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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs SAP Customer Data Cloud 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 Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
SAP Customer Data Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Social Login (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and SAP Customer Data Cloud aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 25.8%, down 31.3% compared to last year.
SAP Customer Data Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Social Login, holds 25.0% mindshare, down 41.7% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Social Login
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced device administration hindered by complex deployment and security limitations
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication. They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases. This will give them a roadmap for software-defined access (SDA) use cases and network segmentation. Threat detection capabilities are very weak. Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
it_user188688 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to sell products which creates significant revenue but their disaster recovery needs improvement
The Registration/Login Management and Single Sign On tools are extremely valuable for us. They have allowed us to migrate a very complex portion of our architecture to a SaaS service that requires minimal maintenance We can now invest more of our resources into our core business instead of into…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of scalability, you need to factor in your licenses. With a virtual platform, the scalability is more than sufficient. We have over one thousand users."
"Cisco ISE provides authentication for various applications. It can integrate with other applications to manage access, including Privileged Access Management for those applications. For a comprehensive environment, Cisco ISE should be able to integrate and provide asset management for an IT organization or any organization."
"The ability to allow or deny hosts onto the network is valuable. It provides great security to the network environment."
"One of the advantages is that you can easily find rogue endpoints. For example, if you don't want to allow any endpoints where you don't know the people plugging into what kind of devices, ISE can give you a big, clear picture, e.g., what kind of endpoints are getting connected to your network. That is one of the advantages."
"Improves switch account management."
"The interconnection with the ecosystem and the ability to force rules all over the network are the most important features."
"The most valuable feature is 801.1x and another very good feature is the TACACS."
"The best features are the scalability and the license structure."
"SAP CDC is very easy to use and the best part about this tool is its documentation."
 

Cons

"Difficult to figure out the protocols and nodes in order to implement correctly."
"It is a good product, but in order to use all of the functions of the product, you must have a good understanding of the product. You must know how to use and manage it. It is a little bit complicated to configure and manage. It must be simplified to make it easy to manage for end users. In the initial stage, we found ISE complicated for end users. It was not easy to manage it or to write authentication and authorization protocol. They must improve its management and make it easy for end users. The monitoring and reporting capabilities can be improved because end users want to quickly see what is happening in their network. There were some restrictions in working with other vendors. It should also have a better and easy integration with other vendors."
"The knocks I have against the product are the number of bugs that we encounter, constantly, and the amount of upgrading that we have to do."
"The user interface could be improved to make it more user-friendly."
"I would rate this solution a 7.5 out of ten. To make it a ten they should have more people on tech support. They need to invest more in the product. It's a good product. They should just work on tech support. More support for the customer. It's not that easy to get somebody to understand this product. I have had some issues with tech before for the solution. One of them brought the solution down due to some of his activity. They need to hugely invest in their tech support."
"The support could be faster and the pricing could be reduced."
"Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication."
"I would say they need to expand the hardware compatibility. The whole setup works well with Cisco access points and Cisco switches, but when you have multiple vendors in the environment, such as HP switches or access points like Aruba, you'll find they will not work well with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)."
"I have struggled to give different access to different users in the same application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license to use this solution and the price is reasonable."
"We are running Version 2.9 because Version 2.9 of the ISE has a persistent license — it's a one-time payment. The latest version (3.1) is only available if you do a yearly subscription."
"According to my sales and account team, the prices we're getting are pretty good."
"Being fully honest, the Cisco licensing model right now is really confusing. We don't know what licenses we have where. We have Smart licensing, but the different levels are way confusing."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The price is okay."
"The technology is good, but to use some of the other features, and capabilities, they request that we purchase the Cisco DNA Center. As a result, the bundled price is a little high."
"I don't know too much about the actual pricing on it. The licensing part is pretty straightforward. It's a lot more simple than some of the other Cisco licensing models. In that aspect, it's great."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
23%
Computer Software Company
13%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?
Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...
What are the main differences between Cisco ISE and Forescout Platform?
OK, so Cisco ISE uses 802.1X to secure switchports against unauthorized access. The drawback of this is that ISE cannot secure the port if a device does not support 802.1x. Cameras, badge readers, ...
How does Cisco ISE compare with Fortinet FortiNAC?
Cisco ISE uses AI endpoint analytics to identify new devices based on their behavior. It will also notify you if someone plugs in with a device that is not allowed and will block it. The user exper...
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Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Gigya Customer Identity Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, Beachbody, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Cisco IT, Derby City Council, Global Banking Customer, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, London Hydro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Molina Healthcare, MST Systems, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Reykjavik University, Wildau University
Nutricia-Danone, ESI, Frontier Communications, Medialaan, Verizon Wireless, Talpa Media
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.