IT AI Index

Index › Products › VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation · October 2026 Edition

VMware · 1 category · Named, not ranked

VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation

11Judge labels

0First choices

7Negative labels

5 / 14Models named it

1Category

October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

4 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation was named 4 times in Server virtualization, where Proxmox VE led with 42%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business59 of 67

under the label threshold

Mid-market57 of 78

under the label threshold

Enterprise71 of 88

under the label threshold

In server virtualization · 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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation 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
Server virtualization platforms	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	57 of 78	50%	4	under 10 labels · led by Proxmox VE at 42%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation 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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative1 label1not counted in share

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained5 labelsNone

Negative3 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative11 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 1 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.

“Best if you're already deeply invested in VMware: vSphere / Cloud Foundation (but watch licensing costs)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Server virtualization · direct 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.

“Large enterprises with complex requirements | Higher licensing costs, recent pricing changes, steep learning curve” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Server virtualization · scale prompt · soft negative

“Expensive; Broadcom licensing uncertainty; steep price increases” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Server virtualization · scale prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation, over the 11 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Nutanix AHV11 of 110Not among the top eight

Proxmox VE9 of 110Not among the top eight

Microsoft Hyper-V / Azure Local7 of 110Not among the top eight

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization6 of 110Not among the top eight

XCP-ng6 of 110Not among the top eight

Microsoft Hyper-V4 of 112Not among the top eight

Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager4 of 110Not among the top eight

Scale Computing4 of 110Not among the top eight

Citrix Hypervisor2 of 110Not among the top eight

Oracle VM VirtualBox2 of 110Not 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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation. 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 11 of the 11 answers that named VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

ciopages.com11

databank.com6

tms-outsource.com5

gitnux.org4

nutanix.com4

us.fitgap.com4

dev.to3

g2.com3

guideflow.com3

linkedin.com3

Forty-six of the forty-six domain citations in answers naming VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

ciopages.com/buyer-guides/virtualization-platform11

databank.com/resources/blogs/choosing-an-enterprise-vm-platform-the-evaluation-framework-t5

tms-outsource.com/blog/posts/10-enterprise-server-virtualization-platforms5

guideflow.com/blog/server-virtualization-software3

techbullion.com/6-best-server-virtualization-platforms-for-enterprise-data-centers3

us.fitgap.com/search/server-virtualization-software/enterprise3

wintelguy.com/2024/virtualization-cost-comparison.html3

biztechmagazine.com/sites/default/files/11_18_10%20Virt%20Prod%20Eval_1.pdf2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation 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: not counted (“vmware vsphere / cloud foundation”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 10 a month
Its own site: It sits on VMware's site (vmware.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 57 of 78 in server virtualization

Segment leader

42%

Proxmox VE

First choices: 0 across its categories
Named in: 11 answers
Its own site cited: in 11 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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation; a claim can dispute any of them.

VMware vSphere/Cloud Foundation 1

Follow VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation

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

VMware is the company behind VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation.

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On record

Company records

Also from VMware: VMware Aria Cost, VMware Avi Load Balancer, VMware Carbon Black, VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware ESXi, VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon / Omnissa Horizon, VMware Horizon/Omnissa and 19 more

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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation'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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation, 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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation 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 VMware vSphere / Cloud Foundation, 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.