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Google Kubernetes Engine vs Illumio Segmentation 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
4.8
Google Kubernetes Engine offers cost efficiency and productivity, though additional service costs and competition may affect returns.
Sentiment score
5.6
Illumio Segmentation offers cost-effective, time-efficient security, eliminating extra costs and delivering high ROI with significant savings.
By migrating from AWS to Google Cloud Platform, we have saved a lot of time and money.
Director at Taotesting
I observe extensive return on investment with Illumio.
Senior Security Consultant at Orange Cyberdefense
Illumio serves as a single endpoint technology where I can implement various features, including a zero-trust network, north-to-south and east-to-west configurations, and micro-segmentation, all coming from one platform, which ultimately saves us time and money.
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Illumio definitely demonstrates its value in money-saving capabilities, enhancing our lateral environment inside the organization and providing effectiveness overall once integrated.
Security delivery specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
3.3
User satisfaction with Google Kubernetes Engine support is mixed, with some praising efficiency and others noting delays and challenges.
Sentiment score
4.4
Illumio Segmentation's customer service is reviewed as both responsive and lacking, with praise for availability but issues with delays.
Whenever I raise a case with their support team, regardless of the priority level—P1, P2, P3, or P4—they generally reply within an hour
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Even if we raise an issue on non-working days like Saturdays or Sundays, we receive prompt responses.
IT Specialist at Allianz
The customer support is very prominent.
Security delivery specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.0
Google Kubernetes Engine excels in scalability, supporting dynamic scaling for enterprises and cloud platforms, ideal for diverse applications.
Sentiment score
6.5
Illumio Segmentation is praised for its scalability, effectively managing large installations and seamless integration into cloud and container environments.
The autoscaling capabilities of Google Kubernetes Engine have significantly impacted our operations.
Director at Taotesting
Scaling it to a large level is not an issue for us.
Cyber Security Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
By employing Linux scripting or other methods, I can push the policy to all devices at once, making it easy to scale.
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Illumio's scalability is very good; it is quite easy to scale.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Google Kubernetes Engine is stable, with minimal downtime and consistent performance, appreciated for scalability and adaptability across environments.
Sentiment score
8.0
Illumio Segmentation is rated highly for stability, being reliable with no bugs, though some are still fine-tuning it.
If I have 100 replicas of containers and the traffic suddenly pushes to 1,000 within a fraction of a second, the selected machine type must be fast.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
Illumio is a stable solution with no glitches or bugs reported, making it a reliable product for us.
IT Specialist at Allianz
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest improvements in pricing, upgrades, interface, security, support, integration, backup, and performance visibility for Google Kubernetes Engine.
Illumio Segmentation needs improvements in user support, tool integration, scalability, GUI, log analysis, and data security enhancements.
When looking at the web interface, it feels kind of slow due to the many features involved.
Product Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Log observability could be made easier so someone from high school can use it without having technological expertise.
Consultant at HSBC
It would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular namespace without needing to write certain labels.
Director at Taotesting
They need to install an agent in the container world, while Akamai Guardicore does not need to install an agent, so they have native support that Illumio lacks.
Senior Security Consultant at Orange Cyberdefense
There could also be more examples of how the automations can be done using Illumio.
Cyber Security Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Another improvement might be around scalability, ensuring that as organizations grow, Illumio can handle even larger, more complex environments seamlessly.
DevOps at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Google Kubernetes Engine offers usage-based pricing with flexibility, but costs may rise with robust configurations and small deployments.
Illumio Segmentation offers flexible, competitive pricing tied to workloads, often seen as cost-effective compared to alternatives.
Instead, we only pay for the hardware we use, which results in cost-cutting.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
Google is considered cheaper compared to AWS, making it suitable for smaller to medium companies concerning cost.
Product Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive.
Director at Taotesting
I know that Illumio is the cheapest solution in the security area.
IT Specialist at Allianz
But when you compare it to firewalls, then it may not be that expensive.
Senior Security Consultant at Orange Cyberdefense
I think it's not very expensive if we compare it with Guardicore.
Cyber Security Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Google Kubernetes Engine excels with auto-scaling, easy deployment, integration, security, and reduced complexity for seamless application management.
Illumio Segmentation enhances security with flexible visibility, easy policy management, real-time monitoring, and zero-trust architecture for threat containment.
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team.
Product Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
The best advantage of Google Kubernetes Engine is that it manages Kubernetes for you, making everything related to the master nodes managed for you with automatic updating and upgrading.
Solution Architect at Rutotech
GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service.
Consultant at HSBC
Illumio helps in audit purposes by saving data and showing blocked traffic, ensuring no outside traffic is allowed.
IT Specialist at Allianz
The most important feature is the traffic review analysis, where we use the draft view and the reported view that helps us understand how the application interacts with other applications in the environment, and based on that, we are able to define the policies.
Cyber Security Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Illumio is a powerful tool for micro-segmentation and zero trust security that provides strong visibility, flexible policy management, and effective threat containment, enhancing an organization's internal security posture.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Kubernetes Engine
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (12th)
Illumio Segmentation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (10th), Microsegmentation Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Google Kubernetes Engine and Illumio Segmentation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Google Kubernetes Engine is designed for Container Management and holds a mindshare of 3.5%, up 2.2% compared to last year.
Illumio Segmentation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud and Data Center Security, holds 14.8% mindshare, down 24.9% since last year.
Container Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Kubernetes Engine3.5%
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform14.6%
Amazon EKS11.5%
Other70.4%
Container Management
Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Illumio Segmentation14.8%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation13.2%
VMware NSX9.8%
Other62.2%
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

ParthasarathyT - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
Managed solutions enable efficient handling of web applications and migration projects
Google Kubernetes Engine can be improved by enabling the in-place upgrade of the machine type of an existing node pool since I currently need to destroy and recreate it. There is no feature present where I can upgrade directly, and having more than 1,000 to 2,000 workloads in one node pool makes changing the node pool name difficult for all those workloads. I choose eight out of ten mainly because of the node pool upgrade challenge I mentioned, but also because of the existence of Anthos service mesh, which is the ingress controller available only for the enterprise Kubernetes Engine. It would be beneficial if it could be offered in the normal Kubernetes Engine with any limitations.
Irfan Sharfi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Micro-segmentation has transformed endpoint protection and now isolates internal threats effectively
Illumio can be improved in several areas based on our feedback. Sometimes, the PCE experiences slowness, especially when deploying around 300,000 endpoint devices. When these devices communicate within the network, loading the map or connections can cause latency, which needs improvement for a more user-friendly and faster experience. Regarding improvements to the interface, I believe we can add more features to the graphical user interface, such as proper logs. While the logs currently indicate what was blocked or allowed, clicking on a specific log should provide more information, such as which extra-scope rule is causing a denial, offering better analysis for troubleshooting.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Google Kubernetes Engine is straightforward, as I previously indicated. The need for humans is reduced with GCP since there is no need for ...
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
The price could be a bit cheaper. I don't see anything with Google Kubernetes Engine that needs to be improved. I think they are already implementing Kubernetes itself, so they are the owners. Howe...
What is your primary use case for Google Kubernetes Engine?
I use Google Kubernetes Engine for many purposes, most notably for websites, but the websites are microservices. However, some mega projects have many machines that needed to be containerized, so w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
It will be the same price as the Akamai price for Guardicore. It's expensive, that's true. But when you compare it to firewalls, then it may not be that expensive.
What needs improvement with Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
I would appreciate if Illumio Segmentation's interface were better. It is good enough to manage the operation and get the visibility, but when looking for data regarding licenses and expansion mana...
What is your primary use case for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
My main use case for Illumio Segmentation is security and visibility, as I am able to get a lot of visibility in networking, even in sites I don't know about, and it is a strong security solution. ...
 

Also Known As

GKE, Google Kubernetes
Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat, Kubernetes and others in Container Management. Updated: June 2026.
904,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.