Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco ACI vs Omada Cloud SDN 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th)
Omada Cloud SDN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
4th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 15.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Omada Cloud SDN is 12.0%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Gavin Cotton - PeerSpot reviewer
Reasonably priced, easy to deploy, and enables remote monitoring
The implementation is quite straightforward. It works every time. The setup is very easy. I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten. The deployment can be done very quickly. The time taken for deployment depends on the setup. Generally, it can be up and running in a few hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very easy to do the configuration after you know how to work with the product. It is global, so you change one interface, and changes are reflected on every switch."
"Cisco technical support is great."
"Cisco ACI's best features include its network-centric approach and micro-segmentation."
"Their technical support is very good. We had a problem and Cisco gave us the best engineer to resolve the issue."
"ACI's most valuable feature is its SDN capabilities. Everything is on your software design controller. Everything is blocked by default until you allow it."
"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."
"The most useful feature in the ACI is a feature called Service Graph."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the Call Manager."
"The solution enables us to monitor and help our customer with their connectivity remotely."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the data center unification of Cisco ACI with Cisco DNA into a single platform to deliver the data center and campus sides."
"Biannually, there is a new design delivered by Cisco. Thus, you are always running behind the new design, and it never stops. With Cisco ACI, this has been a nightmare."
"They should make it easier for the network people to do automated solutions."
"I would like for them to develop integration with AWS."
"Cisco SDN will only work with its own devices, so that's a downside."
"The learning curve is long. It's very difficult to learn Cisco ACI. As a result, our customers usually have difficulty working with this solution."
"The only drawback that we are seeing is the user interface is still a little complex and difficult to use. It needs a more user-friendly interface."
"The error messages should be improved. Sometimes we want to remove an error message so we acknowledge an error and we would then like to remove it but there's no real way of doing that. If we need to do it, we need to open a tech case. That could use improvement."
"The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"The thing that I like the most from Cisco is the support and all the documentation that they have. We do have to pay for it though."
"The cost is fine."
"This is an expensive solution."
"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."
"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"If you compare the licensing and total cost of ACI, it's cheaper than NSX because of the licensing fees. If you are going for full NSX features it will be too expensive, especially the next-generation firewalling feature."
"The tool is reasonably priced."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions are best for your needs.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Omada Cloud SDN?
The tool is reasonably priced. There is no licensing fee.
What needs improvement with Omada Cloud SDN?
The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling. The tool should not be visible on the ceiling.
What is your primary use case for Omada Cloud SDN?
We implement the solution for our clients so that they have Wi-Fi in their villas. We manage the tool for them.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Aviatrix, TP-Link and others in Software Defined Networking (SDN). Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.