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Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. Cisco Catalyst Center

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco ACI

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ACisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is network virtualization technology.N/A

    Cisco Catalyst Center

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ACisco Catalyst Center provides an intent-based platform for managing enterprise networks across campus, branch, and edge environments. It combines automation, analytics, and assurance to streamline IT operations, improve security posture, and reduce manual tasks. With integratedAI/ML-driven insights, policy-based controls, and end-to-end visibility across wired and wireless infrastructures, Catalyst Center empowers IT teams toproactively detect issues, enforce compliance, and accelerate…N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco ACICisco Catalyst Center
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco ACICisco Catalyst Center
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco ACICisco Catalyst Center
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco ACI
    I do not found any solution that has the same maturity of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) with other constructors. I tried NEXUS Dashboard fabric controller to try similar usage with nx-os mode and evpn vxlan. NDFC is quiet near to Cisco Application Centric …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    Price Deal
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    I have not selected Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure. I only just started working with it. But speaking from a classical networking background, the possibilities are endless.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    We use Cisco Nexus Series Switches on Cisco ACI. It helps to make new and easy connections. It will better if we can use Generative Artificial Intelligence with them. We manage many domains in one place. We manage more than one company’s network, so Cisco ACI is really …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    no other produst evaluated
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    Reliability
    Scalability
    Compatibility
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    I had been involved on a project that involved ACI, SD-ACCESS and SD-WAN implementation and one of the better things the level of integration of the solutions on the policies level.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    NSX works well as an overlay technology where ACI in combination with secure workload provide a better overall solution
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    Cisco is Cisco. You have the ecosystem and you have end-to-end technology line-up and the integrations against the rest of the portfolio. No other vender has broad view.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    It provide a consistency on the configuration. and you can push configure to all switches. before we managed the switch independently and use prime to push config and we always miss the devices and end up the switch is not have the standard configuration. and Cat Center can …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    Excellent evolution of previous systems
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    I selected Cisco Catalyst Center because it was first on the list.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    Prime was being end of lifed, so the choice was easy. Although it was still very new when we aquired it, we trusted Cisco to deliver a working platform.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    After a deep evaluation we can say that Cisco DNA suits better for an Enterprise implementation.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    Although it's a relatively a new product, it's really intuitive, more refined and give detailed information.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    It is very comparable, and both do about the same thing. However, we do find ACI more suitable for our datacenter, as opposed to our main company network.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    113 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    306 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    96 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    245 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    115 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    319 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    195 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    93 Answers
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    229 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco ACICisco Catalyst Center
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
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    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Cisco Meraki Dashboard
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Score7.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco ACICisco Catalyst Center
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (131 ratings)
    8.4
    (343 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.7
    (10 ratings)
    8.9
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    5.1
    (8 ratings)
    7.9
    (19 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.4
    (11 ratings)
    8.7
    (33 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    6.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco ACICisco Catalyst Center
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    The ACI solution is perfectly fit for a large or multi-site data center environment. It permits simplifying deployment, management, automation, and security. ACI is especially valuable when strong scalability, automation, security, and segmentation are required. However, ACI is less suitable for a small environment due to its complexity and high cost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Would recommend Cisco Catalyst Center to medium to large scale organizations that have many cookie-cutter sites and the resources to properly provision all their devices. I would not recommend to teams that do not have a strong network engineering team that can navigate the various intricacies of the platform.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • Cisco ACI, The object model is very complicated. It's something difficult to understand and also because there is a user interface, there's a web user interface, but it's not optimal to use it because if you want to deploy a large amount of VLAN or a large amount of tenants, it's quite difficult to do it or it's quite challenging. Maybe if you want to configure a large amount of ports using the web interface, it's not appropriate because it takes a lot of time. It also provides APIs to do that, but as I say, the object model is very difficult to understand and there is very little documentation about automation of the ACI and maybe there is but it's not so easy to find.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Again, the ease of use of the APIs and the API Explorer provides the tools needed to write these custom workflows that allow us to do a lot of the automation we’re doing now, saving hundreds of hours by using those tools.
    • The product is very intuitive, and there is a lot of support out there in the DevNet community to help with that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • I think something I've just went to a session with hyper fabric and the ideas that hyper fabric has. Keep it really simple because Cisco ACI is a complex system and adopt some of the ideas behind hyper fabric, bring it to ACI that will be really beneficial. So as I said, automation is a great thing, but it's still, you need to have the background and the really complex stuff that happens behind the scenes to leverage the value of that solution. And by adding more simplicity to it, I think that will be a great thing. And also integrating with other applications in terms of the automation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Within its Tasks - Audit, it can sometimes allow plaintext data, including passwords, to be seen. There should be functionality to detect password usage and appropriately obfuscate the data.
    • Occasionally, Catalyst Center does not sync changes properly within templates, which requires deleting and reconfiguring the template version. Better processes here would be beneficial.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    Provided with the intensive fault isolation for the CISCO ACI, we are glad that we have this Data Center Solution in place and we will continue to renew as long as the future needed requirements are meet and more helpful features will be enabled in the future with the integration of security
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    You'll need a lot of training and hands on experience to get the most out of the product. There are a lot of very useful features in the ACI product. Often times there are a lot of ways to get to a solution for chalanges in the field. The solutions might be different eacht time. Knowing which one to implement is somtimes a challenge.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    It allways works. If there are problems with links going down by accident (say someone accidentally unpatches something they shouldn't have), we rarely miss more then one packet over the link. Also, using VPCs we are able to upgrade the software on the switches without the attached EPs ever noticing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    Day to day operations on Cisco ACI do not require much human intervention, the platform ticks over without any major faults. Being able to rapidly replicate the communication between two groups of machines across multiple sub networks speeds up new application delivery, and the integration into vmWare allows multiple teams within IT to work together to problem solve rapidly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco provides users and partners with a multitude of data for you to consume. I think that the stuff in the public domain goes a long way to assisting you find any answers you may need, plus insights and information from areas such as DevNet provide you with access to more than just the traditional release notes and the like
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    The Cisco ACI training provided by Cisco was in depth, covered all of our requirements, and allowed us to implement and maintain the platform without issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    Being involved in the implmentation gives you more overview on how things are supposed to be working and communicating, you can easily performce troubleshooting and understanding the troubleshooting scenario
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    Actually we start our learning in networking career with Cisco. So it is very useful or easier to learn this product. And honestly speaking, I didn't work in any other data center solution other than Cisco. So I cannot compare what it gives us more than other popular stuff. But this is very nice product like from Cisco.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Cisco Catalyst Centeris basic zero-touch provisioning out of the box. You just rack and stack the switches, patch 'em in, and the controller pushes the config automatically. No need to console into every single box or spend hours script-running over CLI.The AI-driven assurance and telemetry are top-tier. Instead of getting flooded with useless syslog alerts when a link drops, it correlates the telemetry data to give you proactive health checks. It literally pinpoints wireless anomalies and bandwidth chokepoints before the users even start opening tickets.It handles fabric microsegmentation like a boss through SD-Access and TrustSec. You can easily enforce group-based policies right at the hardware level. It drops IoT gear, guests, and corporate traffic into their own secure buckets dynamically, without you having to manage a trillion messy VLANs and ACLs.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    Cisco ACI scales well and is suited in scenarios such as multi-cloud or large data centre implementations. It is not suited to smaller deployments as the efficiencies that it provides are not fully realised. It is well suited in large environments that contain both virtual and bare-metal machines allowing a great deal of flexibility. It is also perfect to support multi-tenancy platforms.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • We've definitely spent quite a bit of time relearning how to do things in ACI, but I think the investment has been well worth while considering that we can now deploy tenants and leaves from the ground up in a matter of seconds.
    • We can if we choose to upgrade an entire datacenters worth of switches in a single night. (We've chosen to break it up for availability requirements, but if you didn't require 99.999% uptime like us you may be able to do it)
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • I have used it for upgrading devices, and it's does a great job at that, however out operations team for whatever reason has not adopted the feature.
    • Overall it feels like Cisco Catalyst Center has been huge waste of time. I feel like my time would be better spent on other projects and looking at other products and tools
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

    Screenshot of AIOpsScreenshot of BaselinesScreenshot of PoliciesScreenshot of HealthScreenshot of Network HierarchyScreenshot of PoE