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Cisco ACI vs Versa Cloud Services Gateway 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
6.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Versa Cloud Services Gateway
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
14th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 9.6%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Cloud Services Gateway is 2.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI9.6%
Versa Cloud Services Gateway2.5%
Other87.9%
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Khandelwal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer1569237 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Of Product Strategy at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has many capabilities, but is overly complex for our use cases
We couldn't see anything uniquely valuable in the SDN and that's why we didn't pursue it. While the solution offers many capabilities, it did not line up with what we were looking for in our use case. As we are a small organization and do not possess many resources, the solution we use must be simpler and smaller than Versa Cloud Services Gateway. We found it to be too complex for our use case.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has made it much easier to deploy and make changes in the data center versus the previous infrastructure, which was NX-OS based."
"It improved the speed of the daily business, and with the preconfigured workflows, daily business tasks are now done more quickly than in the past."
"The most valuable features are the automation with the different systems for the software development and the ability to provision switches in hours rather than days."
"It has saved me a couple of times, as just a backup feature. It can easily do a snapshot before you do any change, and if something goes wrong, you can just rollback."
"For clients, a visible GUI dashboard provides a unified view of the network."
"There are a lot of features, like automation, that reduce manual efforts that would otherwise be time-consuming."
"It improves security and automation."
"Cisco's technical support team is very good."
"From an economic perspective the solution is very competitive to what is offered in the market."
"It definitely offers a lot of advanced functionality."
 

Cons

"The ACI setup is in its initial phases is difficult. The learning curve at the beginning is higher than a normal setup."
"They should make it easier for the network people to do automated solutions."
"It would be better to introduce some wizards to guide you through the whole configuration process instead of clicking through a bunch of menus with no concrete path. It is too easy to forget one or another if you configure it this way."
"The product needs to be simpler. There is too much complexity in ACI. 80 percent of its features are of no use to us."
"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."
"At first, the setup was really complex because we did everything with the GUI first. We had to figure out how to do that and it was frustrating because we had a lot of errors which didn't really tell us anything because we're used to other kinds of messages from the old school networking."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see some sort of way to baseline the system in a network-centric fashion."
"The initial set up was complex. We had to deploy 120 leads. Migrating from Legacy Cisco network to ACI was complex."
"We found it to be too complex for our use case."
"We found it to be too complex for our use case."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have seen time improvement using the product."
"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 pricing is pretty good for new technology."
"It's expensive but the product is very good. I have never found another partner like Cisco with a solution like this and with great support."
"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."
"The product is not cheap."
"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."
"Yearly, we pay around one point two million for the solution."
"From an economic perspective the solution is very competitive to what is offered in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise87
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?
Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.
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Also Known As

No data available
Versa CSG, Versa Networks CSG, Versa Networks Cloud Services Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Aviatrix, Juniper and others in Software Defined Networking (SDN). Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.