, compatibility, speed, and integration with third-party products. Users face challenges with false positives, policy complexity, and compatibility issues, particularly regarding Microsoft and virtualization improvements.

What Key Features Does Symantec Data Center Security Offer?

Built-in Hard Disk Protection: Safeguards data through advanced protection measures.
Centralized Console: Manages diverse product lines from a single interface.
File Integrity Monitoring: Ensures data integrity by tracking changes to files.
Efficient Endpoint Protection: Provides strong defense against endpoint threats.
Robust Intrusion Prevention: Prevents unauthorized access with advanced threat detection.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Enhanced Security: Offers comprehensive protection for critical data.
Customizable Rule Set: Provides flexibility to adjust security policies to specific needs.
Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and improves efficiency.
Improved Server Management: Enhances control over server access and permissions.
Comprehensive Integration: Complements other security components like antivirus and anti-malware.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and technology, Symantec Data Center Security is implemented to protect server integrity particularly in environments using Docker containers and legacy systems. It supports remote operations, enforces stringent access policies, and locks down systems while offering valuable audit capabilities for code changes, especially on Linux.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security

November 2026

Free Report: Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security report.

See our list of best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors.

We monitor all Cloud and Data Center Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.