VMware Cloud Foundation vs vCloud Air comparison

Virtustream and Broadcom are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Virtustream is ranked #23, while Broadcom is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.2. Virtustream holds a 0.8% mindshare in ISI, compared to Broadcom’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Virtustream users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

vCloud Air

Read 3 vCloud Air reviews

722 Views
462 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Cloud Foundation

Read 33 VMware Cloud Foundation reviews

3,615 Views
1,265 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

vCloud Air

VMware Cloud Foundation

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

vCloud Air and VMware Cloud Foundation are cloud solutions designed for different use cases. VMware Cloud Foundation has an advantage due to its superior features, which justify its cost.

Features: vCloud Air offers scalability, hybrid cloud capabilities, and secure data centers. VMware Cloud Foundation provides integrated solutions, automation, and extensive application and infrastructure support. This comprehensive suite offers a versatile solution for businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vCloud Air provides straightforward deployment and responsive customer support, simplifying setup and management. VMware Cloud Foundation requires a more complex setup, yet increasingly automated, with advanced service offerings supporting larger infrastructures.

Pricing and ROI: vCloud Air provides competitive setup costs with a flexible pricing model suited for rapid scaling, likely yielding good ROI. VMware Cloud Foundation involves a higher initial investment, with long-term value and enhanced efficiency, delivering a superior ROI for enterprises with significant infrastructure demands.

To learn more, read our detailed Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

March 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

vCloud Air

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

23rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (21st)

VMware Cloud Foundation

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of vCloud Air is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Foundation is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Cloud Foundation	2.0%
vCloud Air	0.8%
Other	97.2%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Saurabh Chandratre

Director Solutions Architect - EMEA & APAC at Blue Medora

With the VPC, you can run your workloads in an active state, use it for development work and for hosting SQL/Exchange Servers in IaaS; RaaS/DaaS for DR activities.

All three components of the vCloud Air are equally valuable and important, i.e., IaaS, DaaS and RaaS. I like the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering compared to the Dedicated Cloud. It gives me the flexibility to utilize the pay-as-you-go option. You can run your workloads in an active state at reasonable prices. I have seen lots of companies use it for their development work, as well as for hosting SQL and Exchange Servers, i.e., in the active-passive mode instead of Replication (RaaS). Disaster Recovery is also a great feature that is affordable and easy to use. Disaster Recovery is a great component of the vCloud Air, where you can protect the on-premises cloud infrastructure, by providing self-service recovery options using the vSphere Replication. Some of the features that really stand out and I have used in my projects are: * Direct Connect: It provides high speed and private line connectivity. * Offline Data Transfer: For encrypted bulk data transport.

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Narasimha Reddy Illuri

VMware Administrator at Infosys

There is progress in performance and stability, but further advancements are needed for end-user satisfaction

VMware Cloud Foundation's best features include its advanced capabilities, security purposes, and performance levels. The solution offers efficient licensing options. Previously, vSphere essential was available, but now it has moved to VMware Cloud Foundation 8.0. It includes advanced features such as lifecycle manager, patching level, and cluster level patching options. The solution now offers auto-deployment of VMs. Previously, I had to use the content library, right-click, and create VMs manually. With VMware Cloud Foundation, auto-deployment is possible by simply right-clicking and assigning a specific DHCP IP, enabling physical to vCenter level communication for automatic VM deployment. The workload portability feature in VMware Cloud Foundation provides good workload balance. For instance, in a cluster level with four to five ESXi hosts, each host has minimum resources allocated for CPU and memory, resulting in significantly reduced utilization at the VMware Cloud Foundation level.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"VMware Workstation has an interesting feature to manage vSphere infrastructure (and also stand-alone ESXi hosts) that is really powerful and useful, for example to avoid to install the vSphere client (or the integration plugin) just to open one VM console or to change the power status for some VM."

"This is the part that should be making admins and CIOs smile."

"The Cloud DRaaS solution provided the organization with new levels of flexibility and cost control, together with rapid expansion capability."

"VMware Cloud Foundation's best features include its advanced capabilities, security purposes, and performance levels."

"The ability to auto-scale is the most valuable feature."

"The tool's UI is great."

"Amongst everything that's out there, I would rate the product a nine out of ten."

"The most valuable area is the ECS environment which includes many features."

"The fact that it automates a lot of manual processes in a net new environment build is most valuable."

"I'm able to deploy many platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Azure on VMware."

"The solution is very stable, the scalability is good, technical support is helpful, and the initial setup is easy and doesn't take much manpower."

More VMware Cloud Foundation pros

Cons

"I feel the user interface/portal can be improved further. I did experience timeout issues and the UI was performing slowly at times."

"It’s a really good idea, but the current implementation is very limited: you can simply see your VMs and just open the VM console."

"I don’t think it is quite where EC2 is with regard to capabilities and features but VMware is investing a lot in vCloud Air."

"VMware Cloud Foundation could be more flexible in terms of supporting other integration and components."

"I would like to be able to connect the APIs."

"The deployment is clumsy and complex. There are too many things that need to be done in order to deploy."

"The documentation could be easier to read"

"The price could be better. VMware Cloud Foundation is overpriced, but I think we get what we pay for."

"Compared to Nutanix, which many people consider a better option due to its single platform approach, VMware Cloud Foundation operates on different platforms."

"The solution's log management could be improved because the logs don't provide enough information."

"VMware Cloud Foundation could be more flexible in terms of supporting other integration and components."

More VMware Cloud Foundation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The pricing can be more competitive."

"The tool's price is slightly on the higher side, but I guess you think there is no one-to-one comparison with other tools. The licensing part has become easier, while earlier, it was quite complex."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved and made more flexible."

"It is quite expensive."

"If our customer has the option to buy a server for $4,000 or $5,000, but VMware asks for two-person licensing $7,000 to $8,000, which is more than the hardware price. So sometimes, the customer cannot pay for it because it's too expensive."

"The pricing is moderate. I would rate it six out of ten."

"VMware Cloud Foundation is overpriced, but I think we get what we pay for."

"The price of VMware Cloud Foundation is a bit high. However, it comes with a lot of useful features and can handle a lot of operational complexity. Overall the price can be seen as being fair for what it offers."

More VMware Cloud Foundation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	27

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about VMware Cloud Foundation?

VMware Cloud Foundation provides us with the vSphere dashboard through which we can manage, monitor, schedule, and spin up your virtual machines. We can manage, monitor, and get reports of your inf...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Foundation?

The price for VMware Cloud Foundation is not cheap, as the market is competitive with AWS cloud. When comparing prices of both clouds, AWS is cheaper because they offer a free section for practice....

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What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Foundation?

In VMware Cloud Foundation, areas that have room for improvement include the experience between VMware Cloud Foundation and the cloud. I prefer working with the cloud due to my study with the archi...

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Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs vCloud Air

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs vCloud Air

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon AWS vs vCloud Air

Compared 12% of the time

Cleura vs vCloud Air

Compared 11% of the time

Interoute vs vCloud Air

Compared 9% of the time

More vCloud Air Competitors

Azure Stack vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 24% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon AWS vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Cloud Foundation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2026

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Cloud Foundation

March 2026

Download VMware Cloud Foundation product report

Overview

vCloud Air is a public cloud platform built on the trusted foundation of vSphere, compatible with your on-premises data center, that includes infrastructure, disaster recovery, and various applications as service offerings. vCloud Air allows you to extend your workloads into the cloud with ease. You can migrate existing onsite virtual machines (VMs) to the public cloud or start up new application VMs directly in the cloud.

Virtustream

VMware Cloud Foundation makes it easy to deploy and run a hybrid cloud. VMware Cloud Foundation provides integrated cloud infrastructure (compute, storage, networking, and security) and cloud management services to run enterprise applications in both private and public environments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Lumeta, LifeSite, Clear Tec Solutions, National Physician Services, Queens University of Charlotte, California Natural Resources Agency, Pacific Disaster Center, Seventy Seven Energy Inc., Columbia Sportswear , CSS Corp

ricoh, dell technologies, sky

Buyer's Guide

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March 2026

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