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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs One Identity Manager 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Cisco Identity Services Engine boosts security, simplifies IT, reduces costs, mitigates risks, and enhances efficiency with long-term support.
Sentiment score
6.4
One Identity Manager boosts productivity, automates processes, enhances security, and delivers long-term cost savings for large enterprises.
Direct comparisons with Forescout reveal up to 30% to 40% difference in cost savings.
Without it, we would need thousands of additional people.
If you do not see it as purely an Identity Management tool but as a possibility to automate processes in the company, it provides a huge amount of value.
One Identity Manager saved us approximately thirty to forty percent in terms of time, money, and resources compared to our pre-deployment setup.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Cisco ISE customer service is praised, but tech support varies, with fast resolutions or delays and inconsistent expertise.
Sentiment score
6.7
One Identity Manager's support is mixed, with premium service praised, while standard support often experiences delays and varied partner satisfaction.
I rate the technical support as one out of ten.
Cisco support has pretty good teams for support and every time we had good answers and we could somehow solve the issues we had.
Sometimes it's challenging to identify which support team is responsible for certain issues, which is a significant concern.
If you have outages or critical production problems, you can count on the manufacturer to help resolve the situation.
They should focus on bringing in technically skilled individuals who understand the tools and technologies involved.
Compared to my experiences with other tools, their support is exemplary.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Identity Services Engine scales flexibly for various environments, though virtual deployments and licensing necessitate careful planning and hardware selection.
Sentiment score
7.2
One Identity Manager effectively scales for organizations of all sizes, despite potential performance issues in complex, large-scale scenarios.
Factors like architecture, business nature, and legal limitations such as GDPR affect it.
However, you can have some latency issues depending on where your devices are.
We could handle about 1,00,000 records for different users.
I would rate its scalability as strong since we have not experienced any significant challenges.
This includes designing and implementing IAM solutions for legacy systems, cloud migrations, and multifactor authentications.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco ISE is stable and reliable, though occasional bugs occur, but technical support and proper management ensure performance.
Sentiment score
7.2
One Identity Manager is stable when used correctly; customizations and updates challenge consistency, but version 8 shows improvements.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is considered very reliable and stable.
The stability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is poor for certain use cases, like authentication.
Sometimes when we have upgrades or failovers with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), we had some minor issues.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.
Specifically affecting the test and development environments, not the production environment.
One Identity Manager has improved in terms of performance and added functionality.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek simplified Cisco ISE setup, improved integration and UI, refined stability, transparent licensing, and enhanced logging and analytics.
One Identity Manager requires interface modernization, improved performance, better documentation, responsive support, and simplified tools for customization and integration.
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).
Pricing can be more expensive compared to other vendors, and there is a significant price gap observed, which doesn't seem justified by some specific features.
They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases.
This lack of 24-hour support is problematic from a testing and development standpoint.
It is crucial for them to expand their support team to match their product's success.
When it comes to privileged access management, we need to know who has access to what, which is the central problem we want to solve.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco ISE provides three tiers; complex, costly pricing is offset by comprehensive features and potential discounts through partnerships.
One Identity Manager provides flexible pricing with potential high implementation costs but offers strong functionality and compliance benefits.
Compared to other solutions like HPE ClearPass, Cisco is more costly, and the conversation suggests a possible forty percent price gap compared to competitors.
The license costs can range between $50,000 to $100,000 per year for enterprises.
Cloud solutions are expensive, while on-prem setups with shared environments are cheaper but not effective.
On-premises might incur higher costs.
We have a good enterprise license agreement, and we are very happy with what we get for the price we pay for it.
On-premises, it is cheap.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Identity Services Engine enhances security via dynamic policy enforcement, seamless integration, and robust authentication for a zero-trust environment.
One Identity Manager offers flexible customization, seamless integration, powerful security, and supports complex data management with a user-friendly interface.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers authentication using RADIUS, enhancing network security by separating and segregating networks.
There is value because it helps us secure the network and prevents certain things from happening which could cause financial loss.
The adaptability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) policy enforcement can fit to the site we have depending on which kind of devices we have on site and then the needs for authentication, granting access and then assigning each device into its correct network for segmentation.
It ensures high security through multiple approval processes, preventing unauthorized access and enhancing compliance by providing time-based access for privileged accounts with proper audit trails.
It continuously monitors user behavior in real-time, triggering automated responses, and manages secure access for both on-premises and cloud applications using protocols such as SAML.
Once you have some experience, it demonstrates best practices and guides you on the correct way to use the tool.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
One Identity Manager
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (1st), Identity Management (IM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and One Identity Manager 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 24.2%, down 29.5% compared to last year.
One Identity Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Management (IM), holds 5.4% mindshare, down 7.1% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)24.2%
Aruba ClearPass23.6%
Fortinet FortiNAC17.9%
Other34.30000000000001%
Network Access Control (NAC)
Identity Management (IM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
One Identity Manager5.4%
SailPoint Identity Security Cloud18.4%
Microsoft Entra ID11.8%
Other64.4%
Identity Management (IM)
 

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.
Pradeep Pola - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides robust identity governance with deep customization and advanced integration for complex environments
One Identity Manager is a very robust tool with plenty of out-of-the-box features in the identity and access management space, and it is very easy to customize and fits for very complex platforms. For multinational companies or those with various locations managing their identities and applications, it is very easy and very robust in nature. It also helps streamline aspects of application governance, including access decisions, compliance, and auditing. It has a module called access recertification or attestation for recertification and a robust segregation of duties engine, as a governance platform that collects data and provides a variety of dashboards for management. One Identity Manager provides IGA for difficult-to-manage aspects of SAP, and I can manage by assigning profiles, roles, and groups. There's also a role-in-role concept where I can assign a role to another role. One Identity Manager delivers SAP-specialized workflows and business logic. For example, if my SAP solution is integrated with SAP GRC and I want to request a segregation of duties check with GRC before provisioning an SAP role, all those tasks can be done in One Identity Manager. It is easy to manage and provides a single platform for enterprise-level administration and governance of users' data and privileged accounts, but one must know the product. Learning One Identity Manager takes some time, around four to five months, but once learned, managing applications such as SAP or Active Directory becomes easy. One Identity Manager helps minimize gaps in governance coverage for test, dev, and production servers, and it provides internal deployment tools that make it straightforward to manage code across different environments.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise91
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise83
 

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...
What do you like most about One Identity Manager?
The One Identity birthright process has helped generate user accounts more accurately and quickly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Manager?
We use multiple tools in tandem for better security. The procurement and licensing process can indeed be complex. My experience was decent, with no major problems during procurement or licensing; i...
What needs improvement with One Identity Manager?
The tool did not allow beyond a specific level of visibility; it provided visibility at the user level, not at the level of nested entitlements, resulting in an inaccurate depiction from the asset ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Quest One Identity Manager
 

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
Texas A&M, Sky Media, BHF Bank, Swiss Post, Union Investment, Wayne State University. More at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: October 2025.
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