Cisco^® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI^™) is the industry's most secure, open, and comprehensive Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solution. It radically simplifies, automates, and provides secure infrastructure deployment and governance while expediting the application deployment lifecycle.

Cisco ACI implements Cisco's intent-based networking framework. It captures higher-level business and user intent in the form of a policy and converts this intent into the network constructs necessary to dynamically provision the network, security, and infrastructure services. It uses a holistic systems-based approach, with tight integration between hardware and software and physical and virtual elements, an open ecosystem model, and innovative Cisco customer Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to enable unique business value for modern data centers. This unique approach uses a common policy-based operating model across the network, drastically reducing the cost and complexity of operating your network.