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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
102
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 23.9%, up from 22.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco ACI is 5.4%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

KlavsThaarup - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers micro segmentation capabilities and easy to setup
It's micro-segmentation The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature. There are always areas for improvement. It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud. So that could be improved. In future releases, I would like to see more integration with other…
Rahul Khandelwal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its deception features are great, providing a rich telemetry of lured origins, and are a great resource for any active defense strategy."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the maps and ring fencing that help monitor events."
"From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."
"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."
"Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features."
"The most valuable feature is the unified fabric."
"The straightforward migration of all of the applications and loop balancing are the two most valuable features. Also, the measurement of their customer-wide sources is very straightforward. It's another dimension of the networks."
"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."
"The routing of traffic is one of our main focuses when utilizing Cisco ACI."
"Automation features have been most beneficial for managing complex networks."
"Cisco ACI was the first product in the market, offering stability with a significant install base."
"Now, our customers have tiers of management that have meetings with about the simplest tasks because it has to be approved from upper management and senior management and by the time it gets to the engineer that's going to deploy it, it takes way too long. With the solution, they can delegate a person who would be in charge of running the ACI as a whole, and it will be much faster because it doesn't have to go through the whole chain of command for the simple task of deploying one little machine on one port in the data center."
"The basic functionality that is the most useful is creating a virtual network on a physical device."
 

Cons

"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."
"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 maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow."
"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."
"Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it."
"The long-term management of the security policies could be improved with some kind of automation platform, something like Chef or Puppet or Ansible, to help you manage the policies after day-one... to then manage the policies and changes to those policies, going forward, through some type of automation process is not turning out to be really easy."
"Incident tagging could be improved. Other vendors offer semi-automatic tagging, which Guardicore doesn't yet have."
"For technical support, I would rate them a seven because it's a complex technology and the TAC people sometimes don't have much understanding of the product."
"There should be an alternative "ACI Light" solution for smaller-sized enterprises."
"The CLI needs to be improved."
"The firewall has room for improvement because there is no central inspection yet on Cisco ACI."
"Customer support for ACI needs improvement. Many customers prefer HPE because their internal support is different and easier to integrate with existing networks. This lack of awareness of ACI's capabilities makes customers stick to traditional networking."
"It is challenging for people who don't understand the programming language, making it difficult to migrate. With technology, there are two verticals. One is hardware driven and the other is software driven. Most people in our domain understand networking, but they don't understand programming. When we migrate, some programming is required."
"Cisco SDN will only work with its own devices, so that's a downside."
"The interface is sometimes slow. I receive a lot of weird errors when I try to install apps, such as contract apps, which should give me a nice visualization of all the contracts. However, it just doesn't load, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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."
"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."
"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The customer would complain about the cost."
"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."
"Price is always an issue."
"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"We bought a package for hardware, software, and support. At that time, Cisco was simply selling that package to distributors, then we opted for it directly."
"Once you sign for the start kit implementation, you have to go all the way through to the implementation, even if you are experiences issues."
"Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option."
"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."
"It saves time and resources."
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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
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.