Cisco Secure Workload vs VMware NSX comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Workload and VMware NSX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud and Data Center Security solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,083 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network.""It's stable.""Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

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"NSX is good in managing security or controlling the security and the access control for each single VM.""The best part is the blueprint creation where I can create their things and then move on to the target environment.""The solution is easy to use and is good for management control.""NSX extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3, covering the vRO and extending the capability on Layer 3 by decapsulating using a new mechanism. NSX-V was designed to use with VMware products and Success 360, providing more flexibility toward different levels of cloud, containers, and components. NSX-T gives you the ability to stretch your network across different view locations. If you have multiple sites, you can connect them using NSX-T.""I really like the management dashboard, the tailor-made assurance, the telemetry, and the ease of integration with all other solutions of VMware, such as vSphere.""Over the last two years, they've enhanced a lot, especially in regard to integration with OpenStack.""The initial setup is straightforward.""Provides flexibility to deploy and have network virtualization on different types of firewalls."

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Cons
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions.""Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it.""The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."

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"It could be more user-friendly, but it's manageable. When we add a specific node to this particular NSX and the configuration changes, it won't push through the errors where required, but it'll accept it. However, while using it, we will have issues. It can also be more stable.""The solution is only sold as part of a bundle and not as an individual product.""VMware NSX should be able to scale for different customers, even the big ones. Its scalability needs improvement. Stability for it should also be improved.""I would rate NSX's stability eight out of ten - there's room for improvement.""Occasionally the licensing is not very clear. They should make it easier to understand.""NSX could better integrate with open-source products. Of course, it integrates with some, but I know many people are uncomfortable deploying NSX with certain open-source solutions, such as Radar.""In the next release, they should enhance the visual interface. With NSX-T, it's difficult to communicate between the public cloud and the container.""I want to see the solution expand to more than just the network, for example, perhaps it could provide some VLAN technologies."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
  • More Cisco Secure Workload Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "VMware NSX is expensive and everything is licensed. We have to pay for each individual feature."
  • "The price is based on the virtual desktop infrastructure(VDI) side and also is dependant on the size of the environment. The price is expensive and it could attract more purchasers in smaller organisations if it was reduced."
  • "I was not involved in the purchase of the solution but I hear it is on the expensive side."
  • "There is a license required for this solution, we pay annually."
  • "The solution is free and the price for the support can be expensive."
  • "You can scale NSX if you have the resources, but it's usually expensive and complex to scale up."
  • "We are using a perpetual license to use the solution and we have support."
  • "The subscription is on a yearly basis."
  • More VMware NSX Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I'm in pre-sales. I have no technical complaints in regard to the product. The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions.
    Top Answer: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 where… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The initial setup is easy and takes between one and five days.
    Ranking
    Views
    6,371
    Comparisons
    4,113
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    321
    Rating
    7.7
    Views
    17,117
    Comparisons
    10,846
    Reviews
    37
    Average Words per Review
    402
    Rating
    7.8
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Tetration
    VMware Nicira
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

    Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

    Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

    Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

    When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

    Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

    Reviews from Real Users

    The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

    VMware NSX is a full-stack network and security virtualization platform that enables the virtual cloud network. NSX provides a software-defined process for networking that expands throughout cloud frameworks, data centers, and application structures. Users can join and secure applications within their container and multi-cloud infrastructure and their data center. With robust automated provisioning, the platform offers dynamic flexibility and scalability without compromising on network speed or agility.

    VMware NSX recreates the whole software network model so that users can create and deliver apps quickly and securely. Users can customize security policies and leverage IDS/IPS to block against lateral threats. These security policies can be managed throughout private and public clouds from one pane of glass, no matter where your applications run. By consolidating networking and security tasks into a unified platform, users can save up to one-third of their budget.

    VMware NSX Use Cases

    VMware NSX brings the operational model of a virtual machine to users’ data center networks and revolutionizes the foundations of network and security operations. There are a number of use cases, including:

    • Containers - Similar to VMs, users can offer unified, full-stack networking and security for microservices and containerized apps. This includes the ability to micro-segment, use container networking for Kubernetes, and offers complete visibility for microservices.
    • App Delivery - Users can deliver infrastructure as code while also accelerating app delivery with blueprints that can automate the management of security and networking resources.
    • Security - With zero-trust security in public and private cloud environments, users can reduce attacks, lock down critical apps, and design a logical DMZ in software.
    • Load Balancing - Users can update their data centers from legacy load balancers to software load balancers and SDN automation, creating savings of over 50%.
    • Multi-Cloud - Expand networking across clouds and streamline multi-cloud operations with multi-cloud use cases, including rapid workload mobility, seamless data center extension, and multi-DC pooling.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Through a policy-driven approach, VMware NSX provides VMware technologies to assist with network and security visualization in a unified solution. Users particularly like the distributed firewall and the management dashboard.

    Kolawole O., a systems engineer at a tech services company, writes, "NSX's stand-out function is the distributed firewall. The firewall system is just top-notch, and I haven't seen another solution like it."

    A head of business development and partners management at a comms service provider notes, "I really like the management dashboard, the tailor-made assurance, the telemetry, and the ease of integration with all other solutions of VMware, such as vSphere."

    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Secure Workload
    Learn more about VMware NSX
    Sample Customers
    ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
    City of Avondale, Lumeta, Kroll Ontrack, Heartland Payment Systems, Baystate Heallth, Exostar, Tribune Media, iGATE, NTT Communications, Synergent, California Natural Resources Agency, Bloomington Public Schools, Columbia Sportswear, Join Experience S.A, Schuberg Philis
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider57%
    Media Company14%
    Energy/Utilities Company14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Retailer11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government11%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise64%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,083 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 7th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 3 reviews while VMware NSX is ranked 2nd in Cloud and Data Center Security with 42 reviews. Cisco Secure Workload is rated 7.6, while VMware NSX is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Workload writes "User-friendly with a good UI and helpful support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware NSX writes "Reliable and has a good console that requires less effort when using, but is resource-intensive and not as easy to scale". Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Guardicore Centra, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, vRealize Network Insight and Trend Micro Deep Security, whereas VMware NSX is most compared with Cisco ACI, Nutanix Flow Network Security, Guardicore Centra, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation and Trend Micro Deep Security. See our Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX report.

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