The Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is meant to provide a centralized approach to all of the network components. In the data center context, it means that the centralized controller is aware of and manages the spine, leaf, and top of rack switches, as well as all the network service functions. This can be done through GUI, CLI, or API. Some might argue that the ACI is Cisco's answer to the broader controller-based software-defined networking.
One of the somewhat confusing points for ACI is the difference between ACI and APIC-EM. In short, ACI focuses on data center operations while APIC-EM focuses on enterprise modules. Both offer a centralized view and control of the network components, but each has its own focus ...
