Cisco Unveils AI-Powered Network Management Solutions at Cisco Live 2025

Cisco rolls out AI agents to automate network tasks at 'machine speed' - with IT still in control

Computer networking giant Cisco Systems, which has partnered with Nvidia to develop networks for artificial intelligence, on Tuesday announced new versions of its routers and switches it said are optimized for campus deployments of AI. Along with the hardware, new versions of network management software make use of a large language model developed by Cisco called Deep Network Model to automate network tasks. Cisco argues much of network management can be achieved via what's called AgenticOps, where the development and refinement of AI agents is an automated process akin to DevOps. The announcements were the highlight of Cisco's annual Cisco Live customer and partner meeting, taking place Sunday through Thursday this week at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Also: Autonomous agentic AI can shake up workflows, and businesses should prepare now On the hardware side, the 8100, 8200, 8300, 8400, and 8500 are new versions of the Cisco "secure router" family of routers that Cisco says will bring three times the throughput of prior versions. That is meant to handle increased load on branch office networks, Cisco said. Likewise, new versions of Cisco's Catalyst family of campus LAN switches, the 9350 and 9610, have been enhanced to provide up to 51.2 terabit-per-second throughput, "below 5 microsecond latency, and quantum-resistant secure networking to power high-stakes AI applications," said Cisco. The new hardware also includes a new member of the Cisco Meraki family of Wi-Fi access points, the 9179F, and "ruggedized" network switches designed for industrial applications of AI. In both devices, Cisco is incorporating the wireless broadband technology known as "Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul," which is meant as a substitute for fiber-optics. Cisco emphasizes being able to combine URWB, as it's known, with Wi-Fi in the same devices. Along with the new hardware, Cisco said its network management software will combine control of the Catalyst and Meraki devices, along with the industrial switches, in a "unified management platform." Also: AI agents make great teammates, but don't let them code alone - here's why Underlying the unified management platform is its new LLM, the Deep Network Model. Cisco says the model has been trained on the collective Cisco corpus, calling it "a domain-specific LLM trained on decades of Cisco expertise, from CCIE-level content to Cisco U. courseware." The Deep Network Model makes several capabilities possible. One is "Cisco AI Assistant," a natural language interface for network management. Cisco says the Assistant can identify network issues, "diagnose root causes, and automate workflows," which it claims will "reduce troubleshooting time from hours to seconds." The AI Assistant is in public beta. Another capability is AI Canvas, which is an AI-based user interface that Cisco says makes it easier for security operations staff to collaborate with network managers and DevOps team members. The Canvas software is expected to be given to "select customers" for testing this fall. Also: Tech leaders are seemingly rushing to deploy agentic AI - here's why All of these capabilities are wrapped inside of what's known as AgenticOps, an emerging rubric that moves beyond traditional DevOps, DevSecOps, and MLOps. AgenticOps refers to the entire lifecycle of using AI models to automatically code an app, along with the agents the app needs to interface with enterprise resources. The AgenticOps workflow includes the continuous test and refinement, and recoding, of AI apps, from the first developer prompt to the retraining of the underlying language model. Cisco describes AgenticOps as an "orchestration" of AI agents, which are expected to have a high degree of autonomy within the enterprise. Several examples of AgenticOps exist from startups, including AutoGPT, CrewAI, LangGraph, OpenDevin, and AgentOS. Cisco claims the AgenticOps code will "turn real-time telemetry, automation, and deep domain expertise into intelligent, end-to-end actions -- at machine speed and with IT teams still in control." You can read about all the Cisco Live announcements on the Cisco news website.

Cisco touts AI agents in automating network management tasks

Computer networking giant Cisco Systems, which has partnered with Nvidia to develop networks for artificial intelligence, on Tuesday announced new versions of its routers and switches it said are optimized for campus deployments of AI. Along with the hardware, new versions of network management software make use of a large language model developed by Cisco called Deep Network Model to automate network tasks. Cisco argues much of network management can be achieved via what's called AgenticOps, where the development and refinement of AI agents is an automated process akin to DevOps. The announcements were the highlight of Cisco's annual Cisco Live customer and partner meeting, taking place Sunday through Thursday this week at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Also: Autonomous agentic AI can shake up workflows, and businesses should prepare now On the hardware side, the 8100, 8200, 8300, 8400, and 8500 are new versions of the Cisco "secure router" family of routers that Cisco says will bring three times the throughput of prior versions. That is meant to handle increased load on branch office networks, Cisco said. Likewise, new versions of Cisco's Catalyst family of campus LAN switches, the 9350 and 9610, have been enhanced to provide up to 51.2 terabit-per-second throughput, "below 5 microsecond latency, and quantum-resistant secure networking to power high-stakes AI applications," said Cisco. The new hardware also includes a new member of the Cisco Meraki family of Wi-Fi access points, the 9179F, and "ruggedized" network switches designed for industrial applications of AI. In both devices, Cisco is incorporating the wireless broadband technology known as "Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul," which is meant as a substitute for fiber-optics. Cisco emphasizes being able to combine URWB, as it's known, with Wi-Fi in the same devices. Along with the new hardware, Cisco said its network management software will combine control of the Catalyst and Meraki devices, along with the industrial switches, in a "unified management platform." Also: AI agents make great teammates, but don't let them code alone - here's why Underlying the unified management platform is its new LLM, the Deep Network Model. Cisco says the model has been trained on the collective Cisco corpus, calling it "a domain-specific LLM trained on decades of Cisco expertise, from CCIE-level content to Cisco U. courseware." The Deep Network Model makes several capabilities possible. One is "Cisco AI Assistant," a natural language interface for network management. Cisco says the Assistant can identify network issues, "diagnose root causes, and automate workflows," which it claims will "reduce troubleshooting time from hours to seconds." The AI Assistant is in public beta. Another capability is AI Canvas, which is an AI-based user interface that Cisco says makes it easier for security operations staff to collaborate with network managers and DevOps team members. The Canvas software is expected to be given to "select customers" for testing this fall. Also: Tech leaders are seemingly rushing to deploy agentic AI - here's why All of these capabilities are wrapped inside of what's known as AgenticOps, an emerging rubric that moves beyond traditional DevOps, DevSecOps, and MLOps. AgenticOps refers to the entire lifecycle of using AI models to automatically code an app, along with the agents the app needs to interface with enterprise resources. The AgenticOps workflow includes the continuous test and refinement, and recoding, of AI apps, from the first developer prompt to the retraining of the underlying language model. Cisco describes AgenticOps as an "orchestration" of AI agents, which are expected to have a high degree of autonomy within the enterprise. Several examples of AgenticOps exist from startups, including AutoGPT, CrewAI, LangGraph, OpenDevin, and AgentOS. Cisco claims the AgenticOps code will "turn real-time telemetry, automation, and deep domain expertise into intelligent, end-to-end actions -- at machine speed and with IT teams still in control." You can read about all the Cisco Live announcements on the Cisco news website.

Cisco reveals its AI-ready data center strategy - boosted by its Nvidia partnership

Every company and its dog will happily chew your ear off about its AI offerings. Much of this is -- how shall we say? -- junk. But Cisco is a different story. Cisco really is an AI powerhouse, thanks in no small part to its hand-in-glove Nvidia partnership. Today, at Cisco Live, its annual network conference, the company introduced new solutions designed to help enterprises and service providers modernize their data centers for AI workloads, without adding complexity. Also: Dell wants to be your one-stop shop for enterprise AI infrastructure The core of today's announcements is Cisco Silicon One, the company's new unified, high-performance networking chip architecture. Silicon One is designed to power routing and switching across data centers, service providers, AI/machine learning clusters, and enterprise networks. Traditional approaches require different silicon for different network roles, such as routing versus switching, or service provider versus enterprise. According to Cisco, Silicon One delivers a single, flexible architecture that can be deployed across all these environments, simplifying design, deployment, and operations. You'll find this architecture in Cisco's Nexus 9000 series switches, designed to connect the large clusters of GPUs that are essential for AI and machine learning. With the Nexus 9000s built to scale from tens to thousands of GPU clusters, the modular architecture allows you to expand your network as your AI demands grow, Cisco noted. In addition, the next generation of switches will include Nvidia Spectrum application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which can work with the newest versions of Cisco's data center switch operating system, NX-OS. This architecture, by the way, supports up to 51.2 terabits per second (Tbps) per device. Companies need this level of bandwidth in their data centers to deliver high-performance AI services. Cisco also addresses the growing need for high-bandwidth, low-latency, and power-efficient networking by introducing 400 gigabit per second (Gbps) bidirectional optics. This enables you to upgrade your data center networks without replacing existing fiber infrastructure. Also: AI's biggest threat isn't what you'd think - here's how to protect yourself Cisco's offerings are flexible in other ways. Cisco's new Unified Fabric Experience with Nexus, for example, allows customers to streamline network operations across environments. It enables network administrators to merge disparate fabrics into a single, unified management dashboard. In particular, this will enable IT teams to manage LAN, storage area networks (SAN), Internet Protocol Fabric for Media (IPFM), and AI/ML networks from a single pane of glass, with the next release coming in July 2025 Cisco is also rolling out Intelligent Packet Flow, a feature that uses real-time telemetry to dynamically steer traffic across AI fabrics, optimizing performance and proactively detecting issues. The upcoming Cisco AI Assistant, integrated into the Nexus Dashboard, will simplify troubleshooting using natural language queries and intelligent recommendations. Not sure what you'll need from your network for AI workloads? Cisco is also now offering Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs). These are pre-validated, optimized reference architectures for AI workloads, eliminating guesswork and speeding up deployment, Cisco said. These designs cover everything from hardware setup to software tuning, ensuring high performance and reproducibility. Also: The best AI for coding (including a new winner - and what not to use) In a related field, Cisco and Nvidia are building out the Secure AI Factory, which is designed to address AI's unique security challenges. The Secure AI Factory is built on the networking side from Cisco Silicon One and Nvidia Spectrum-X. For the compute side, it relies on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers. These, in turn, are based on NVIDIA HGX and NVIDIA MGX platforms. Finally, the Cisco/NVIDIA Secure AI Factory uses Cisco AI Defense for the software. Get the picture? Nvidia and Cisco are working to help businesses scale their AI ambitions, whether they are hyperscale builders, emerging neocloud providers, or enterprises modernizing their infrastructure. If you're serious about running your own AI infrastructure, consider Cisco's offerings. Get the morning's top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.

Cisco Live: Cisco unifies consoles, pushes AI relevance

Not just a salve for netadmins - this is also a play to ensure Switchzilla is AI-relevant Cisco Live There's light at the end of the tunnel for netadmins tired of juggling multiple management consoles: Cisco announced it's testing a tool called Cloud Control that will drive all its networking, security, and observability tools - and hopefully make the biz more relevant in the AI era. At its Cisco Live conference in San Diego, the networking giant previewed Cloud Control and introduced AI Canvas - an agentic interface that dynamically generates management dashboards that IT pros need to handle different tasks. Cisco also announced an AI Assistant that provides a conversational interface for its products. Both are powered by a "deep network model" the networking giant built to provide expert networking advice. Cisco execs told The Register that Cloud Control relies on Canvas and the AI Assistant and will allow IT teams to use natural language queries to find information about the state of a network, or the reason for glitches and outages. The AI systems will draw on live and historical operational data to advise on issues, generate a UI with the controls needed to address a problem, and propose a fix that agents will then implement - after human approval. Switchzilla thinks IT departments will welcome this "agentic ops" approach, as today they struggle to collaborate when incidents occur because networking, ops, applications, and security teams each have their own domains and tools. CEO Chuck Robbins said these technologies are needed because no organization can scale its headcount to meet security threats, so machines must scale to share the burden. Also at Cisco Live, the tech giant announced the unification of its Catalyst and Meraki switching and wireless hardware ranges, which now share a management console and common licensing. The company additionally announced Nexus Dashboard, which offers a single console to manage NX-OS and ACI fabrics. The keynote crowd applauded both unification announcements. There's an AI tie-in here as well - Cisco thinks these unifications of previously disparate tools make its range portfolio more relevant to companies building AI applications. Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel observed on stage that generative AI creates sporadic spikes of demand for networking and compute resources, but agentic AI creates "sustained perpetual demand for inferencing capacity" - and therefore requires more sophisticated infrastructure that will require IT teams to "re-rack the entire datacenter and rebuild the network." Of course he'd say that, given Cisco's business remains grounded in selling hardware - and especially hardware running its own programmable Silicon One processors. Patel rates programmability as essential because it means Cisco can adapt its boxes for new workloads without needing to go through the lengthy process of developing new silicon. Customers therefore won't need to buy new devices quite so often. Patel then dismissed rival networking vendors whose appliances rely on open-source software and commodity hardware as "metalworking and sheet metal companies." Bragging and sniping aside, Cisco has brought Silicon One into a pair of new campus switches, the C9350 and C9610. Those machines integrate with Hypershield, the distributed security tools Cisco introduced in 2024 that allow the deployment of lightweight firewalls that run in many locations - on switches, servers, and networking devices. The new switches therefore reflect Cisco's belief that networking and security must fuse to enable widespread AI adoption, because the info in AI models and the applications that use them require access to sensitive material. Robbins observed that Cisco's networking competitors don't offer security tools, and its security competitors don't offer networking tools. Patel riffed on that with an observation that "Every technology you buy adds value by itself and compounds value," before adding that users can only realize compound value when products work in harmony. In other words, unifying device and service management with Cloud Control, and improving management for Nexus, Meraki, and Catalyst, will not only please long-suffering netadmins - the moves also let Cisco push its portfolio as a platform for AI that justifies datacenter rebuilds. ®

The cloud is not enough: Cisco embraces the shift toward Hybrid AI workloads

Bottom line: At this year's Cisco Live event in San Diego, one thing became apparent: the opportunity to run modern applications like GenAI and autonomous agents is no longer limited to the cloud. Cisco was ready to highlight several new products and services specifically targeted at major cloud computing providers and large ISPs. They also noted that interest in expanding the capabilities of on-premises data centers is not only still alive, but it's being reinvigorated by the rapid transition to AI-powered workloads. From new AI-optimized, on-premises-focused routers and switches delivered through the company's traditional networking hardware business, to AI-enhanced versions of their communications, collaboration, and customer support software platforms, and even into their new agentic AI offerings, Cisco made it clear at this year's Live event that it is eager and willing to meet the growing demand for capabilities that businesses can run within their own environments. ... it's a stunning development, given the relentless focus on moving everything to the cloud that the IT industry has witnessed over the past 10 to 15 years. In some ways, it's a stunning development, given the relentless focus on moving everything to the cloud that the IT industry has witnessed over the past 10 to 15 years. And a cynic might argue it's an attempt by an old-school tech company to return to its glory days of providing essential enterprise equipment. But in truth, it's part of a much broader industry movement that many large companies are starting to see and talk about. Driven in part by traditional data gravity arguments - which say you need to bring the workloads to the data - the fact that the most valuable corporate data (and the most useful for AI model fine-tuning) often still sits behind the firewall is a key factor. Combine that with the growing range of hardware and software offerings now capable of running these advanced workloads in the enterprise, and it all starts to make sense. While companies will unquestionably continue to use cloud computing resources for some of their workloads, the interest in - and ability to do - more internally is very real. To put it succinctly: the world of Hybrid AI, where companies use both public and private clouds and data centers for AI workloads, has arrived. Viewed through that Hybrid AI lens, many of the specific announcements from Cisco Live gain important relevance. For example, in hardware, new additions to the C9000 series switches and 8000 series routers leverage the latest Cisco Silicon One chips to run latency-sensitive AI workloads, while also integrating support for post-quantum security, zero-trust networking, and other capabilities. The 8000 series routers also incorporate an enhanced version of Cisco's SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network), and next-generation firewall (NGFW) functionality. In computing, Cisco launched its version of Nvidia's Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 GPU server (or, as Cisco calls them, AI Pods), specifically designed for companies to run within their own data centers. Additionally, Cisco built on its partnership with Nvidia to showcase interoperable networking hardware that offers Nvidia's Spectrum-X capabilities, but uses Cisco's Silicon One chips and connects with Cisco G200 switches. The bottom line: it is now much easier for companies with existing Cisco-based networks to connect with these new AI computing resources. On the software side, Cisco announced that many previously cloud-only AI-powered features in Webex - such as blurred backgrounds, audio denoise, and meeting summarization - are now coming to companies that still want to run Webex on-premises. By itself, this isn't a huge announcement, but it clearly signals Cisco's priorities and direction. Similarly, for call center tools, Cisco debuted the Webex AI Agent, which allows pre-built templates for customer service interactions to be created much more easily. The new Cisco AI Assistant can also provide call center employees with real-time transcriptions that compensate for fast talkers, those with accents, and - most importantly - conversations across different languages. In addition, the Assistant can suggest responses, which can be tremendously helpful for customer service agents with limited experience. As expected, Cisco also announced several AI and agentic-based capabilities, including its own customized, network-focused LLM, called Deep Network Model. It is trained on Cisco's own documentation, as well as decades of real-world data on how to interpret and resolve network-based issues. Cisco is using this model to power several important new capabilities, most notably AgenticOps and the AI Canvas. Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia - vertically integrated option AgenticOps is Cisco's new tool for helping manage what is expected to be a deluge of new AI-powered agents traversing its networks. The goal is to provide a platform that can automate and operate agents at machine-level speeds and deliver real-time telemetry, while still allowing human IT teams to remain in control. The AI Canvas takes data from the AgenticOps tool and enables organizations to create dashboards and other visual indicators of key network, application, and agent activities. The Deep Network Model is also being used to power the previously mentioned network-focused chatbot, the Cisco AI Assistant. It offers a valuable way for IT employees and network administrators to get quick, accurate answers to common issues they face in their day-to-day work. Importantly, all of these agentic capabilities are being made available for both cloud-based and on-premises implementations, with feature and functionality parity across both. Another key area Cisco discussed in depth at Live was creating even more secure networks - again, on-premises. Noting that AI-powered tools also give bad actors new opportunities to launch dangerous cyberattacks, the company introduced important new additions to its zero-trust and firewall offerings to help mitigate these risks. Specifically, Cisco unveiled a new Hybrid Mesh Firewall, as well as a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) strategy that brings security protections deeper into the network and across a more distributed set of hardware (including that of some competitors), while also simplifying the configuration and management of these tools. One particularly relevant feature is that ZTNA capabilities are being extended to digital agents, helping ensure they are constantly monitored. Of course, Cisco made a huge range of other announcements as well, particularly around further integrations between its ThousandEyes monitoring and Splunk automation tools. The new single Ethernet-cable-connected PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) camera is also a great extension of the company's collaboration offerings. Taken together, all the news from Cisco Live points to a vision of a company focused not only on bringing advanced AI capabilities to cloud-based offerings, but to on-premises installations as well. Cisco clearly sees a shift in focus among many businesses worldwide, and they are eager to provide solutions that meet those evolving needs. Bob O'Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on X @bobodtech

Cisco and NVIDIA Advance Security for Enterprise AI Factories

Cisco and NVIDIA are helping set a new standard for secure, scalable and high-performance enterprise AI. Announced today at the Cisco Live conference in San Diego, the Cisco AI Defense and Hypershield security solutions tap into NVIDIA AI to deliver comprehensive visibility, validation and runtime protection across entire AI workflows. This builds on the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA unveiled at the NVIDIA GTC conference in March. As AI moves to the center of every industry, enterprises need more than just speed -- they need trust. From data ingestion and model training to deployment and inference, Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA can provide continuous monitoring and protection of AI workloads. Cisco AI Defense and Hypershield integrate with NVIDIA AI for high-performance, scalable and more trustworthy AI responses for running agentic and generative AI workloads. The NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design now includes Cisco AI Defense and Hypershield to safeguard every stage of the AI lifecycle -- which is key to helping enterprises confidently deploy AI at scale. Open models post-trained with NVIDIA NeMo and safeguarded with NVIDIA Blueprints can now be validated and secured using AI Defense. Cisco security, privacy and safety models run as NVIDIA NIM microservices to optimize inference performance for production AI. Cisco AI Defense provides runtime visibility and monitoring of AI applications and agents deployed on the NVIDIA AI platform. Cisco Hypershield will soon work seamlessly with NVIDIA BlueField DPUs and the NVIDIA DOCA Argus framework, bringing pervasive, distributed security and real-time threat detection to every node of the AI infrastructure. Whether their workloads are running in a data center or at the edge, organizations can benefit from this real-time threat detection at the network, server and application layers. Together, NVIDIA and Cisco are enabling enterprises to maintain zero-trust security across distributed AI environments, no matter where data and workloads reside. AI workloads are data hungry and latency sensitive. To meet these demands, Cisco and NVIDIA have enhanced AI networking with: To support the evolving needs of enterprise AI, Cisco is expanding its AI PODs -- modular, validated building blocks for diverse AI workloads, including training, fine-tuning and inference. This flexibility lets organizations scale AI initiatives efficiently and securely, whether deploying a handful of models or running massive, distributed AI factories. The new NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server GPU is now available for order with Cisco UCS C845A M8 servers, providing exceptional performance for next-generation AI applications.

The Partner Opportunity in Cisco's AI-Ready Network Architecture

The announcement we made at Cisco Live represents Cisco's most significant networking innovation in a decade -- and the biggest partner opportunity we've seen in just as long. Today's enterprise networks are being pushed to their limits -- not just by what's coming, but by what's already here. As organizations rely more heavily on bandwidth-intensive, latency-sensitive applications like real-time collaboration, ERP, and CRM, performance expectations are rising fast. At the same time, AI workloads are introducing entirely new demands: bursty, unpredictable traffic patterns and massive east-west data flows that legacy infrastructure simply wasn't built to handle. This dual pressure -- optimizing the performance of critical business applications now while preparing for the exponential demands of AI -- is creating a strategic inflection point. And with many customers nearing end-of-service on key networking components, the urgency to modernize is real. For our partners, this moment presents a unique opportunity: to help customers evolve from infrastructure that's struggling to keep up, to a future-ready foundation that delivers today and scales effortlessly for tomorrow. What makes this announcement different is architectural completeness. While competitors focus on individual components, Cisco is delivering the full solution: next-generation hardware powered by our Silicon One technology, AI-driven management, built-in quantum-ready security, and end-to-end visibility with embedded ThousandEyes. For partners, this means you're not just selling switches and routers anymore. You're selling business transformation. You're offering the foundation that enables AI initiatives while ensuring operations remain secure and resilient. That translates to larger deal sizes, deeper customer relationships, and strategic advisor status. What sets Cisco's AI-Ready Secure Network Architecture apart isn't just what we've built -- it's how we've redefined what's possible. This launch represents the only end-to-end architecture engineered for the AI era, across three foundational pillars: As enterprise networks face exponential demand from AI agents, real-time analytics, and dynamic workloads, traditional IT operations can no longer keep up. Cisco's AgenticOps model transforms operations from reactive to proactive. Our AI Assistant and AI Canvas bring natural language diagnostics and cross-domain troubleshooting into a unified experience, while our unified Meraki Dashboard gives IT teams a single view and control across switching, wireless, routing, WAN, and industrial environments. This is AI managing AI -- accelerating resolution and restoring confidence. AI workloads require a new class of infrastructure -- engineered for low latency, high throughput, and edge-ready computing. Cisco delivers purpose-built hardware across every domain: Smart Switches with sub-5 microsecond latency, Wi-Fi 7 access points for dense AI-device environments, and Secure Routers with integrated SD-WAN and quantum-ready encryption. These are not upgrades -- they are foundational elements built for tomorrow's digital operations, available today. In the age of AI, the attack surface is expanding rapidly -- and bolt-on security is no longer enough. Cisco embeds protection into every layer of the architecture, from quantum-safe Secure Boot at the device level to post-quantum MACsec encryption in transit and AI-aware segmentation that detects and stops lateral threats at machine speed. This is security that's not added after the fact -- it's built into every connection, every flow, and every interaction. When you walk into a customer meeting with Cisco's AI-Ready architecture, you're not pitching isolated products. You're offering the only truly integrated, scalable, and secure foundation built for the AI-powered enterprise. That's what gives you -- and your customers -- a competitive edge. For a deeper technical dive into how this architecture addresses the fundamental challenges of AI-driven enterprises, I encourage you to read Anurag Dhingra's blog on the AI-Ready Secure Network Architecture. Most enterprise networks were designed for human-driven workflows -- not for the speed, scale, and unpredictability of AI. As AI becomes central to business operations, legacy infrastructure quickly turns into a constraint. The real choice facing customers today is whether to modernize proactively to support their AI strategies -- or wait until performance bottlenecks force a reactive upgrade. Cisco's new architecture empowers customers to take control of this transformation on their terms, with confidence and clarity. With Cisco's new architecture, you help them choose the proactive path. The unified management platform simplifies their operations, AI-powered tools help their teams scale, and built-in security gives them confidence as they expand their digital footprint. This technology is available immediately through Cisco and our certified partners. Customers are actively seeking solutions to support their AI initiatives, and many are facing hardware refresh timelines that create natural selling opportunities. The businesses that move quickly to modernize their network foundations will gain competitive advantages over those that delay. Your role is to help customers understand that this isn't just an infrastructure upgrade -- it's an enabler of their digital transformation strategy. The AI-driven enterprise is here. The infrastructure to support it is ready. The question is whether you'll be positioned as the trusted advisor who helps your customers navigate this transformation successfully. Your success in the AI era starts with the right foundation. Today, we're giving you that foundation and the competitive edge that comes with it. We'd love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with #CiscoPartners on social!

AgenticOps: How Cisco is Rewiring Network Operations for the AI Age

Before your first meeting of the day, the alerts have already started. A branch office in Europe is syncing with a cloud service in Virginia. A policy drift is flagged in SecOps. Somewhere, an engineer is pulling up a dashboard -- again. And AI is everywhere: in headlines, in workflows, on every screen. Today's IT isn't just busy. It's overrun. The IT stack is sprawling with apps running across clouds, edges, and everything in between. AI workloads are exploding. Machines are talking to machines. And the expectation? Zero downtime. Always-on. Machine speed. Even worse, the signal-to-noise ratio is deteriorating by the minute. IT teams now face over 170,000 network alerts per hour. And with AI, that number is expected to triple. Meanwhile, AI agents expect sub-50 millisecond response times, faster than humans can blink. By 2026, nearly two-thirds of organizations will face a critical IT skills gap. With AI systems running 24×7, IT has no off hours. This isn't just a staffing problem -- it's an architecture problem. Designed from the ground up for real-time demands and complex, distributed environments, AgenticOps is a new paradigm for modern IT operations -- powered by AI agents. It enables teams to act with speed and precision across networking, security, and application domains. What sets AgenticOps apart isn't just speed -- it's operational simplicity and autonomy. It breaks down silos, reduces tool sprawl, and lets teams move from alert to action without constant handoffs or tool hopping. Unlike traditional AIOps, AgenticOps doesn't just surface insights -- it guides next-best actions and executes cross-domain workflows directly within the platform. These aren't just alerts. They're operational accelerators. A Model Purpose-Trained for the Network At the heart of AgenticOps is Cisco's Deep Network Model, one of, if not the most advanced LLM purpose-trained for networking. Trained on over 40 years of Cisco expertise, not just theory or labs, it's fine-tuned with CiscoU content, CCIE-level problem solving, and real-world reasoning paths. This empowers AI agents to reason with deep contextual awareness across complex hybrid environments. We've further enhanced the model with advanced reinforcement learning, chain-of-thought reasoning, and test-time scaling, so it doesn't just respond faster, but smarter. Trained on over 40 million tokens, the model is now strengthened by thousands of high-quality examples -- each meticulously annotated and validated by Cisco experts. Because in mission-critical environments, precision isn't optional. And this is just the beginning. As it begins to learn from Cisco's global TAC, CX, and telemetry data, the model will continuously evolve -- gaining deeper insight and mastering the nuances of the entire Cisco ecosystem. This is AI engineered specifically for network operations. Cisco's Deep Network Model delivers the depth, context, and precision modern IT operations demand, offering responses that are up to 20% more accurate than leading general-purpose models. Cisco AI Canvas: The Workspace for AgenticOps AI Canvas is where AgenticOps comes to life. It's the industry's first generative UI built for cross-domain IT operations, unifying NetOps, SecOps, IT, and executives into one collaborative environment. Powered by real-time telemetry from Meraki, ThousandEyes, Splunk, and more, AI Canvas brings together data from across the stack into one intelligent, always-on view. But this isn't just visibility. It's AI already operating. When a service issue hits, AI Canvas pulls in the right data, connects the dots, and surfaces a live picture of what matters -- before anyone even asks. Every session starts with context, whether launched by AI or by an IT engineer. Embedded into the AI Canvas is the Cisco AI Assistant, your interface to the agentic system. Ask a question in natural language. Dig into root cause. Explore options. The AI Assistant guides you through diagnostics, decisions, and actions, all grounded in live telemetry. And when you're ready to share, just drag your findings into AI Canvas. From there, with one click you can invite collaborators -- and that's when the canvas comes fully alive. Every insight becomes part of a shared investigation with AI Canvas actively thinking, collaborating, and evolving the UI at every step. But it doesn't stop at diagnosis -- AI Canvas acts. It applies changes, monitors impact and share outcomes in real time. No silos. No switching tools. No delay. AI Canvas doesn't take IT engineers out of the loop -- it empowers them. With full transparency at every step, it shows where the data comes from, what it means, and which actions are recommended. Every step is auditable and engineer-approved, with the flexibility to review, confirm, or revert as needed. You stay in control -- while AI handles the heavy lifting. As we refine AI Canvas, we're inviting select customers to co-design it with us. Your input will play a critical role in shaping a new way of working -- ensuring the tools we build are not only powerful, but practical and grounded in real-world needs. Only Cisco transforms real-time telemetry into real-time outcomes -- at enterprise scale. And the experience doesn't stop with AI Canvas. AI Assistant: Accelerate Network Operations AI Assistant is expanding across Cisco. Now in controlled release, new networking skills for Cisco AI Assistant bring conversational AI and real-time intelligence directly into management tools you already use, like Meraki and ThousandEyes. Ask "what's the status of my org?" and get a live summary across all your networks. Drill into a network, client, or device in seconds -- no dashboard hopping or digging through menus. Before, resolving issues meant jumping between tools, digging through logs, and filing tickets. Now, the AI Assistant pulls everything into one view, highlights root causes, and shows exactly what to do next -- with config guidance, compliance checks, and one-click automation. Tasks like NAC configurations or switch migrations that used to take hours? Now triggered by a simple prompt and completed in minutes -- with full validation. Cisco handles execution behind the scenes -- at scale with precision -- enabling compliance, consistency, and faster outcomes. This is Just the Beginning Imagine a network that monitors itself, detects anomalies before they escalate, and acts -- quietly, intelligently, without the war room calls. That's the future Cisco is building: proactive, self-healing operations that stay under your control, while operating with real-time autonomy. From natural language actions to Generative UI, from workflow automation to autonomous resolution -- AgenticOps is how modern IT runs. It's a leap only Cisco can make -- powered by unmatched visibility, purpose-trained AI, and decades of operational expertise. All unified in one platform. This isn't an enhancement. It's a new standard -- and it's already here.

Evolving AI-Ready Data Centers with Cisco Full-Stack Solutions and Pervasive Security 

As you immerse yourself in the cutting-edge technologies showcased at Cisco Live, one thing is abundantly clear: AI is no longer a future concept -- it's the engine driving today's digital transformation. At Cisco Live San Diego, we're showing the world how to build it securely in collaboration with NVIDIA. Cisco is at the forefront of enabling organizations to harness the power of AI with solutions that are scalable, efficient, and, above all, secure. Our evolving portfolio lays the groundwork for AI-ready infrastructure, designed with the flexibility and protection needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world. In San Diego, we are highlighting how we continue to expand the capabilities of our AI-ready data center technology to help our customers transform their data centers to support both AI and traditional workloads -- anywhere, securely, and at scale. As organizations accelerate AI adoption, they face mounting complexity -- from siloed infrastructure and operational sprawl to new security risks across the AI lifecycle. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA provides the building blocks for solving these challenges: A full stack of infrastructure, software, and security designed to help enterprises deploy, operate, and scale AI with trust and efficiency. Think of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA as the blueprint for your AI ambitions. It's the bedrock upon which you can build secure, end-to-end AI solutions tailored precisely to your enterprise requirements. Secure AI Factory offers two deployment paths -- a vertically integrated option built on Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI (shown in Figure 1), and a modular option that leverages Cisco AI PODs. Using Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, enterprises can confidently embrace AI, knowing they have a secure and flexible foundation to support their journey. Additionally, Cisco and NVIDIA showed progress towards a unified architecture; at Cisco Live, the companies showcased the first technical integration of Cisco G200-based switches and NVIDIA NICs, demonstrating NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking based on Cisco Silicon One that supports NX-OS, Nexus Hyperfabric AI, and SONiC deployments. At Cisco Live, we are introducing an expanded range of Cisco AI PODs. These full-stack AI solutions support edge, RAG, training, and large-scale inferencing at lower total cost of ownership and provide greater control and include NVIDIA accelerated computing, networking, and AI software. Built on Cisco UCS, Nexus, and our partner storage solutions, these validated architectures give customers the flexibility and performance to run enterprise-grade AI with less complexity and faster time to value. Our AI PODs are purpose-built to simplify AI adoption, offering production-ready solutions that are constantly evolving to enable customers to tackle a broader spectrum of AI workloads. Cisco Nexus Dashboard integrations simplify data center networking by delivering unmatched visibility and control over your AI infrastructure. At Cisco Live, we are showcasing the integration of greater capabilities into the dashboard. Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides centralized data center network operations and automation across Nexus, MDS, and ACI fabrics. It delivers a unified fabric architecture across VXLAN-EVPN and ACI fabrics. Cisco Intelligent Packet Flow optimizes traffic in real time using telemetry and congestion awareness, ensuring peak AI workload performance. Nexus Dashboard provides end-to-end visibility across networks, GPUs, and AI tasks for proactive issue detection. These capabilities seamlessly align with AI PODs, ensuring smooth coordination between compute and networking -- essential for today's AI-driven environments. In February, we introduced the Smart Switch powered by Hypershield, a fresh approach to securing AI data centers by fusing security directly into the network fabric. The DPU-powered Smart Switch is designed to deliver the high-speed data transfer and ultra-low latency demanded by compute-intensive AI tasks. We're excited to announce that Nexus Dashboard now supports Smart Switches. Now we're releasing a top-of-rack model, which will feature 48 25G ports, two 100G ports, and six 400G ports. It enhances performance, security, and flexibility within a data center environment. We're also extending Hybrid Mesh Firewall enforcement to the Cisco ACI fabric by integrating Cisco Secure Workload with Cisco ACI. This automation enables AI-driven policy discovery and applies observation-based security policies directly into the network. Delivering top-tier digital experiences boosts customer satisfaction and drives revenue -- and it can lead to lower support costs and smarter decisions through actionable insights. We now offer deeper integration with Nutanix Prism Central, which provides enhanced visibility and management through GPU metrics and M8 server support. FlashStack with Nutanix for hybrid cloud AI deployments extends the power of AI across your entire infrastructure. This solution provides a pre-validated and easy-to-deploy infrastructure, reducing the complexity of managing separate components. In San Diego, we are introducing new 6th Gen Fabric Interconnects, engineered to maximize the performance of Cisco UCS servers and ensure they are fully prepared for the rigors of AI. These updates complete Cisco's full-stack AI-ready infrastructure, ensuring that every layer -- from compute to networking -- is optimized for AI excellence. Over the past few years, Cisco has helped data center operators upgrade to higher speeds while protecting their existing cabling investments. Building on the success of our 40G and 100G BiDi optics, now we're introducing the next generation: 400G BiDi. This innovation enables a smooth transition to 400G networks using current duplex multimode fiber, simplifying upgrades and making it easier and faster to modernize. Through the continuing evolution of our AI-ready infrastructure, Cisco is committed to helping enterprises harness the full potential of AI -- securely, seamlessly, and at scale. Whether you're just beginning your AI journey or looking to optimize existing deployments, our Secure AI Factory, AI PODs, and next-gen networking innovations provide the foundation you need to succeed. Take the next step: Let Cisco be your trusted partner in building a smarter, more secure AI-powered future.

Expanding the Edge of Possibility: Cisco Agile Services Networking for the AI Era

AI is fundamentally reshaping the connectivity and infrastructure required to support emerging workloads and services. For service providers and enterprises, the demands of AI are multiplying, as AI workloads are increasingly distributed, data intensive, and latency sensitive. Enterprises that are leaning into AI are building immersive multimodal experiences and inference-heavy applications that span clouds, data centers, edge locations, and users. Meanwhile, service providers are seeking new ways to monetize their infrastructure for AI by enabling GPU-as-a-Service, Inference-as-a-Service, and intelligent services for industries. There is tremendous momentum to build and deliver AI, but the reality of network readiness is actually quite sobering, with only 13% of organizations acknowledging their networks are AI-ready, according to Omdia. The pain points to network readiness are real, with nearly 80% of production networks requiring lower latency or greater throughput to support AI workloads, and AI is expected to drive a 6x increase in data center power demand over the next decade. These pressures are forcing network leaders to rethink infrastructure strategy -- pushing for architectures that are agile, high-capacity, AI-native, and automated by design. In February of this year, we launched Cisco Agile Services Networking -- an architecture purpose-built for AI connectivity that enables organizations to monetize assured services. We've seen keen customer interest and real incremental value from this approach with adoption across routing, switching, automation, assurance, and security to achieve enhanced network simplicity and resilience. Today, at Cisco Live San Diego, we are announcing expansions to our Agile Services Networking portfolio to help customers to continue to evolve their architecture and operations to reap the real benefits of AI connectivity. Bandwidth demand and network traffic continue to skyrocket in this new era. The generation of networks built for the internet, video, and 5G are not designed to handle the scale, complexity, and real-time responsiveness that AI workloads require. Instead, an AI-native architecture, purpose-built like Agile Services Networking, delivers elastic bandwidth at the edge, a routed optical infrastructure for network simplicity, cost-effective scaling, and policy-driven automation for application workflows. As autonomous networks become essential to automate tasks, accelerate decision making, and eliminate network impact, real-time telemetry, AI agents, and predictive and prescriptive analytics become a necessity. To thrive in the AI era, organizations must converge IT and network domains, recognizing the network as the foundational platform that drives efficiency. At Cisco, we are revolutionizing network transformation through Routed Optical Networking and Routed PON with cutting-edge Silicon One-based Cisco 8000 Series Routers launched earlier this year. We are expanding this portfolio to introduce new A100-based 8011-12G12X4Y-A/D converged access and K100-based 8711-48Z-M edge routers powered by Cisco Silicon One ASICs, combined with coherent optics and automation empowering service providers to achieve unprecedented efficiencies and capabilities. Take service provider Lumen, for example. By adopting Cisco Routed Optical Networking, they have reimagined their metro architecture, leaving behind the traditional hub-and-spoke design. With solutions like Cisco 400G ZR/ZR+ coherent pluggable optics and Cisco 8200 Series routers, they have doubled their network efficiency while increasing fiber capacity by 1,000%. Additionally, successful trials with both Colt Technology Services and Internet2 demonstrate the real power of new Cisco 800G and 400G coherent optics in delivering ultra long-haul, ever higher capacity connections. Cisco is introducing a new multi-agentic AI framework in our Cisco Crosswork Network Automation portfolio to accelerate decision making across network operations. As service providers and enterprises are pressured by more network complexity, increasing scale, diverse technologies, multi-vendor environments, and mounting technical debt, this framework creates a flexible environment where AI agents can be built, deployed, and work together to solve complex customer challenges. Through closed-loop automation, predictive and preventive AI insights, and data-driven intelligence, network operators can improve network reliability and efficiency as they evolve to autonomous networks. Two standout capabilities -- Toxic Factor Identification and Configuration Drift Detection -- are game-changers for network automation and assurance. Together, they simplify network complexity, reduce incidents, and proactively prevent outages. Delivered through the Cisco AI Assistant, these features minimize downtime, improve service quality, and help to better manage end-user expectations. Looking ahead, a new SDK will allow third parties to build and deploy AI agents tailored to their operational environments. The future of networking lies in network autonomy, and Cisco is at the forefront of this transformation. Cisco is also redefining global connectivity through Non-Terrestrial Networking, enabling seamless integration between terrestrial and satellite networks. This architecture supports dynamic resource allocation and opens up monetization opportunities in remote, underserved sectors like maritime, aviation, IoT, and disaster response. Our work with Rivada Space Networks -- powering the "Outernet" -- is just one example of how Cisco is converging satellite and terrestrial transport at scale. "For decades, Cisco Systems has been a driving force in networking, powering the Internet and enabling businesses worldwide to connect and operate more effectively. Utilizing Cisco's technology, Rivada is ready to converge the Outernet with traditional terrestrial networks, challenging the way satellite transport has been utilized in the past." - Declan Ganley, CEO, Rivada Space Networks. To help service providers unlock value from their mobile infrastructure, Cisco Mobility Services Platform is enabling faster innovation by leveraging an ecosystem of APIs and mobility integrations to deliver enterprise-grade services without the need for new network build outs. From enterprise IoT to fixed wireless access and QoS-based offerings, this platform supports tailored, high-value connectivity that drives enterprise relevance and revenue growth. At Cisco, we believe in empowering service providers and enterprises with the tools, technologies, and platforms needed to thrive in an ever-changing world. Whether it's extending connectivity to the most remote corners of the globe, enabling enterprise monetization, or building smarter, more autonomous networks, Cisco is leading the way. The journey of innovation never ends -- and together, we can shape the next generation of AI-ready infrastructure one breakthrough at a time.

Transforming Networks, Empowering Businesses: The AI Advantage

This blog is co-authored by Vinay Nichani, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Sales, Solutions, and Alliances for NTT Data's $6B Technology Solutions Business. For 40 years, Cisco has been at the forefront of not just building networks but shaping the future. This week, at Cisco Live in San Diego, we unveiled the largest launch in our history-a transformative leap that establishes a new foundation for our customers in an AI-driven world. At the same time, NTT DATA announced a major milestone in our 34-year partnership: the global availability of AI-Powered Software-Defined Infrastructure Services for Cisco products. Together, Cisco and NTT DATA are not just introducing new products and services; we are unlocking an entirely new era of opportunity for our customers. This collaboration is designed to empower organizations to lead and thrive in a rapidly evolving market. According to NTT DATA's 2024 GenAI research, 80% of organizations agree that inadequate or outdated technology is holding back progress and innovation. Moreover, 94% of C-suite executives believe legacy infrastructure significantly hinders business agility. While AI infrastructure investments are critical for modernization, only 13% of organizations are fully prepared to leverage AI and AI-powered technologies, as highlighted in Cisco's 2024 AI Readiness Index. As our customers face increasingly complex challenges in integrating AI into their operations, modernizing their networks becomes essential. Upgrading Last Day of Support (LDOS) infrastructure is a crucial step to avoid operational risks, security vulnerabilities, and inefficiencies associated with outdated technology. Cisco and NTT DATA are uniquely positioned to guide our customers through digital transformation. By combining Cisco's cutting-edge AI-ready secure network architecture with NTT DATA's expertise in software-defined infrastructure and lifecycle management, we enable businesses to achieve unparalleled operational efficiency and scalability. This is more than a launch; it's a call to action to revolutionize how infrastructure and data connect and protect your organization in the AI era. With Cisco and NTT DATA, you have the tools, expertise, and support to seize this moment and own the future. Together, we are not just building networks; we are building the future of AI-driven innovation. We'd love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with #CiscoPartners on social!

Cisco explains why the network is AI's looming bottleneck

Few enterprise technology shifts are more significant than the rise of AI agents. This means a leap in digital headcount that will force every CIO to revisit infrastructure once taken for granted: the network. Matt Marshall, editor in chief of VentureBeat, welcomed Anurag Dhingra, SVP and GM of enterprise connectivity and collaboration at Cisco, to the latest VentureBeat in Conversation. They talked through where networks fall short, what AI-ready really means and how companies can turn connectivity into a competitive edge. "When agents -- whether they're embodied AI or software agents -- become ubiquitous, it's going to feel like the workforce went through a step function increase," Dhingra said. "Of course, network traffic is going to go through the roof as a result. So, you have to be very sure you have the right infrastructure to be ready for that AI future. Unfortunately, not many organizations today do just yet, despite the fact that this is not an optional technology going forward." New architecture for a new era "Connectivity from the office environment to the internet had to be reimagined and rewired for the transition to cloud and SaaS, and I believe we're at the cusp of a similar technology transition," Dhingra says. "It's not just about agentic AI. It's around taking a step back to start thinking about what the right architecture for this new era -- AI-ready and secure -- looks like." There are three elements to consider: first is ensuring you have scalable and secure devices that are ready for all the traffic and the security exposure that's expected in this new world. Second is about fusing security into the fabric of the network, so all of the new threats that are surfacing are manageable. And then finally, AgenticOps, or leveraging AI to help simplify operations, which is a boon to IT departments that are struggling with shortages of skilled people. Beyond the question of wired vs. wireless Cisco has delivered on its promise to converge its full portfolio across switching, routing, wireless, and even industrial networking, into a single, unified platform. Through this platform - manageable on-premises, in the cloud, or a mix of both - customers benefit from end-to-end network assurance, rich telemetry and insights -- even into unowned infrastructure online that connects you to cloud services. All of that is accessible through a conversational agentic AI interface that helps users make sense of the data and can also take actions on the user's behalf. The Cisco C9350 and C9610 Smart Switches enable a more efficient and extensible architecture. These new devices can run networking and security processes in parallel, without impacting the performance of the switch, by integrating services directly with the network, rather than bolting them on top. By combining their own Cisco Silicon One ASICs with this co-processing capability, they're not only weaving security directly into the fabric of the network, they're making it easy for IT teams to scale and adapt networks as business needs change, without adding expensive new compute or new hardware. And that's where cost savings emerge: hardware consolidation, reduced power consumption, and operational simplicity. This approach builds on the journey Cisco began with smart switches in the data center, where security was directly embedded into the switching layer with AI-native, hardware-accelerated architectures like Hypershield. By integrating security into the fabric itself, smart switches reduce the need for additional appliances and enable data center operators to create micro perimeters around every service that makes up a workload. But now that traffic is increasingly impacting the campus network, Cisco is extending this same concept to campus environments. The switches incorporate two processing engines: a high-performance network processor for stable data transfer, and a network services co-processor for agile security processing, with traffic steered between them intelligently, to ensure performance remains fast and stable. Boosting network security With new attacks emerging that target both network infrastructure and encrypted data flowing across the switch, security for the campus and branch networks requires a multilayered approach. It starts with securing the device itself, and then one layer up is connectivity, and the top layer is securing users, applications, and devices. "When you look at the core of this layer stack, how do we build trustworthy systems?" Dhingra says. "This is where our custom ASIC, Silicon One, has some amazing security capabilities. We can provide tamper-proof devices that are ready for post-quantum cryptography. One layer up, you can also encrypt data flows with post-quantum crypto. On top, where capabilities like segmentation and universal zero trust network access sit, you can define policies in one place, and you push those policies out to every network element." Each device has a context that carries across user identity, device identity and machine identity. With a policy in that context, each device can apply the right type of security policy so that enforcement becomes truly distributed, but policy is managed in one place. It's a multilayered approach to address new risks that are emerging. Security policies are automatically updated to the right enforcement points to keep security posture up to date. Plus, organizations can make policy lifecycle management work at scale by using self-qualifying policy updates before deployment, and extend consistent policy enforcement across multiple domains. Because policies can be managed across a library of enforcement points in the cloud, on-prem and on traditional next-gen firewalls, customers now have a single management system with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall. The solution, seamlessly integrated into existing processes, supports common and separate workflows for NetOps, SecOps or NetSecOps teams using a single solution to maintain connectivity and security. AI assistants for the network Today many developers are using AI to write code, and in some cases the agents writing that code are completely autonomous -- but in all cases, a human evaluates that code before it's put into production. Cisco's new agentic assistants for network management take inspiration from those workflows, by offering configuration change suggestions based on what they're observing in the network, which are reviewed before they're deployed to put guardrails against the possibility that these models will hallucinate. Cisco has also introduced a collaborative workspace for NetOps, SecOps and DevOps teams with AI Canvas. "This is how we're going to create a next step forward in AgenticOps with humans in the loop, simplifying the workflow to deliver amazing experiences to people," Dhingra explains. An admin who's using an AI assistant with a conversational model to troubleshoot a network can pull in another coworker into a collaborative canvas that incorporates all the charts and graphs being dynamically generated by the AI assistant and invite them to take a look and help unknot any issues. Ensuring reliability and service across the whole network "We think of assurance as a promise," Dhingra says. "It's a promise to deliver amazing experiences to people who are connecting to the network. That's why we build capabilities that are not just about monitoring what's going on, but proactively and predictively taking steps to not have any incidents or any outages to begin with. That's the holy grail, the journey we're on." In the meantime, it's about getting visibility across every piece in your infrastruct6ure, and every piece that is outside of your infrastructure. Cisco takes a layered approach, with rich telemetry coming out of devices across the switching, routing and wireless domains, which can be stitched together to make sense of the data. Layered on top are synthetic tests, which are enabled by ThousandEyes. The product offers a single time-correlated view of critical metrics, based on all the networks and services that make up the user experience. Its cross-correlation algorithms produce cross-layer telemetry as well as interactive visuals to make it easy to plan service rollouts, isolate problems, take action, and resolve issues faster. "We're taking a step forward in the ability to apply AI to simplify operations," Dhingra added. "It's really about operations at scale. I'm very excited about the new capabilities both within Cisco and as agentic AI evolves."

Cisco product blitz aimed at making networks more AI-friendly - SiliconANGLE

Cisco product blitz aimed at making networks more AI-friendly Asserting that bandwidth limitations are throttling artificial intelligence's potential, Cisco Systems Inc. is using its Cisco Live event today to introduce new products and updates designed to help enterprises and service providers adapt their infrastructure to the growing demands of AI-driven workloads. The updates span data center networking, AI workload optimization, security and operational management. The goal is to simplify network operations, increase visibility into AI workloads, and support both traditional and satellite-based networking environments. The announcements mark a broad push by the networking giant to position itself as a central player in the emerging AI infrastructure stack. Rather than launching entirely new platforms, most of Cisco's moves focus on stitching together existing capabilities -- from networking to security to observability -- under a more unified, AI-assisted operational model. Cisco said its strategy centers on helping organizations adapt existing infrastructure to accommodate AI workloads better without adding complexity. The company is introducing what it calls a "Unified Fabric Experience" built on its Nexus network switching portfolio. It brings together the previously separate Application Centric Infrastructure and NX-OS VXLAN EVPN fabrics into a unified control and management layer. ACI is a software-defined networking architecture that enables organizations to build their network infrastructure around the needs of their applications rather than hardware. It uses centralized policy to automate and simplify network configuration, deployment and management. NX-OS VXLAN EVPN fabrics create a virtual overlay network that allows Layer 2 traffic to be transported over a routed network. The converged networks are managed through the updated Nexus Dashboard, which now consolidates services for LAN, storage-area networking, IP fabric management and AI fabric monitoring. The updates are expected to be released in July. Cisco also announced Intelligent Packet Flow, a telemetry-based tool that dynamically routes traffic across AI networks based on real-time congestion. It provides visibility across the stack from network layers to graphic processing units and distributed AI jobs to improve diagnostics and minimize disruptions. On the hardware side, Cisco is expanding its AI PODs, which are pre-validated, optimized infrastructure packages aimed at simplifying and speeding the deployment of AI workloads, in partnership with Nvidia Corp. Cisco will offer servers equipped with the Nvidia RTX 6000 Pro GPU in its UCS C845A M8 AI servers and as part of the companies' jointly validated "Secure AI Factory" solution set. For customers planning to transition to higher-bandwidth networks, Cisco introduced 400G bidirectional optics. These new modules are designed to support legacy multi-mode fiber infrastructure while enabling an upgrade to 400G speeds. Cisco expects them to be available in the second half of 2025. In campus networks, the CG350 and CG610 smart switches use Cisco's Silicon One chips to deliver throughput of up to 51.2 terabytes per second with sub-five-microsecond latency and quantum-resistant networking features. For branches, the new 8100 through 8500 series secure routers combine software-defined wide-area networking and secure access service edge functions with integrated firewalls and support for post-quantum encryption. Cisco said they provide up to three times the throughput of earlier models. Cisco is also expanding its wireless offerings. The Wireless 9179F access points support Wi-Fi 7 and are aimed at large venues like stadiums, while the new Campus Gateway supports roaming across large deployments. On the industrial side, Cisco is releasing ruggedized switches for AI use cases such as autonomous mobile robots and visual inspections. A new access point integrates wireless backhaul with Wi-Fi for wireless operations demanding high availability. Cisco is unveiling several updates meant to improve collaboration, workplace connectivity and operational efficiency as AI systems increasingly interact autonomously with their environments. Cisco AI Canvas is a real-time collaboration tool that connects network and security teams through a shared generative user interface. Cisco AI Assistant spans multiple Cisco products with conversational controls and a domain-specific large language model trained on Cisco documentation and training materials. The Assistant helps information technology teams troubleshoot, identify root causes, and automate tasks using natural language commands. It will integrate into the Nexus Dashboard and ship later this year. "This is one of the most advanced networking [large language models]," said DJ Sampath, senior vice president for AI software and platform at Cisco. "It's trained and fine-tuned on over 40 years of expertise. It is going to be very precise and is continuously going to learn based on a ton of telemetry that we constantly provide." Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer, noted that Canvas uses agents to manage infrastructure. "The [user interface] of this product is text-first, so it's built not just for humans but can be very easily interpreted by agents," he said. Cloud Control, a unified management interface now in preview, spans Cisco's networking, security and observability tools. Built with native support for Cisco AI tools, Cloud Control is designed to let IT teams manage infrastructure, automate workflows and anticipate issues before they occur. The Room Vision PTZ Camera is an AI-enhanced camera designed to improve video conferencing. Scaling from huddle spaces to large boardrooms, the camera fluidly tracks presenters, frames speakers and or adapts to changing room setups, Cisco said. Its "one click to distance zero" approach consolidates power, video and camera controls into a single Ethernet cable and dramatically reduces setup complexity, Cisco said. New features for the Webex video conferencing system include integrations with Atlassian Corp.'s Jira project tracking software and Salesforce Inc.'s Agentforce as well as a Webex AI Agent for industry-specific self-service workflows. Cisco is also announcing security upgrades targeting enterprise needs in a distributed and AI-driven environment. They include two new firewalls -- the 6100 and 200 series - and expanded Hybrid Mesh Firewall and zero-trust network access offerings. The new tools are aimed at addressing the growing risks associated with agentic AI models and distributed workforces. A new Mesh Policy Engine lets administrators define policies once and apply them across both Cisco and non-Cisco firewalls, reducing the need to rewrite rules as infrastructure changes. The Universal ZTNA offering introduces passwordless authentication through Duo IAM, which now acts as an identity broker. It includes proximity-based verification without hardware tokens. All Cisco SD-WAN options, including Meraki, now integrate with Cisco Secure Access for consistent policy enforcement across branches. "Duo Identity & Access Management provides the authorization, Secure Access does semantic inspection so that end users do not have to be prompted repeatedly for access permission, AI Defense is invoked to evaluate that agent actions align with its purpose and Cisco Identity Intelligence monitors the actions and provides visibility," Raj Chopra, chief product officer of Cisco security, wrote in a blog post. Live Protect is a new tool that applies kernel-level protections to switches and routers without requiring system reboots. For securing data in transit, Cisco added post-quantum-ready MACsec and IPsec capabilities and made its new C9000 smart switches compatible with its security architecture to enable faster segmentation. For endpoint and application security, Cisco is combining its Identity Services Engine for network access control, Cyber Vision security posture management and Talos threat intelligence software with its Secure Access SSE platform. These components allow organizations to classify devices automatically, apply consistent policy and extend protections across the network. Cisco is also enhancing its digital observability offerings through deeper integration between its products and those from its Splunk subsidiary. New bidirectional integrations among Splunk Observability Cloud, Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco's enterprise networks improve network performance tracking and help organizations detect and resolve issues more quickly, the company said. New visibility features extend ThousandEyes assurance to mobile devices and industrial endpoints, with tighter integration between ThousandEyes and Splunk for end-to-end network and application monitoring. Cisco is also addressing the service provider segment, which faces increasing demands for traffic flexibility as AI workloads introduce new performance requirements. Cisco's Agile Services Networking architecture is meant to support new forms of traffic and service monetization. It includes new converged access and edge routers powered by Cisco's Silicon One chips, which are now part of the expanded Cisco 8000 series. A key component of the architecture is a new AI-driven multi-agentic framework for automation integrated with Cisco's Crosswork Network Automation platform. The framework system allows both Cisco- and customer-developed agents to collaborate in managing network operations with the ultimate goal being to enable more autonomous network functionality. The company also showcased capabilities to integrate satellite and terrestrial networks, opening the door to more resilient and flexible services in remote or underserved areas such as maritime, aviation, or emergency response.

Cisco, NVIDIA Launch Next gen AI Data Center Tools | AIM

Cisco, in partnership with NVIDIA, is accelerating AI adoption by unveiling new innovations designed to simplify, secure, and future-proof data centres. With a focus on high-performance, low-latency networking, Cisco aims to meet the growing demands of AI workloads and deliver secure, scalable infrastructure solutions. "The world is moving from chatbots intelligently answering our questions to agents conducting tasks and jobs fully autonomously. This is the agentic era of AI," said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. The company announced the expansion of AI PODs, the integration of NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking based on Cisco Silicon One, and the introduction of the Unified Nexus Dashboard, which centralises management across multiple environments. It noted that these innovations enable enterprises to deploy and manage AI workloads with enhanced operational efficiency. Commenting on data centres, Patel noted that as billions of AI agents start functioning on behalf of users, the need for high-bandwidth, low-latency, and power-efficient networking in data centres will significantly increase. He emphasised that Cisco is leading the way by providing advanced and secure networking technology essential for the AI-ready data centres of the future. "Cisco is at the forefront, delivering advanced, secure networking technology that's foundational to the AI-ready data centres of the future," Patel said. Cisco's strategic partnerships with neocloud providers such as HUMAIN, G42, and Stargate UAE further solidify its leadership in next-gen AI infrastructure. At the same time, its Agile Services Networking architecture helps service providers modernise their networks to support new AI-driven services. In Q3 FY2025, Cisco notably surpassed its annual target of $1 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers a year ahead. Matt Kimball, Moor Insights & Strategy, said Cisco's ability to deliver AI-ready infrastructure to its customers, along with its investment in AI-enabled operations, differentiates the company. "AI reaching its full potential depends on a resilient network on which partners build and deliver solutions and services," Kimball said. Cisco is also introducing a new "Unified Fabric Experience" using its Nexus product line. This is designed to help organisations simplify network operations and improve efficiency across various environments. Another innovation, Cisco AI Defence and Cisco Hypershield, provides visibility, validation, and runtime protection of the end-to-end enterprise AI workflow and is now included in the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design. Meanwhile, the company also announced new innovations to help enterprises securely integrate AI into their operations, addressing the increasing risks of AI-driven cyberattacks.

Cisco's 'Agentic AI Era' Includes AI Canvas For Reimagined IT Operations

'The way that you should think about us is like the picks and shovels company during the gold rush. We are the infrastructure company that powers AI during the agentic movement,' says Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer. Cisco is building out its "AgenticOps" capabilities as the tech giant helps partners and businesses brace for agentic AI's impact on IT operations. To that end, AgenticOps, or Cisco's approach to running modern IT operations that turns real-time telemetry, automation, and domain expertise into intelligent actions, now includes AI Canvas, a generative AI user interface for customer dashboards that lets NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps teams collaborate, optimize operations, while reducing IT strain, according to the company. "The agentic AI era is upon us," said DJ Sampath, vice president of product, AI software and platform for Cisco. Agentic AI marks a paradigm shift for businesses and it requires a "reimagining" of operations, he added. "As we start to think about: How do we implement operational simplicity? It becomes really important for us to recognize that you're going to have hundreds, thousands, billions of agents that are going to be doing things for you. When you start to think about agents, what really becomes important is being able to operate in an environment where these agents are out there doing the things they are doing. You really need that next level of operations to come together," he said. [Related: Cisco Security Exclusive: Execs Say New Security Blueprint Will Help Partners, Enterprises Battle 'Varsity Team'-Level Attacks] AI Canvas, revealed on Tuesday at Cisco Live 2025, unlocks new agentic AI capabilities, Sampath said. "It's going to help you troubleshoot and execute actions across multiple domains of data and multiple architectures. More importantly, different users will be able to collaborate seamlessly on AI Canvas and last, but not least, we're building all of these on a purpose-built foundation model called the Deep Network model," he said. The Deep Network model is one of the most advanced networking LLMs, he said. The domain-specific LLM has been fine-tuned and trained on more than four decades of Cisco expertise, from CCIE-level content to Cisco U. courseware. The data is always being vetted for accuracy and will continuously learn based on telemetry that Cisco will constantly provide, which means this model is going to be very precise, Sampath said. The Deep Network Model also powers Cisco's AI Assistant, a natural language interface that can identify issues, diagnose root causes, and automate workflows, Cisco said. AgenticOps first and foremost requires a purpose-built, precision model on which to make decisions because AI agents are going to be completing tasks autonomously, Sampath said. "The second thing that you're going to need is you're going to need access to cross domain data to be able to see the whole [environment], to be able to troubleshoot effectively and to be able to solve real problems, you're going to need to unlock those data silos and connect them all together. And third, you're going to need oversight, because autonomy without oversight is going to cause a lot of confusion. There's always going to be humans in the loop," he said. For further ease of use and manageability, AI Canvas is part of Cisco's unified management platform that now brings together management of Meraki and Catalyst devices in one platform that supports any cloud, on-prem, or hybrid deployment that a business chooses. The AI team for Long View Systems, a Calgary, Alberta-based MSP and Cisco Gold partner, is "very excited" about AI Canvas and Cisco's AgenticOps approach, said Lane Irvine, Long View's network business solutions director. For Long View, AgenticOps is the "next step" in what the firm is doing with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) AI for its customers, Irvine said. "It's tying in how do we actually bring the ops side of this into that AI conversation? And how do we actually have that AI engine execute and bring in real-time data for real-time environments. So now, not only are we doing RAG AI with a subset of data and insights, but we're also then able to bring in real-time insights about the environment," he said. "From an ops perspective, that really brings together both sides, which is a huge advantage and a huge opportunity for us from an operations and a NetOps and SecOps perspective." The agentic era is going to be meaningfully progressive to society in a lot of ways, said Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer. "One of the things that gets mostly underestimated and under-hyped in AI, which, if you can believe is actually true in this particular area, is that AI is not just about aggregating information and data that's there and coming back with clearer answers. It's actually about creating original insights that didn't exist in the human corpus of knowledge. And when that starts to happen, you can solve problems that we couldn't have dreamt solving before, and that's super exciting," he said. But for agentic AI to be useful in the enterprise, fundamental requirements around infrastructure, safety and security, will need to be completely rethought, Patel said. "Classical infrastructure just won't be able to deal with the scale and proportion that we're talking about. Because if you think about it, there'll be tens of billions of agents that will be conducting work on our behalf, [and] that requires a very different infrastructure [and] capacity in place, and that's why you're seeing such a massive level of build out globally of data center capacity as well." How is Cisco going to be a part of this era? "The way that you should think about us is like the picks and shovels company during the gold rush. We are the infrastructure company that powers AI during the agentic movement," Jeetu said. Cisco AI Canvas will be tested with select customers this fall, according to the company.

Cisco, NTT Partner On Software-Defined Infrastructure Services For 'Future-Proofed' AI Data Centers, Architectures

As AI places new demands on IT infrastructure, NTT Data's new SDI services for Cisco products will help enterprises modernize their architectures and data centers, the two companies unveiled at Cisco Live 2025. One of Cisco's biggest channel partners, NTT Data, is working with the tech giant to launch AI-powered software-defined infrastructure services (SDI) for Cisco's infrastructure and software products. The new collaboration will help enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure and reduce costs at a time in which AI is placing new demands on IT infrastructure, the two companies unveiled on Tuesday at Cisco Live 2025. Infrastructure challenges, said Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer, are one of the biggest hurdles facing businesses in the AI era. "The infrastructure requirements for AI will change quite substantially, because you will have the demand for more compute, more power, more network bandwidth. It's almost insatiable. And right now, if you think about it, just imagine what the world could do if we weren't constrained on infra[structure] in AI. We would be ten times as productive as we are right now," Patel said at Cisco Live. [Related: Cisco Secure Data Center, Nexus And Firewall Innovations Unveiled At Cisco Live 2025] SDI services are an approach to managing hardware infrastructure, including compute, networking, and storage, by treating each as software resources. By offering SDI services for Cisco products, NTT's AI-powered digital infrastructure services will give businesses "future-proofed" networking and security architectures and AI ready data centers, the firm said. Ninety-four percent of C-suite executives believe legacy infrastructure is "greatly hindering" their business agility. Only 13 percent of enterprises are ready to leverage AI and AI-powered technologies to their full potential, according to Cisco's 2024 AI Readiness survey. AI is driving modernization of infrastructure in network, compute, cybersecurity and power for data centers, said NTT. "While traditional infrastructure services focus on uptime and SLAs, these are no longer sufficient for a modernized infrastructure that is increasingly software-defined," Dilip Kumar, global head of technology solutions for NTT, told CRN in an email. "NTT Data's SDI Services aims to address that gap with its AI-Powered premium infrastructure service that provide proactive, personalized, and predictive support to optimize client infrastructure availability, reduce costs, and empower your business." NTT Data's SDI Services will include outcome-success plans that outlines client goals, KPIs, and how NTT's services can help. It will also include AI insights and service assurance thanks to smart technology, license management and analysis to help prevent expensive software issues and eliminate unnecessary expenses, and digital access, which will include a mobile app for instant updates and AI insights, Plano, Texas-based NTT said. NTT Data, which has partnered with Cisco for more than three decades, is also offering AI-powered SDI services for Juniper Networks, HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Checkpoint.

Cisco Launches Secure AI-Ready Network Architecture to Power the Future of Work

Cisco unveiled a new network architecture to power the campus, branch, and industrial networks of the future. The new architecture delivers unmatched operational simplicity through unified management, next-generation networking devices purpose-built for AI workloads, and advanced security capabilities embedded into the network. Cisco is setting a new standard for how organizations navigate the challenges of skyrocketing traffic, rising cyber threats, and critical uptime requirements created as enterprises rush to harness the potential of AI in the workplace. According to the Cisco IT Networking Leader Survey, 97% of businesses believe they need to upgrade their networks to make AI and IoT initiatives successful, and the stakes are high: a single severe outage can inflict nearly $160 billion in losses globally. Faced with these challenges, IT teams need a new approach to scale operations, reduce downtime, and unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation.

Cisco Unveils New AI Solutions to Help Businesses Build Smarter Data Centers

Cisco is at the forefront, delivering advanced, secure networking technology that's foundational to the AI-ready data centers of the future. Cisco unveiled groundbreaking innovations to simplify, secure, and future-proof data centers, empowering organizations to scale their AI ambitions with confidence. Cisco's leadership in hyperscale and AI infrastructure-as-a-service markets demonstrates the foundational role that secure, resilient networking plays in today's data center architecture. In Q3 FY25, Cisco notably surpassed its annual target of $1 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers a full quarter ahead of schedule.