Cisco Unveils AI-Powered Innovations for Future-Proofed Workplaces

Cisco Unveils New Future-Proofed Workplace Innovations in Amsterdam

When I talk to customers, I often hear that their workplaces are not ready to handle the competing demands created by distributed work and the influx of AI and IoT. Regardless of industry or physical attributes, workplaces are part of a connected and complex environment. When planning for the future of your wireless network, it's essential to consider how Wi-Fi access points integrate with your entire network infrastructure and evolving business needs. Factors like traffic management by switches, how access points connect to other parts of the network, and device security must also be considered. Focusing solely on access points without this broader perspective may lead to connectivity and security challenges. It's nearly impossible to prepare workplaces for the future by looking at these pieces in isolation. A fragmented approach leads to security holes, visibility gaps, and experience breakdown. At Cisco Live 2025 Amsterdam, our teams unveiled innovations designed to tackle these challenges head on. From new Wi-Fi 7 access points to AI-powered security cameras, cutting-edge network security, and AI-native assurance enhancements, we're helping organizations globally create truly future-proofed workplaces in almost every environment. Let's dive into how these technologies are empowering you, our customers, to operate with confidence. Imagine a world where every branch, office, and campus space works smarter for you. To make that vision a reality, we're expanding our Wi-Fi 7 portfolio to bring enterprise-grade capabilities to sites of any size. With the new Wi-Fi 7 Cisco Wireless 9172 Series Access Points, distributed organizations in financial services, retail, and healthcare can now harness the bandwidth, security, and intelligent assurance of 6 Ghz wireless in branches, stores, and local clinics. These access points have a software-defined radio to enhance capacity in 5 Ghz for geographies where 6 GHz is not available or there is no 6 GHz demand as part of the deployment. And with Cisco Spaces included with our improved unified licensing, every site can deliver real-time location tracking across Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® Low Energy while also simplifying IoT sensor management through an open, multi-vendor partner ecosystem and a comprehensive application programming interface (API). With real-time, actionable insights into how people and things interact within buildings, these new and improved access points make it easier to gain spatial context and build seamless integrations. Get details on the full Wi-Fi 7 solution The Cisco Wireless 9172I Access Point is ideal for branch offices, retail stores, and healthcare facilities, providing flexible deployment options and reliable connectivity to support critical business applications and IoT devices. Arriving this spring, the Cisco Wireless 9172H Access Point is purpose-built for hospitality and multi-dwelling unit environments and addresses unique needs, such as in-room connectivity and smart building capabilities. Both models offer an entry into Wi-Fi 7, enabling businesses to scale their networks efficiently and meet growing connectivity demands. Imagine hospitals where critical equipment can be tracked and located in real time, ensuring that healthcare professionals can access the assets they need without delay. The Wi-Fi 7 access points provide ultra-reliable high-speed connectivity with enhanced security and resilience, ensuring seamless operation of critical medical equipment and patient monitoring systems. Coupled with Cisco Spaces, these access points transform into powerful sensors that enable real-time location tracking of medical assets, staff, and patients. IT teams can now derive value from every space in the hospital, driving outcomes like efficient asset management and improved patient care (through locating assets equipped with radio frequency ID [RFID] tags), and enhanced safety (through precise monitoring of high-risk areas). Additionally, the platform's analytics offer insights into space utilization and device performance, supporting informed decision-making and operational efficiency in the complex hospital environment. Cisco access points provide secure Wi-Fi access for patients and staff, real-time location services to find critical assets, resilient bandwidth for patient data and medical apps, and securely connect and power every device on the network. Powering this new wireless infrastructure are Cisco MS150 cloud-managed switches, designed to scale and optimize connectivity for these smaller sites. With twelve different models, these switches provide up to 60W PoE++, with mGig capacity, flexible SFP+ uplinks, and rich stacking capabilities. This scalability supports growing wired and wireless infrastructure demands, making them ideal for adopting Wi-Fi 7 and more. Learn more about the full potential of the cloud-managed MS150 To streamline security management across distributed organizations, Cisco has introduced org-wide firewall policies, simplifying the process of policy creation and enforcement. Adding confidence to these announcements, I'm excited to share our NetSecOpen certification on the Catalyst 8300 Edge Platform for the next-gen firewall capability. Ensuring you a whopping 98.8% security effectiveness score, security teams get real-world confidence in its performance and protection capabilities. Now with bolstered protection, the enhanced multicloud networking security ensures seamless connectivity for branches working with cloud providers like Oracle and Microsoft Azure. Regardless of the physical attributes of branches, Cisco SD-WAN Interconnect allows customers to choose a mix-and-match, best-fit choice of SD-WAN across disparate locations and streamline management from a single dashboard. Sites with similar attributes can run the most operationally efficient SD-Branch solution with Meraki. If certain or all locations require precise WAN configurations, you can deploy a customizable SD-WAN with Catalyst. Get the details on how to use SD-WAN Interconnects With Cisco XDR, you can instantly integrate with Meraki MX appliances at scale to automatically detect and respond to advanced threats, prevent real-time ones with a powerful next-gen firewall, and streamline management to a single dashboard. Mountains of multi-site network telemetry from MX appliances is correlated and contextualized using ML to rapidly detect sophisticated attacks, while AI instantly suggests, or even automates, remediation. And we're not stopping with securing digital assets. By extending our Meraki MV smart cameras portfolio, customers can protect and secure their people and physical assets. Meraki MV introduces two new smart cameras to their lineup. The MV53X is a bullet-style camera with 4K resolution and AI analytics, including people counting. The MV84X is a multi-imager camera with four independent cameras in one housing, offering easy deployment with a single cable and comprehensive coverage for detailed monitoring. Similarity Search with Cross-Camera Tracking, a feature coming soon to Vision Portal, will allow security teams to rely on privacy-first AI/ML technology to track the entire path of a "person of interest" along multiple cameras deployed in the space without the use of facial recognition. Check out the specs at Meraki MV Future-proofing your organization means ensuring excellent performance, no matter the challenge. Assurance tools from Cisco make it easy to maintain high-performing operations across both owned and unowned networks. ThousandEyes Traffic Insights, launching in March 2025, provides out-of-the-box correlation of flow and synthetic data across branch-owned networks, enabling organizations to proactively optimize and resolve performance issues before they escalate. We often hear from customers that they need more time for deployments, planning, or innovation. That's why we're always building more automation and intelligence to eliminate time wasted on tasks beneath your skillset. We're excited to offer a surge of updates centered around AI and automation. Check out a brief list of recent achievements: With secure networking solutions from Cisco, IT leaders can lead the revolution -- not react to it. Spin up hundreds or thousands of new sites faster and deploy any digital initiative without fear of the unknown. Leave crisis mode behind and embrace the thrill of riding the forefront of technology across campus and branch networks.

Future Proofing the Workplace in the age of AI

Over the past few years, AI has radically changed the business landscape. As organizations race to meet unprecedented demands for access, connectivity, and flexibility, it's clear our workplaces need to evolve. Modern workplaces need to be dynamic environments where people and technology intersect to drive innovation and productivity. The influx of IoT devices and AI applications has introduced new complexities. As more devices connect to networks, data demands increase, and security risks intensify. Legacy infrastructures need to modernize to support these innovations. An evolution in workplace design is needed to unlock the real potential of these technologies. Cisco is at the forefront of this transformation, committed to delivering future-proofed workplaces by uniquely integrating networking, collaboration, and security. Our unified approach empowers organizations to navigate the complexities of modern business with simplicity and confidence. The result is secure connectivity and unrivaled collaboration experiences for employees and customers. We've made our mission at Cisco clear: we are simplifying IT everywhere, for businesses of all sizes. We are constantly innovating to help IT teams lead through the AI era, not just react to it. That starts with intelligent networking infrastructure, ironclad security, and proactive assurance across owned and unowned environments. Intelligent Connectivity To radically simplify Net Ops management, we are bringing networking skills to the Cisco AI Assistant. With the AI Assistant for networking, IT will automate routine tasks, receive instant insights into network performance, and resolve problems faster with guided recommendations and automated troubleshooting. When we launched our Cisco Wireless Wi-Fi 7 access points in November, we went far beyond the standard to deliver a wireless solution truly capable of future-proofing every workplace. We included more intelligence, combining AI-native capabilities like advanced Radio Resource Management with a self-configuring out-of-box experience. Beginning today, we're bringing those enterprise-grade innovations to sites of any size. The new Cisco Wireless 9172 series Wi-Fi 7 access points, together with the new MS150 cloud-managed access switch, can provide seamless and consistent connectivity across all environments. When combined with Cisco Spaces, these access points become powerful sensors that can deliver insights from every space, including utilization and device performance, to drive operational efficiency. Secure Every Site We know that deploying cutting-edge technology can potentially open your network up to new vulnerabilities, which is why we build security into the core of every Cisco product. From physical spaces to digital experiences, we're helping you confidently keep your assets safe. Today we announced several new innovations that do just that. With the new integration of Cisco XDR and Cisco Meraki MX, organizations can automatically detect and respond to advanced threats quicker and with more confidence. Through unified visibility, regardless of vendor or vector, Cisco XDR improves security resilience, ML-driven prioritization, and AI guided remediation. To simplify connectivity across a complex network, Cisco SD-WAN Interconnect gives WAN teams a flexible, resilient way to connect their Meraki and Catalyst SD-WAN fabrics, all managed from one central dashboard. Alongside many of the advanced security features you expect from your physical Meraki MX devices, Meraki vMX customers can now secure east-west flows within a given cloud as well as north-south traffic from workloads to the internet. Assure Every Experience Future-proofing your organization includes ensuring exceptional experiences for every employee and customer, regardless of whether or not you own the infrastructure. Set to launch in March, the new ThousandEyes Traffic Insights will unify visibility across internal and external networks. By correlating user traffic flows with synthetic monitoring data it simplifies troubleshooting, streamlines workflows, and makes root-cause analysis faster and more accurate. This approach enables organizations to optimize and resolve performance issues before they escalate, delivering outstanding user experiences and supporting the demands of next-gen applications and devices. We are also laser focused on improving experiences for employees and customers. With our AI-powered Collaboration portfolio, interactions are clearer, more immersive, more effective, and even more human. All of this is critical to building a future-proofed workplace. Engagement and Sustainability for Every Workspace Leaders have defined unique workstyles for their organizations, whether in-office, hybrid, or remote. The imperative now is to create smart workspaces and intelligent interactions that enhance employee engagement across all environments. Future proofing workplaces with smart workspaces requires attention to efficiency and sustainability. Cisco Collaboration devices can deliver sustainability outcomes across the entire product lifecycle. This means devices that last longer and are more cost effective to operate. Alongside our video devices, the recently launched Desk Phone 9800 series will now support deep sleep capabilities enabling up to 81% energy savings compared to idle mode. When you combine these devices with Office Hours and Sustainability Insights in Control Hub, you get meaningful sustainability and energy efficiency gains. Enabling seamless collaboration for everyone means video equipping every workspace, including smaller spaces where BYOD is the norm. That's why we are excited to announce the new Cisco Room Bar BYOD, a flexible AI-powered solution that delivers an incredible audiovisual experience. To help IT, facilities, and HR teams plan their workplace, we are announcing new room configurations for our Webex Workspace Designer. This is a first-of-its-kind interactive design tool for meeting rooms, huddle spaces, executive boardrooms, and now auditoriums and training rooms. To further enhance our global user experience, we are expanding our cloud infrastructure to new sites across EMEA. And Webex Go, our secure and compliant mobile calling solution, is expecting to expand to 13 new countries in Europe via Cloud Connect Partners. AI is Reshaping the Customer Experience In a world where experience truly matters, customer needs should be anticipated and seamlessly delivered. But in an increasingly distributed and complex world, companies have struggled to make customer satisfaction gains. AI presents a way to tackle this complexity with scalable AI Agents and productivity-enhancing AI Assistants--but only if implemented in the right way to deliver frictionless, personalized, and seamless experiences. At WebexOne 2024 we introduced the revolutionary Webex AI Agent -- omnichannel, multilingual AI agents that replace existing digital chat bots and voice IVRs with intelligent, human-like conversations and dynamic automation. By offering an always-on conversational AI experience for customer interactions, human agents can concentrate on more complex, high-value interactions. We are excited to make Webex AI Agent generally available this calendar quarter. Additionally, we are excited today to announce general availability of the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center. The AI Assistant presents agents with automated guidance, context, wellness breaks, and summaries to optimize engagement and improve customer interactions. Only Cisco unifies networking with collaboration and security to create workplaces that are truly future-proofed. By integrating these core elements, we help organizations not only prepare to meet today's challenges but also thrive in the future. Our comprehensive approach empowers businesses to achieve amplified experiences, improved productivity, enhanced agility, and sustainable operations. With Cisco, the future of work is not just envisioned -- it is realized.