Calico Open Source vs Elisity Microsegmentation

Calico Open Source provides networking, network security, and observability for Kubernetes across multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, and on-premises environments. It supports container, virtual machine, and bare-metal workloads with a shared security policy framework. The policy engine implements Kubernetes network policy features including AdminNetworkPolicy and BaselineAdminNetworkPolicy. Policies can use tiers, deny and log actions, NetworkSets, and cluster-wide global rules; Staged Policies allow teams to assess behavior before applying enforcement. Listed data planes include eBPF, iptables, nftables, Windows, and VPP. Whisker provides a visual way to view flow logs and analyze network communication. Calico can also manage WireGuard tunnels to encrypt pod traffic between Kubernetes nodes. Calico Ingress Gateway provides traffic control, load balancing, and ingress policy enforcement. The free plan includes unlimited clusters, with in-memory data retention and community-driven support and maintenance. Tigera describes deployments ranging from 10 to 10,000 or more nodes.

Elisity Microsegmentation applies identity-based least-privilege policies to users, workloads, and devices across IT, IoT, OT, and IoMT networks. Passive telemetry and integrations discover devices and correlate identity, behavior, traffic, and risk in IdentityGraph. Teams can simulate policies against real traffic before activation, while Elisity Intelligence recommends actions for customer approval. A cloud-hosted Cloud Control Center manages Virtual Edge deployments, and Virtual Edge Nodes enforce policies through existing network infrastructure. Elisity describes Virtual Edge as lightweight container software for access-layer switches or virtual environments, without additional hardware. The platform is agentless, supports mixed workloads and hybrid cloud environments, and is available through API, self-hosted, and web platforms. Integrations include Armis, Claroty, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, ServiceNow, Active Directory, Splunk, Cisco, Juniper, Aruba, and Arista. It targets healthcare, manufacturing and industrial organizations, and commercial enterprises. Pricing and subscription terms are set in a Software Order.