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Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco ACI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (11th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (4th), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)
Cisco ACI
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 24.3%, up from 22.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco ACI is 5.5%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

Matthias Kropf - PeerSpot reviewer
The tool's most valuable feature is visibility but needs improvement in Kubernetes
We use the product in the production environment of server infrastructure.  The tool's most valuable feature is its visibility.  Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it.  I have been using the product since October.  We faced some minor issues, but overall, the product is stable. I…
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides scalability, ease of migration for future DC moves, multi-tenancy and programmability
Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms. To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything. I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more. We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"That is primarily because I've seen increased rules. It's kind of caught us a little off guard. With GuardiCore, I have had to deal with their technical support and engineering team in Israel. They are amazing. They are very quick to adapt."
"The solution is very scalable, especially when connected to the cloud resources."
"The tool is a complete package that offers many features like visibility. You can get a graph with real-time workflows and visibility into server-to-server communication. We get visibility into many things happening within our environment."
"Guardicore makes its own rule set automatically, so we can work fast when creating a rule set."
"Guardicore Centra offers the best coverage specifically in backward compatibility with legacy operating systems."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the maps and ring fencing that help monitor events."
"The interface and dashboard are amazing."
"From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."
"The features we find most valuable is the integration with the virtual switches of our UCS platform."
"One significant attraction for clients in Iran is the robustness of multicast solutions, which has been a major driver for them to migrate to Cisco ACI."
"With its programmability, you can do stuff to policies to make them more flexible, allowing you to connect devices in new ways."
"Virtualization and integration with VMware is the most valuable feature."
"I rate Cisco ACI nine out of ten due to its impressive features."
"This product improved the way our company functions by enabling us to establish our goal of moving to a zero-trust model. That's how Cisco ACI helps us the most."
"Micro-segmentation is the solution’s most valuable feature."
"I especially like the host-based routing feature of Cisco ACI because it's straightforward to do it on different data centers. Another valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that its management controller works very well with no issues."
 

Cons

"It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud."
"They can maybe improve their customer service just because they are kind of a small organization, and customer service isn't as big as others such as VMware."
"Customers would want to see the cost improved."
"The maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow."
"The dashboard needs improvement. It should be more flexible so that I can easily see what I want or need to see."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten, where one is low and ten is high stability."
"The product needs a few features like enhanced user policies and payload-level inspection to improve the offering."
"Needs more customization of honeypots and a vaster catalog of systems able to be mimicked."
"It would be better to introduce some wizards to guide you through the whole configuration process instead of clicking through a bunch of menus with no concrete path. It is too easy to forget one or another if you configure it this way."
"Since it is a new technology, Cisco moved all the menus. This made it tricky to use."
"I would like this solution to be integrated with Pure Storage."
"They should improve the GUI, make it simpler. They also need to improve its integration with other automation tools."
"One of the things that makes it a lot more complicated is the way contracts are handled in ACI. Contracts are like their own access lists. They can improve the setting up of contracts between devices a lot. It can be simplified."
"Its graphical user interface (GUI) is not as user-friendly as it could be."
"We're still in the process of doing the migration. We haven't migrated completely all of our applications out of our legacy into it yet. It was challenging at first, but getting easier now that we're starting to get into it."
"I can recommend that Cisco improve its execution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is too high."
"Guardicore Centra provides better value for money than NSX, was the other solution that we looked at, which was too expensive for what it does."
"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."
"The customer would complain about the cost."
"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."
"GuardiCore has made some new changes to the license now. We've seen monthly and annual licenses based on a subscription. We have a few clients that pay anywhere from $25,000 a year."
"The price is the same as other products in the market. There's no price argument to choose one or the other product, it will cost the customer approximately the same."
"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."
"Pricing for Cisco ACI could be expensive if you're not a gold partner. If you're a gold partner, you'll get reasonable pricing, but to become a gold partner, you must cross several layers. For example, at least twenty engineers within your organization have to be certified, with each certification priced at £2,000 minimum, so this would make some companies think twice about the product. If you're going for Aruba and Juniper products, on the other hand, you can quickly get the partner status, and you can start selling the product. As a gold partner, you can get up to seventy percent discount on Cisco ACI, for example, while an ordinary partner gets ten percent off. Cisco ACI is expensive for both customers and partners, but I'm rating pricing for the product as four out of five because even if the price is costly, you get a lot of benefits from the product. Cisco ACI isn't the best, price-wise, but it's still a good solution. If you're in a small organization, you may be unable to afford it. Cisco ACI is best for enterprises but not SMBs because Cisco ACI and its required resources are expensive."
"The licensing cost for ACI is expensive - I would rate its price 2.5 out of five."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing."
"It's expensive but the product is very good. I have never found another partner like Cisco with a solution like this and with great support."
"Cisco's pricing is very expensive."
"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Guardicore Centra?
I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. I know other micro-segmentation tools like Cisco or Illumio, and so I think they are in the middle.
What do you like most about Guardicore Infection Monkey?
Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy and found that they really stood out from other vendors. It allows us to see mi...
What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?
When we have more than one interface, we can only have one policy for both interfaces. Normally, you have assets with a production interface and a server interface that are only for management. But...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
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 wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
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...
What do you like most about Cisco ACI?
The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.
 

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE
Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco ACI and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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