Every category where a model named Cisco ACI for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Data center networking	Network and edge	0%	165 of 165	58%	12	criticized challenger
Microsegmentation	Network and edge	0%	78 of 94	50%	2	under 10 labels · led by ColorTokens Xshield at 25%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Cisco ACI yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment and per category, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Cisco ACI across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	2	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	2	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	1	1	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	2	2
Kimi K2	0	1	2	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	1	1
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase11 labels1

Comparative12 labels2not counted in share

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained5 labelsNone

Negative17 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative47 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 3 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“If you need an enterprise-grade, policy-driven SDN with strong security, Cisco ACI is the benchmark.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Data center networking · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“What I'd Avoid: | Cisco ACI | Overly complex and expensive for mid-sized environments” Kimi K2 · Data center networking · paraphrase prompt · hard negative

“Do not buy highly complex SDN platforms (like Cisco ACI) unless you have a dedicated team” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Data center networking · negative prompt · hard negative

“ACI described as "a waste of time and money" by some practitioners” Kimi K2 · Data center networking · negative prompt · hard negative

“often criticized for its significant complexity and high cost... The learning curve and licensing costs can be substantial” Mistral Small · Data center networking · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Cisco ACI, over the 47 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cisco ACI was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

VMware NSX27 of 471Not among the top eight

Arista Networks15 of 475Not among the top eight

Juniper Apstra15 of 473Not among the top eight

Juniper Networks7 of 472Not among the top eight

SONiC7 of 471Not among the top eight

Illumio Segmentation6 of 472Not among the top eight

Ubiquiti UniFi5 of 471Not among the top eight

Arista CloudVision4 of 471Not among the top eight

Cisco Meraki4 of 471Not among the top eight

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation4 of 470Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Cisco ACI. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 39 of the 47 answers that named Cisco ACI and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cisco.comYour site22

g2.com21

us.fitgap.com16

juniper.net15

peerspot.com15

gartner.com13

arista.com11

slashdot.org11

hpe.com10

reddit.com10

122 of the 144 domain citations in answers naming Cisco ACI came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

g2.com/categories/data-center-networking12

us.fitgap.com/search/data-center-networking-solutions/small-business11

cloudnuro.ai/blog/top-10-data-center-networking-solutions-for-robust-it-infrastructure-2029

g2.com/categories/data-center-networking/enterprise9

esim.holafly.com/digital-nomad/data-center-networking-solutions7

v2cloud.com/blog/software-defined-networking-solutions7

gartner.com/reviews/market/data-center-and-cloud-networking6

peerspot.com/categories/data-center-networking6

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Cisco ACI stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 1,600 a month (“cisco aci”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 160 a month
Its own site: It sits on Cisco's site (cisco.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 165 of 165 in data center networking

Segment leader

27%

Arista Networks

First choices: 1 across its categories
Named in: 47 answers
Its own site cited: in 39 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read October 5, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

Names read as Cisco ACI

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cisco ACI; a claim can dispute any of them.

Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) 4Cisco ACI (Application-Centric Infrastructure) 1

Follow Cisco ACI

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

The company

Cisco is the company behind Cisco ACI.

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On record

Company records

Also from Cisco: Cisco ACE, Cisco ACI / Tetration, Cisco AI Defense, Cisco ASA/Firepower, Cisco AnyConnect, Cisco AppDynamics, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, Cisco Catalyst 1200/1300 and 68 more

In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Certifications: CCNA certificationCCNP Collaboration (or equivalent hands-on experience)
Not stated on the pages read: Positioning, who it is for, price, starting price, free plan or trial, integrations, hosting, customers

What Cisco ACI's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: talentbridge.cisco.com/organization/cisco, talentbridge.cisco.com/job/cisco-sd-wan-engineer-56524, talentbridge.cisco.com/job/cisco-uc-voice-engineer-56561, talentbridge.cisco.com/job/customer-success-specialist-cisco-54109, talentbridge.cisco.com/job/strategic-brand-manager-dwm-cisco-54033. A claimed page can correct any of them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Cisco ACI's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Cisco ACI, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Cisco ACI by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Cisco ACI is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Cisco ACI, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.