10 categories · RankedCisco
126Judge labels
5First choices
40Negative labels
12 of 12Models named it
10Categories
September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
5% in SD-WAN for enterprise buyers
Rank 6 of 53 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
0 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 6% of its 18 labels there were negative.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business8 of 53
2%3 labels
under the label threshold
Mid-market6 of 53
2%18 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise6 of 37
5%15 labels
criticized challenger
In sd-wan · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Cisco 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD-WAN | Network and edge | 2% | 6 of 53 | 6% | 18 | accepted challenger |
| SASE platforms | Network and edge | 0% | 17 of 43 | 31% | 13 | criticized challenger |
| Next-generation firewalls | Network and edge | 0% | 20 of 100 | 18% | 11 | accepted challenger |
| Zero trust network access | Network and edge | 0% | 70 of 71 | 100% | 3 | under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare One at 35% |
| Endpoint detection and response | Security operations | 0% | 37 of 54 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Bitdefender GravityZone at 20% |
| Endpoint protection | IT operations and endpoint | 0% | 55 of 99 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Cloud at 22% |
| Security awareness training | Security operations | 0% | 60 of 65 | 100% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by KnowBe4 at 42% |
| SIEM platforms | Security operations | 0% | 21 of 49 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Sentinel at 41% |
| Threat intelligence platforms | Security operations | 0% | 73 of 128 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by NordStellar at 13% |
| Web application firewalls | Network and edge | 0% | 77 of 87 | 100% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 55% |
Movement
This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Cisco yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.
By model
How each model treated Cisco across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 7 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 10 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
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
Direct16 labels3
Paraphrase8 labelsNone
Comparative35 labels4not counted in share
Budget-constrained10 labelsNone
Scale-constrained25 labels2
Negative32 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative126 labels in all, every segment counted; 5 of the 9 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.
“Cisco – Market Leader ... Cisco dominates with ~55,000 customers globally” Qwen 3.7 Flash · SD-WAN · comparative prompt · first choice
“Shortlist 3–5 vendors: Cisco Meraki (easy for mid-market)” Grok 4.1 Fast · SD-WAN · scale prompt · first choice
“Seamless integration (SecureX); strong routing/HA; good for branches ... Lower raw performance vs. leaders; ecosystem lock-in” Grok 4.1 Fast · Firewalls · comparative prompt · alternative
“Choose Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN if you need granular control, complex routing, and have dedicated WAN engineers” MiniMax M2.5 · SD-WAN · comparative prompt · alternative
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.
“you might want to avoid the enterprise-heavy giants like Cisco and Palo Alto” Qwen 3.7 Flash · SASE · negative prompt · hard negative
“Vendors to scrutinize: Cisco ... users and admins still frequently complain about navigating fragmented dashboards and dealing with complex integrations.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · SASE · negative prompt · soft negative
“Forrester excluded Cisco entirely from its 2025 SASE Wave because management interfaces weren't sufficiently unified.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · SASE · negative prompt · soft negative
“Be Cautious: The "Black Box" Proprietary Appliances ... (e.g., early versions of Cisco, Barracuda, or Netscreen)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Cisco, over the 126 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cisco was named but was not.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. 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. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 96 of the 126 answers that named Cisco and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
gartner.com56
fortinet.com38
techtarget.com22
cisco.comYour site21
paloaltonetworks.com21
decryptiondigest.com19
comparitech.com17
reddit.com17
wifihotshots.com17
digitalcarbon.io16
223 of the 244 domain citations in answers naming Cisco came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Names read as Cisco
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cisco; a claim can dispute any of them.
Cisco (Secure Access) 2Cisco (Secure Firewall) 2Cisco (ASA/FTD) 1Cisco (Catalyst SD-WAN + Meraki SD-WAN) 1Cisco (Catalyst/Meraki) 1Cisco (Cisco Secure Access / SD-WAN) 1Cisco (Firescale/Firepower) 1Cisco (SVA) 1Cisco (Secure Access / Secure Connect) 1Cisco (Umbrella + Viptela/ Meraki SD-WAN) 1Cisco (Viptela/ENCS) 1Splunk Enterprise Security / Cisco 1
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'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, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at cisco.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.
Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.