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Cisco ACI vs Omada Cloud SDN comparison

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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
6.1
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Omada Cloud SDN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
7th
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 November 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 8.9%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Omada Cloud SDN is 3.8%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI8.9%
Omada Cloud SDN3.8%
Other87.3%
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Sulaiman Olubiyi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Automation Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Network automation has simplified secure multi-site connectivity and reduced daily operational effort
I believe Cisco ACI could improve by incorporating something related to agentic AI, where it can execute tasks based on particular evaluations or loop engineering, enhancing fault identification or suggestions based on each tenant's configuration. Additionally, I think they should ensure that the documentation is comprehensive. I appreciate that Cisco provides documentation, and their support engineers are helpful in case of any issues. In terms of governance and security regarding Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, I think what we call evals or evaluations is important, whereby the engineer can evaluate the functionalities of the AI in Cisco ACI, preventing it from making deletions or modifications on its own. Therefore, there should be evaluations or guardrails incorporated into the development capabilities. Regarding accuracy and reliability of output for Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, it hasn't met my expectations. What we need is something called RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation. If Cisco can implement that to utilize customer-specific data instead of general knowledge, while ensuring data privacy under GDPR laws, I think that will result in very good, reliable output.
Gavin Cotton - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at Attune
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 stable, allowing us to update firmware on the go without any downtime, which we couldn't do before, with everything redundant so if you shut down one system then another one takes over."
"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."
"Before we started using Cisco ACI, everything was essentially flat open access, and by using ACI, we're able to segment out everything and get more visibility into our virtual environment."
"The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management."
"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."
"The scalability is perfect, and it is one of the main reasons that we install it."
"Cisco ACI was the first product in the market, offering stability with a significant install base."
"It has benefited my organization by saving us a lot of time."
"The solution enables us to monitor and help our customer with their connectivity remotely."
 

Cons

"I would like to be able to test the upgrades in a simulation before implementing them in production because not everyone has a lab."
"Cisco should provide more examples of code in their website. Something that other people can use. There is a great place in the development area."
"I would like for them to develop integration with AWS."
"Its graphical user interface (GUI) is not as user-friendly as it could be."
"They should improve the GUI, make it simpler. They also need to improve its integration with other automation tools."
"I have been a bit disappointed with technical support from Cisco. They will often take some time to respond."
"It could benefit from an orchestration tool that makes deploying services easier."
"The initial setup was not straightforward. We adopted an agile strategy, starting small and expanding to multiple data centers."
"The product must provide access points that can be plastered into the ceiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."
"Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option."
"Cisco's pricing is very expensive."
"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."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."
"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
13%
Retailer
11%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco ACI, I observe that it is on the more expensive side, although discounts sometimes make it more affordable. Overall, it is recognized as a pr...
What advice do you have for others considering Omada Cloud SDN?
As a current user at home and a pro reseller, I can highly recommend Omada Cloud SDN. For usage at home, it maybe a little bit technical but you can forget many issues like unnecessary add-ons you ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Aviatrix, Megaport and others in Software Defined Networking (SDN). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.