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Cisco ACI vs Versa Cloud Services Gateway 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
6.2
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (9th)
Versa Cloud Services Gateway
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
12th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 9.1%, down from 15.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Cloud Services Gateway is 2.5%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI9.1%
Versa Cloud Services Gateway2.5%
Other88.4%
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Khandelwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Technical Manager at KPMG
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.
reviewer1569237 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Of Product Strategy at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has many capabilities, but is overly complex for our use cases
We couldn't see anything uniquely valuable in the SDN and that's why we didn't pursue it. While the solution offers many capabilities, it did not line up with what we were looking for in our use case. As we are a small organization and do not possess many resources, the solution we use must be simpler and smaller than Versa Cloud Services Gateway. We found it to be too complex for our use case.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Automation features have been most beneficial for managing complex networks."
"The centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the Call Manager."
"I especially like the host-based routing feature of Cisco ACI because it's straightforward to do it on different data centers. Another valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that its management controller works very well with no issues."
"It scales very well. When you increasingly scale with it, it makes the product easier to work with."
"The most useful feature in the ACI is a feature called Service Graph."
"We are doing automation from ACI and we have integration with Azure. With the Azure stack integration we can have total automation. We can configure the EPGs from there, and we can configure load balancing functionalities from there as well. The most useful feature is that you don't need to configure anything on ACI itself. You can configure on Azure and it will provision your application."
"The integration with vCenter means that when I create something on the network, it only has to happen one time instead of many times for our many virtual hosts."
"It definitely offers a lot of advanced functionality."
"From an economic perspective the solution is very competitive to what is offered in the market."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"There is quite a learning curve at the beginning."
"Because this is new technology, which requires a different way of thinking, it can be hard to understand. Therefore, I would like more documentation or education."
"The product needs to be simpler. There is too much complexity in ACI. 80 percent of its features are of no use to us. We could do with a simplified version."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see some sort of way to baseline the system in a network-centric fashion."
"It would be better to introduce some wizards to guide you through the whole configuration process instead of clicking through a bunch of menus with no concrete path. It is too easy to forget one or another if you configure it this way."
"One of the things that makes it a lot more complicated is the way contracts are handled in ACI. Contracts are like their own access lists. They can improve the setting up of contracts between devices a lot. It can be simplified."
"We found it to be too complex for our use case."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not cheap."
"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."
"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."
"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option."
"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."
"We have seen time improvement using the product."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"From an economic perspective the solution is very competitive to what is offered in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise88
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.
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Also Known As

No data available
Versa CSG, Versa Networks CSG, Versa Networks Cloud Services Gateway
 

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: May 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.