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Illumio Logo
4,418 views|3,349 comparisons
85% willing to recommend
VMware Logo
6,357 views|4,052 comparisons
88% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 26, 2023

We compared VMware NSX and Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation based on our users' reviews in six categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Ease of Deployment: While VMware NSX setup can vary from straightforward to complex, taking a few days to several weeks, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation has a relatively straightforward setup that takes six months to complete. 
  • Features: VMware NSX provides robust control over virtual switches, VLANs, and micro-segmentations, while also offering a distributed firewall for enhanced security. Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation prioritizes monitoring capabilities, automatic policy creation, and increased visibility to effectively comprehend application communication.
  • Room for Improvement: VMware NSX has areas for improvement such as clarifying licensing, integrating with open-source products, supporting non-Windows operating systems, simplifying deployment and setup, and offering support and assistance. On the other hand, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation could benefit from expanding its operating system support, improving customer service, enhancing data security, and improving the product's agents in OT environments.
  • Pricing: Users have different experiences with the setup cost of VMware NSX, with some finding it costly due to support expenses and intricate licensing. On the other hand, it is reported that Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation demands a subscription with payments made every three years. It is generally considered expensive.
  • ROI: The profitability of VMware NSX is generally favorable, as users typically experience a return on investment within one to two years. Nevertheless, some users believe that it falls short in terms of substantial security enhancements, leading to a reduced ROI rating. Conversely, it is still too early to gauge the return on investment for Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation accurately.
  • Service and Support: VMware NSX's customer service and support have varying opinions, with some users finding it satisfactory, while others believe it requires enhancement. On the other hand, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation's support team is highly regarded for their promptness and round-the-clock assistance. However, there have been grievances about delayed responses and unhelpful replies.

Comparison Results: VMware NSX offers advanced features like virtual switches, micro-segmentation, distributed firewalls, and integration with other solutions. However, the initial setup for VMware NSX can be complex. On the other hand, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation has a straightforward setup process and is praised for its monitoring capabilities, and visibility into application communication. VMware NSX has room for improvement in licensing clarity, integration with open-source products, and compatibility with non-Windows operating systems. Conversely, Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation could expand its operating system support and enhance customer service.

To learn more, read our detailed Illumio vs. VMware NSX Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,847 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 most valuable feature of Illumio Adaptive Security Platform is monitoring. When I have no requirement from the other application, I can use the web block traffic to build.""The solution helps to maintain logs and monitor activities. It also helps us with access management. The tool helps us to secure organizational data that include files.""The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination.""The solution is easy to use.""The flexibility of the solution is its most valuable feature.""The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across various locations. However, I've encountered challenges related to tagging policies, which can be complex to devise. It's a matter that requires careful consideration and stakeholder involvement before implementing such policies.""It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation.""The product provides visibility into how the applications communicate and how the network protocols are being used."

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"The microsegmentation is great, and the security team thinks it is great.""NSX gives us the ability to put our network, NSX, onto any network there is, which allows us not to have to go to the network team to create networks our VLANs for networks.""VMware NSX offers some of the best features for security, such as micro-segmentation.""The microsegmentation allows me to sleep at night. My job is reducing risk, plugging security holes, and working with the automated layer security. Even if somebody spins up a new server, it has to have a tag in NSX.""We like that everything is integrated.""The best part is the blueprint creation where I can create their things and then move on to the target environment.""Overall, for me, it's a good solution and has been working well.""It gives more security and micro-segmentation. It helps to set network configurations in an easy way."

More VMware NSX Pros →

Cons
"The customer service is lagging a bit. It could be better.""Illumio Adaptive Security Platform could improve by supporting more operating systems. For example, Cisco and Apache appliances.""Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial.""It requires a low-level re-architecting of the product.""The interaction we've had with the support team hasn't been ideal. Technical support should be improved.""I would like to see better data security in the product.""The product’s agents don't work very well in OT environments.""The solution is very basic and doesn't do anything other than the orchestration of layer four endpoint firewall rules."

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"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.""VMware NSX only supports some platforms like KVM.""It could be cheaper!""The solution is only sold as part of a bundle and not as an individual product.""The initial establishment can be complex.""If you're worried that NSX is too complex, I would tell you to take another look. If you compare NSX to a similar solution you might find it to be a bit more complex. Usually, the guy that comes in to implement NSX isn't the network guy and will lack the knowledge for the program. He can lack the knowledge for this program and will therefore think it's complex. You need somebody with network experience.""Since most people are very much used to physical networking, they find it difficult to use VMware NSX in the initial stage.""I want to see the solution expand to more than just the network, for example, perhaps it could provide some VLAN technologies."

More VMware NSX Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
  • "The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Illumio Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing and licensing could be improved as we are a government entity. Lower pricing could always help."
  • "We haven't had to hire a dedicated network engineer because NSX handles 90 percent of it. The reduced overhead in terms of managing networks has been the biggest plus."
  • "We have saved man-hours and decreased our security exposure."
  • "We can't go without NSX, so it's invaluable from this perspective."
  • "The solution is very expensive."
  • "The licensing fees are expensive and we pay on a yearly basis."
  • "It is an expensive product, but cheaper than some competing solutions."
  • "The price of this product is too high."
  • More VMware NSX Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across various locations. However, I've encountered challenges related to tagging… more »
    Top Answer:The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis.
    Top Answer:Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial.
    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 product has valuable features for security and network extension.
    Ranking
    Views
    4,418
    Comparisons
    3,349
    Reviews
    6
    Average Words per Review
    384
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    6,357
    Comparisons
    4,052
    Reviews
    34
    Average Words per Review
    416
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
    VMware Nicira
    Learn More
    Overview

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is a cloud and data center security solution that helps stop breaches from spreading across hybrid and multi cloud IT environments. The solution is designed to stop ransomware, contain cyber attacks, and reduce risk. With Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, users can understand relationships and communications to map exposure risk of systems and data, identify the right security posture and secure applications through least-privilege policies, and ensure a Zero Trust security posture.

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Features

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Scalability: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation scales up to 200,000 managed workloads or over 700,000 unmanaged workloads. These workloads can be in the cloud, on-premises, and in hybrid environments.
    • Single pane of visibility: The solution’s single pane of visibility improves your security posture and ability to prevent and respond rapidly to cyberattacks.
    • Simplicity: With Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, setting up groups and tags is simple. The solution is easy to integrate with next-generation firewalls and can also integrate with IT service management tools to import workload tags to provide more context to workloads.
    • Ransomware containment: The solution provides enforcement boundaries to contain attackers from moving laterally across your organization, enabling security architects to immediately isolate any workload or endpoint compromised in an attack. Enforcement boundaries can be activated instantly through scripts or by manual control, isolating workloads and endpoints already infected from spreading across the organization.

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Visibility everywhere: The Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation solution helps ensure that every interaction on your network is accounted for. 
    • Least-privilege access: By implementing Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, your organization can prevent unexpected breaches from propagating.
    • Adaptability and consistency: The solution guarantees consistent network behavior everywhere. 
    • Proactive posture: Using the solution enables your organization to always be on the lookout for an attack. 
    • Improve breach containment: With the solution, you can prevent unauthorized lateral movement and reduce your blast radius. Creating micro-perimeters around specific assets breaks up your attack surface and gives you the granular control needed to contain breaches.
    • Streamline policy management: The solution enables organizations to decouple segmentation from the underlying network to define policies based on the language that IT uses. Illumio's human-readable labels make policy creation much simpler and faster than traditional network segmentation approaches like VLANs, IP addresses, and port numbers.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has a good auto policy writing feature, great mapping, and useful monitoring. 

    Shashi, Technical Consultant at a financial services firm, explains which features she really likes. “The auto policy writing is great. The feature will give you the option of inbound-outbound traffic. The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination. The illumination definitely stands out. Mapping is great. The application group mapping is useful.”

    The solution has “helpful support, useful monitoring, and high availability,” according to Edwin L., Security Architect at MGM.

    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."

    Sample Customers
    Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
    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
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Retailer10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise69%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Illumio vs. VMware NSX
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Illumio vs. VMware NSX and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Illumio is ranked 4th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 8 reviews while VMware NSX is ranked 1st in Cloud and Data Center Security with 93 reviews. Illumio is rated 8.0, while VMware NSX is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Illumio writes "Pprevents attackers or threats from spreading or moving laterally". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware NSX writes "Allows for seamless micro-segmentation and the support is exceptional". Illumio is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Workload, Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Zero Networks Microsegmentation, whereas VMware NSX is most compared with Nutanix Flow Network Security, Cisco ACI, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Workload and Cisco DNA Center. See our Illumio 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.