Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco ACI comparison

Akamai and Cisco are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Akamai is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8, while Cisco is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.0. Akamai holds a 21.5% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Cisco’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Read 18 Akamai Guardicore Segmentation reviews

7,980 Views
5,347 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Cisco ACI

Read 102 Cisco ACI reviews

3,819 Views
2,521 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Cisco ACI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Cisco ACI and Akamai Guardicore Segmentation compete in the network automation and security platforms category. Cisco ACI holds a slight advantage due to its robust integration capabilities and centralized management, making it an attractive choice for existing environments.

Features: Cisco ACI excels in automation, scalability, and programmability, offering centralized management for diverse environments like VMware and Azure. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation's strengths lie in powerful visibility, ease of policy creation, and comprehensive platform support alongside strong micro-segmentation capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Cisco ACI faces challenges with complexity and a steep learning curve, requiring improvements in documentation and third-party service integration. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation needs enhancements in policy management automation, cost-effectiveness, and better integration with leading security appliances.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco ACI's deployment process is challenging, particularly in complex environments, but it benefits from comprehensive technical support, though inconsistencies in service quality are noted. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers easier initial setup due to its modern design; however, it requires improvement in its support resources.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco ACI is viewed as expensive, with licensing costs as a barrier but justified by potential long-term savings and operational efficiency. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation commands a premium price, with advanced capabilities providing enhanced network security and operational efficiency that justify the investment despite high costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco ACI Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco ACI

September 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (12th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (6th), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)

Cisco ACI

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 21.5%, down from 24.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco ACI is 4.7%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	21.5%
Cisco ACI	4.7%
Other	73.8%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Uday Varma

Solution Architecht at Inspira Enterprise

Offers granular control and ease of policy creation with features like telemetry and micro-segmentation but incident tagging is missing

Our customers use the solution for micro-segmentation within the data center or cloud environments. One customer uses it for their on-premises infrastructure, deployed at the code level across their massive network. Another customer uses it in a data center to monitor microsegmentation for their 500-node workload. Moreover, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation has helped our customers manage and secure traffic between different applications or workloads. Earlier, they were using VMware NSX-v, which offered good logging for distributed services on an analytical level. However, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides them with better overall visibility and granular control over-segmentation, even for inter-application and inter-routing traffic.

Read full review

Rahul Khandelwal

Network Technical Manager at KPMG

Enables streamlined data center management with automation and application-centric design

The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application. That's helpful, and it's good for one-time implementation. The automation capabilities are really helpful. We deployed one data center using Terraform, and after deployment, many automation features are available, which can be very helpful. Based on my experience, Cisco ACI provides substantial capability; you can design your network accordingly and it's part of the SDN family, providing many benefits to the organization, especially when moving from traditional network infrastructure. Many organizations are actually using the old traditional Nexus infrastructure or some old data center devices. It gives you significant control and one-time implementation capabilities, and it also provides better performance and security. Functionality-wise, Cisco ACI provides integration using automation. We implemented it through Terraform, which was easy. Those features are available, so I don't think any new features are needed right now; something new could come up, but they have implemented many improvements over the years.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interface and dashboard are amazing."

"The real bonus is the fact that we can secure applications, all the way down to the individual services, on each host. It's actually more granular security than we can get out of a traditional firewall."

"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."

"We like the centralized management of the firewalls. Until we installed Guardicore Centra, we managed all our firewalls individually, so making changes was complicated, difficult, and time-consuming."

"Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features."

"The solution is very scalable, especially when connected to the cloud resources."

"Guardicore Centra offers the best coverage specifically in backward compatibility with legacy operating systems."

"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 microsegmentation as distributed services."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pros

"ACI's most valuable feature is sizing - you can easily find the sizing of the data, which means the data speed, CPU, and virtualization can be determined."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the unified fabric."

"We will improve our organization using the automation."

"Automation features have been most beneficial for managing complex networks."

"The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application."

"It offers multitenancy. The opportunity to install it on the same platform with a huge amount of customers."

"The basic functionality that is the most useful is creating a virtual network on a physical device."

More Cisco ACI pros

Cons

"It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud."

"Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it."

"Supports become difficult when it's for a big organization. For a small organization, medium organization, it still makes sense, however, for a big organization, it makes life difficult."

"The product needs a few features like enhanced user policies and payload-level inspection to improve the offering."

"I would rate the stability a six out of ten, where one is low and ten is high stability."

"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."

"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."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

"From my point of view, troubleshooting issues relating to ACI can be a little bit complicated to perform."

"The user interface should be made easier."

"The challenging thing about Cisco ACI was we had to put a lot of effort into providing the customer the full picture, new standards, and new technology that they had to use. This was more challenging than deploying the product."

"The product needs to be simpler. There is too much complexity in ACI. 80 percent of its features are of no use to us. We could do with a simplified version."

"It needs more integration with public clouds, like Azure and AWS."

"It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them."

"I would like them to simplify the way you configure the Fabric. The process is quite complex. This can be a barrier to entry. For anything, where it should take two or three steps, you have ten steps"

"The ACI setup is in its initial phases is difficult. The learning curve at the beginning is higher than a normal setup."

More Cisco ACI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."

"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."

"The customer would complain about the cost."

"The pricing is too high."

"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."

"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."

"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."

"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"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."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option."

"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."

"We have seen time improvement using the product."

"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."

"The licensing cost for ACI is expensive - I would rate its price 2.5 out of five."

"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."

More Cisco ACI pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	21
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	87

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Illumio vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 45% of the time

VMware NSX vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 9% of the time

Zero Networks vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation Competitors

Cisco Secure Workload vs Cisco ACI

Compared 24% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco ACI

Compared 19% of the time

HPE SDN vs Cisco ACI

Compared 11% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco ACI

Compared 10% of the time

Juniper Contrail Networking vs Cisco ACI

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco ACI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

September 2025

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI

September 2025

Download Cisco ACI product report

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore

No data available

Overview

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a software-based microsegmentation solution that provides the simplest, fastest, and most intuitive way to enforce Zero Trust principles. It enables you to prevent malicious lateral movement in your network through precise segmentation policies, visuals of activity within your IT environment, and network security alerts. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation works across your data centers, multicloud environments, and endpoints. It is faster to deploy than infrastructure segmentation approaches and provides you with unparalleled visibility and control of your network.

Akamai

Cisco ACI provides advanced capabilities with features like seamless integration with VMware and APIs for programmability. It offers centralized management for streamlined operations, efficient micro-segmentation, and robust security, addressing modern data center needs.

Cisco ACI brings automation to data center infrastructure, enabling transitions from legacy to modern environments with centralized management. Organizations benefit from optimized server farms, seamless integration with VMware, and support for Kubernetes, making it suitable for large-scale environments. Offering support for healthcare, finance, and public sectors, Cisco ACI facilitates tasks such as virtual networking and multi-site connectivity with application-centric and network-centric designs.

What are the key features of Cisco ACI?

Seamless Integration with VMware: Ensures smooth operation with existing virtualized environments.
Programmability via APIs: Offers flexibility in network configuration and management through APIs.
Centralized Management: Provides a unified view of the network, simplifying oversight.
Automation: Reduces manual configuration workload, speeding up deployment.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands with ease.
Robust Security: Enhances protection against threats with comprehensive security measures.
Efficient Micro-Segmentation: Improves network segmentation for security and efficiency.

What benefits or ROI should users look for when evaluating Cisco ACI?

Streamlined Operation: Reduced complexity in network management.
Enhanced Performance: Improved network and application efficiency.
Cost Efficiency: Better resource allocation reduces operational costs.
Improved Security: Advanced features for increased protection.
Scalability: Allows growth without significant redesigns.

In the healthcare industry, Cisco ACI supports secure and efficient data management, accommodating regulatory needs and enhancing patient data handling. Financial institutions benefit from robust security and seamless integration with existing infrastructures, facilitating smooth transaction processing. In the public sector, it's utilized for reliable network management and servicing a diverse range of applications.

Cisco

Sample Customers

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco ACI

September 2025

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