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Cisco ACI vs Versa Cloud Services Gateway 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
105
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Versa Cloud Services Gateway
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
15th
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 September 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 9.1%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Cloud Services Gateway is 2.6%, up from 2.0% 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 Gateway2.6%
Other88.3%
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.
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

"We use Cisco ACI for perimeter security and threat detection."
"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."
"The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management. Other solutions, like traditional solutions and pricier solutions—or even fabric and PAT—you have to do many configurations on a box-to-box basis, With Cisco ACI, you go on the AP and do some "next, next finish" installer."
"ACI provides network ability to deploy and respond to the needs of applications, both in the data center and in the cloud."
"It offers multitenancy. The opportunity to install it on the same platform with a huge amount of customers."
"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."
"You can integrate Cisco ACI well with VMware."
"It has reduced our day-to-day operations by at least half."
"From an economic perspective the solution is very competitive to what is offered in the market."
"It definitely offers a lot of advanced functionality."
 

Cons

"Security and isolation based on the type of traffic"
"It's very new, so there's lots of bugs, and it's only good for testing with PoC customers."
"I would like to see a smoother transition from existing systems."
"The initial setup was not straightforward. We adopted an agile strategy, starting small and expanding to multiple data centers."
"The GUI is not easy to use."
"I would like to see a lot more integrations with the rest of the Cisco portfolio."
"Customer support for ACI needs improvement. Many customers prefer HPE because their internal support is different and easier to integrate with existing networks. This lack of awareness of ACI's capabilities makes customers stick to traditional networking."
"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."
"We found it to be too complex for our use case."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing."
"It's expensive but the product is very good. I have never found another partner like Cisco with a solution like this and with great support."
"Price is always an issue."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"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 licensing cost for ACI is expensive - I would rate its price 2.5 out of five."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"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
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
No data available
 

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.
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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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.