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Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform

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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

    Anypoint Platform

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/AThe Anypoint Platform developed by MuleSoft and acquired by Salesforce in early 2018 is designed to connect apps, data, and devices anywhere, on-premises or in the cloud. This platform was built to offer out-of-the-box connectors as well as tools that architects and developers can adopt quickly to design, build and manage the entire lifecycle of their APIs, applications, and products.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco ACIAnypoint Platform
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco ACIAnypoint Platform
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco ACIAnypoint Platform
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    113 Answers
    93%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    96 Answers
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    115 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    15 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    93 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    Features
    Cisco ACIAnypoint Platform
    Cloud Data Integration
    Comparison of Cloud Data Integration features of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) and MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
    Feature
    Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
    -
    Ratings
    MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
    9.7
    13 Ratings
    19% above category average
    Pre-built connectors00 Ratings9.814 Ratings
    Connector modification00 Ratings9.714 Ratings
    Support for real-time and batch integration00 Ratings9.714 Ratings
    Data quality services00 Ratings9.614 Ratings
    Data security features00 Ratings9.714 Ratings
    Monitoring console00 Ratings9.714 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco ACIAnypoint Platform
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Make
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    IBM App Connect
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Workato
    Score9.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco ACIAnypoint Platform
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (131 ratings)
    9.0
    (26 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.7
    (10 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    5.1
    (8 ratings)
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (11 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 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 ACIAnypoint Platform
    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
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    Salesforce
    MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is best tool in the market for developing APIs with complex structures communicating with various different types of applications including web applications as well as legacy applications. Also applications including database connectivity for fetching and updating data in the DB tables. I cant think of any scenario which MuleSoft Anypoint Platform could not be used for developing the integrations.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Salesforce
    • API Manager provides easy API Policy Governance. You do not have to manage multiple platforms for managing the policies.
    • Supports hybrid Mule EBS environments. You can configure both CouldHub-based and on-premise-based API using Mulesoft API manager in a similar manner.
    • It's very easy to implement API proxy.
    • User friendly UI.
    • Single platform to manage all.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Salesforce
    • Has more features than what we really need so we're paying for more than we use. Sort of like paying for an Abrams tank when all we really need is a Toyota Corolla.
    • Not a value product, tends to be expensive.
    • Takes a while for developers to learn to use Mulesoft Anypoint.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Salesforce
    We have migrated our existing over 100+ APIs from legacy to MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and the processing has seen over 40% improvement and saved huge amount in overall annual billing. From development perspective, MuleSoft Vibe has made developers life so easy and reduced development time. Extensive logging, and build-in connectors for other integration tools, logging and repo is providing kind of one place solutions. Any point Platform is providing various options like runtime, API manager, Access management, segregation of Business groups and so many other option which is helping us to monitor, configure and manage all our APIs in one place
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    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
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    Salesforce
    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
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    Salesforce
    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
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    Salesforce
    Anypoint Platform support is very responsive. There is also a huge knowledge base and an active online forum where answers to most questions can be found. When needed support engages the engineering group so adequate solutions or workarounds are always provided.
    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
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    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    I have started with MuleSoft Fundamentals course provided by MuleSoft training at start. This was sufficient to do initial learning and get onboarded. The online documentation with different Runtime versions/deprecated functions and keywords are well documented. The automated solution provided by MuleSoft Anypoint Platform to upgrade 3.0 to 4.0 gave a good head start while learning MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and working altogether with Online training and documentations
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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
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    Salesforce
    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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    Salesforce
    Once we have moved all of our system integration APIs to the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, we will need to communicate with a wide variety of external systems. All of our business and service logic is stored in the aforementioned core systems. Anypoint Platform (and all of our APIs) makes it easy to connect to various other platforms. In order to link to these many other systems, connectors and/or components are utilized, and they are simple to configure and integrate.
    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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    Salesforce
    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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    Salesforce
    • Mulesoft can be used to provide an integration platform to a large number of systems like Salesforce, ODBC, JDBC, SAP, Mongo DB, etc.
    • An excellent option to develop microservices and real-time integrations.
    • Not as robust in handling large data volumes, Informatica is better in that respect.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Anypoint Platform Screenshots

    Screenshot of Connect any endpoints using out-of-the-box connectors, dynamic connectivity to API specifications, or by building reusable connectors with Anypoint DevKit™.Screenshot of A reporting suite that provides a real-time view of API consumption trends and operational performance. Analytics provides insight into how your API is being used and informs forward-looking design decisions.Screenshot of A platform to engage with API developers and drive adoption. Share documentation, examples and manage developer access from a single platform.