Cisco ACI vs Symantec Data Center Security comparison

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Cisco is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.0, while Broadcom is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. Cisco holds a 3.7% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Broadcom’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco ACI

Read 105 Cisco ACI reviews

5,415 Views
3,032 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Symantec Data Center Security

Read 12 Symantec Data Center Security reviews

1,870 Views
1,178 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Cisco ACI

Symantec Data Center Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Cisco ACI and Symantec Data Center Security are leaders in the network management and data security markets, respectively. While Cisco ACI has the upper hand due to its comprehensive automation and integration capabilities, Symantec excels in detailed policy enforcement for infrastructure protection.

Features: Cisco ACI focuses on network automation, centralized management, and microsegmentation, ensuring seamless integration with virtual environments. It also supports vast tenant networks and scalability. Symantec Data Center Security offers robust hardening capabilities, detailed policy enforcement, and intrusion prevention, crucial for safeguarding infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: Cisco ACI users encounter complex configuration processes, a steep learning curve, and limited integration flexibility with third-party products. Enhancements are needed in both documentation and technical support. Symantec Data Center Security requires improved reporting, better third-party integration options, and a more user-friendly interface to enhance policy management and usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco ACI provides deployment flexibility across various environments, though feedback on technical support is mixed. Symantec also supports diverse deployment scenarios but similarly faces criticism regarding technical support responsiveness. Cisco's extensive support structure surpasses Symantec’s, which struggles with complex issue resolution.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco ACI is recognized as an expensive solution with mixed opinions on its value, despite operational savings through automation. Symantec Data Center Security, although costlier than some competitors, promises potential ROI via operational efficiency and security enhancements. Both solutions improve efficiency and reduce downtime, but Cisco ACI's pricing may limit accessibility for smaller businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security

August 2026

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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

Cisco ACI

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

105

Ranking in other categories

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

Symantec Data Center Security

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

12th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 3.7%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Data Center Security is 3.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco ACI	3.7%
Symantec Data Center Security	3.3%
Other	93.0%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Sulaiman Olubiyi

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.

Read full review

Muhammad Ejaz ul Hassan

CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Continuous server hardening has protected critical legacy workloads and simplified security control

Symantec is lagging on the reporting side. I have been working for 10 years and I have identified many gray areas. As a user protecting your infrastructure, you need to sell the value to your management. Management buys the tool for preventing threats, and it works for them. However, you cannot sell it because every solution needs to show what happened in the last few years or how you will be protected in the future. Reporting is the most important thing for the CIO level, not the admin level. I have seen Symantec really lag in this area. I am creating my own tool to build a dashboard to share with the CIO level because they want to know what happened last week, last month, and last year. These reports will tell you about activities. Symantec changed the licensing when Broadcom acquired the company. The question of who will provide support became unclear. Support has now changed and they are making money. I have seen that most of the time when you ask implementation questions, they do not answer you. If you have a problem, they give you a low-level engineer at the first level. This delays resolution. Support has to be better.

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

"Technical support for this solution is great. The ACI guys have been some of the best technical support people that I've worked with at Cisco."

"It is easy to use because you have all the information coming from the same technology."

"The most valuable features of Cisco ACI are micro-segmentation, the VXLAN, and the ACI flattening services."

"I like using WebEx Board."

"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."

"It's improved the static configuration of our data center switching environment. But it's added some challenges to our ability to operationalize it and make it easier for people to manage."

"Because we can use automation processes with this platform, we have been able to free up our IT department's time."

"Automation is its most valuable feature."

More Cisco ACI pros

"Good file integrity monitoring features."

"The file integrity monitoring features are the most valuable features of this product."

"The ability to finely control permissions and restrictions on servers or assets through a customizable rule set is a key strength."

"We have not reduced manpower, the number of servers has gone up, but the number of incidents has tricked down to single digits."

"The monitoring in the management console allows us to find out what is going wrong, and it gets reports even before the user reports it."

"The tool will then detect any anomalies, such as an intruder who has breached the network, which can trigger the system lockdown feature if it's enabled and meets the defined threshold."

"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."

"The console and tools are very user-friendly."

More Symantec Data Center Security pros

Cons

"The initial setup was not straightforward. We adopted an agile strategy, starting small and expanding to multiple data centers."

"Cisco needs to enhance their technical support and pay more attention to regional support."

"The additional features I would like to see included in the next releases are support for our policy-based routing. There are endpoint issues that are there now in the code. Hopefully, these will get fixed in the future code."

"The learning curve is long. It's very difficult to learn Cisco ACI, and as a result, our customers usually have difficulty working with this solution."

"The initial set up was complex. We had to deploy 120 leads. Migrating from Legacy Cisco network to ACI was complex."

"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing. For half the cost, I can obtain the same service with another product."

"It would be great if ACI would include the next generation firewall feature."

"Previously, the product was a little tricky to use."

More Cisco ACI cons

"I think that technical support in general is not really capable of doing their work. They don't have enough knowledge to provide quick solutions, so we usually try to resolve problems within our team."

"A user or administrator making the policy in the DCS should have a very thorough knowledge of the operating system or policy making. You have to be very specific about the data structure."

"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."

"Could have better reporting capabilities and better support."

"The support is very bad. They're not fast at all. Trend Micro's support is much better."

"This solution clashes with Microsoft defender, which results in performance degradation on the machine."

"Agent management is a challenging task."

"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."

More Symantec Data Center Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."

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

"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."

"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."

More Cisco ACI pricing and cost advice

"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."

"The product is a bit costly."

"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

18%

Outsourcing Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	21
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	89

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

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...

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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?

Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Symantec Data Center Security?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Symantec Data Center Security?

As a partner support, we handle all Symantec products for various clients. Currently, we work with DLP, Symantec Endpoint Protection, Data Loss Prevention, Data Center Security, Email Security, and...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Data Center Security?

I am still a Symantec partner. Price rating is five out of ten. Symantec Data Center Security is a perfect solution, but it needs to elaborate its functionalities and functions to the market. Peopl...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware NSX vs Cisco ACI

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Cisco ACI

Compared 10% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Cisco ACI

Compared 8% of the time

Illumio Segmentation vs Cisco ACI

Compared 7% of the time

Juniper Contrail Networking vs Cisco ACI

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco ACI Competitors

TrendAI Deep Security vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 20% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 15% of the time

VMware NSX vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 14% of the time

Sysdig Secure vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 11% of the time

Illumio Segmentation vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Symantec Data Center Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI

August 2026

Download Cisco ACI product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Center Security

July 2026

Download Symantec Data Center Security product report

Overview

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

Symantec Data Center Security provides comprehensive server protection with features like hard disk protection, file integrity monitoring, and centralized management, making it suitable for securing legacy systems and preventing unauthorized access.

Focusing on server integrity and data protection, Symantec Data Center Security delivers robust intrusion prevention, system lockdown, and specific control over server access. With a customizable rule set, it enhances server hardening by fine-tuning access controls without relying on IPS signature detection. While offering significant advantages for managing legacy infrastructure, it also requires improvements in platform metrics, compatibility, speed, and integration with third-party products. Users face challenges with false positives, policy complexity, and compatibility issues, particularly regarding Microsoft and virtualization improvements.

What Key Features Does Symantec Data Center Security Offer?

Built-in Hard Disk Protection: Safeguards data through advanced protection measures.
Centralized Console: Manages diverse product lines from a single interface.
File Integrity Monitoring: Ensures data integrity by tracking changes to files.
Efficient Endpoint Protection: Provides strong defense against endpoint threats.
Robust Intrusion Prevention: Prevents unauthorized access with advanced threat detection.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Enhanced Security: Offers comprehensive protection for critical data.
Customizable Rule Set: Provides flexibility to adjust security policies to specific needs.
Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and improves efficiency.
Improved Server Management: Enhances control over server access and permissions.
Comprehensive Integration: Complements other security components like antivirus and anti-malware.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and technology, Symantec Data Center Security is implemented to protect server integrity particularly in environments using Docker containers and legacy systems. It supports remote operations, enforces stringent access policies, and locks down systems while offering valuable audit capabilities for code changes, especially on Linux.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Symantec Data Center Security

August 2026

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