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Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Cisco Charts Its Agentic AI Journey At Cisco Live U.S. 2025
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins delivering the opening-day keynote at Cisco Live 2025 At last week's Cisco Live event in San Diego, the IT and OT infrastructure giant showcased the development of deep agentic AI integrations across its broad portfolio of networking, cybersecurity and observability offerings — with a renewed focus on customer experience. I have had the opportunity to participate in many of the company's past events around the world, but this year's conference could be considered historic given the payload of substantive announcements. Let's dig into what I found most important — and how Cisco might improve on what it's already doing to further its ambitions. (Note: Cisco is an advisory client of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) Cisco Live's mainstage sessions across two days focused on two things: (1) a dizzying number of new solution announcements, and (2) improvements in its customer experience journey. Not surprisingly, day one outlined Cisco's continued progression with modern AI into agentic functionality, from both connectivity and security perspectives. Jeetu Patel, the company's chief product officer who was recently promoted to president, articulated a pragmatic approach that focuses on AI-ready datacenters, future-proofed workplaces and digital resilience created by infusing security controls into the company's network infrastructure portfolio. I was particularly struck by how he contrasted the demands of generative versus agentic AI inferencing, highlighting the need to future-proof connectivity and compute infrastructure to support the demands of agentic persistent workloads. His illustration also demonstrated the need for Cisco to double down on supporting these workloads, something that I will come back to as an opportunity for improvement. On day two, executive vice president Liz Centoni, who took the reins of the company's overall customer experience efforts a year ago, outlined a completely retooled strategy. A new approach was desperately needed, given that Cisco's initial launch of the CX was more programmatic and decoupled technically from its infrastructure solutions, making it complex to navigate for both its channel partner sellers and its customers. What I like about the new effort is tighter product and solution integration supported by an AI adoption agent and a purpose-built large language model. It is a powerful combination, leveraging the company's vast knowledge base with 40 years of issue and remediation experience. Cisco unquestionably possesses the largest data lake in its market, one that has the potential to speed deployment and resolve ever-present issues such as infrastructure misconfigurations quickly and easily. Centoni's 'drop the mic' moment for me was the stated goal to make every customer feel like Cisco's only customer. That is an audacious statement by any measure, and I believe that Cisco has the potential to deliver on its promise. Given the vast number of announcements at Cisco Live this year, it might be difficult to pick one that stands above all the rest. However, the company's new AgenticOps platform landed for me as the most significant for two reasons. First, it includes what I consider to be a beautifully executed management console, dubbed AI Canvas. AI Canvas incorporates an intuitive user interface that integrates a generative AI-powered natural language tool that allows users to customize views with dynamically generated widgets. In doing so, AI Canvas provides a dynamic and real-time view into the inner workings of a customer's infrastructure expanse — providing network assurance, security observability and remediation functionality supported by Cisco's Splunk, ThousandEyes, AppDynamics, Duo Security and other solution offerings. Second, a newly developed Deep Network Model aims to feed AI Canvas with data pulled from Cisco's knowledge base. Combined, they have the potential to dramatically simplify network and security operations with deep observability, exceptional visualization and robust collaboration features to remediate network issues and improve security posture and cyber defense. I also had the opportunity to spend time with senior vice president DJ Sampath, who leads Cisco's AI Software and Platform organization. What I find noteworthy about his team's efforts is the rapid development cycle that brought AgenticOps to market so quickly — in less than one year. As a former product marketer, I can tell you that is a significant achievement by any measure, and it's one that continues to feed Cisco's innovation engine under Patel's leadership. From my perspective, the newly announced AgenticOps platform could serve as the tip of the spear to facilitate the company's deeper infrastructure sales penetration into its competitor install bases. Moor Insights & Strategy founder and chief analyst Patrick Moorhead and The Futurum Group's chief executive Daniel Newman dive deeper with Sampath in this Six Five Media On The Road conversation from the event. A handful of other announcements are worth highlighting: I have highlighted only a handful of the networking and security announcements at the conference. With that said, I really like what Cisco is doing to drive to a platform approach at scale — making it easier for channel partners to sell and deploy the company's numerous new offerings and for customers to consume them. As previously mentioned, Cisco's announcement payload was massive at Cisco Live. Consequently, customers and partners may have a tough time digesting all of this. The risk is that some of these new capabilities may be lost in the mix, and it's going to be a challenge for Cisco to prioritize which elements are most important, whether for overall product marketing or in go-to-market conversations with individual customers. Furthermore, I felt that Cisco's compute strategy fell flat during Patel's keynote. A handful of Cisco executives I spoke to acknowledged the need to strengthen the messaging, especially given the company's desire to deliver full-stack, AI-ready infrastructure through its AI PODs platform, which marries compute and networking to address AI modeling and ML operations. However, I will defer to my Moor Insights & Strategy colleague Matt Kimball to explore this more deeply, given his coverage of datacenter compute. Despite some of those short-term challenges, I like what the company is doing to execute against a platform strategy that addresses the challenges organizations face in deploying AI-ready infrastructure to transform network and security operations. Historically, through Cisco's parallel organic roadmap and acquisition efforts, it has duplicated functionality — especially from an automation perspective. The good news is that its rapid adoption of agentic AI is addressing its myriad automation tools, and in the process is simplifying automation capabilities though more unified product development and go-to-market efforts. I liken a complete and modern AI infrastructure stack to a three-legged stool providing the requisite compute, networking and security functionality. In my mind, it also includes storage as table stakes, given the demands placed on unifying data to train large and small language models. The recent announcements at Cisco Live U.S. address all of these elements to help enterprises unlock the transformative potential of generative and agentic AI applications and workloads securely and at scale.
Web Release
3 days ago
- Business
- Web Release
Cisco Powers AI-Ready Data Centers, From Hyperscale to Enterprise
Today Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) 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. Building on this momentum, Cisco's latest innovations enable enterprises and service providers to continue to accelerate the transformation of their infrastructure for the AI era. These innovations underscore Cisco's unique position as a trusted partner for hyperscale builders, neocloud providers, enterprises, and service providers, enabling the entire ecosystem to evolve and meet the demands of AI-driven workloads. '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. 'As billions of AI agents begin working on our behalf, the demand for high-bandwidth, low latency and power efficient networking for data centers will soar. Cisco is at the forefront, delivering advanced, secure networking technology that's foundational to the AI-ready data centers of the future.' 'The criticality of secure connectivity becomes more apparent as AI use expands across the enterprise,' said Matt Kimball, Moor Insights & Strategy. 'Cisco's ability to deliver AI-ready infrastructure to its customers, along with its investment in AI-enabled operations differentiates the company. It is this kind of partner and customer-first thinking that leads to AI-powered tools that abstract the complexity associated with deploying and managing AI infrastructure. AI reaching its full potential is dependent on a resilient network on which partners build and deliver solutions and services.' Simplifying, Securing, and Modernizing Enterprise AI Infrastructure Enterprises need to evolve and build out their current infrastructure to support their unique AI workloads, all without adding complexity or sacrificing safety and security. Cisco provides enterprise customers with new solutions to modernize their data centers, including hardware innovation and more powerful, simplified management capabilities. Cisco is also continuing to build on its relationship with NVIDIA to deliver validated infrastructure solutions, and to provide a safe and secure foundation for AI agents built with open models. New innovations include: · New Unified Fabric Experience with Nexus: Customers will be able to simplify network operations and enhance operational efficiency across environments, converging ACI and NX-OS VXLAN EVPN fabrics with unified data, control, policy enforcement, and management. The Unified Nexus Dashboard consolidates services across LAN, SAN, IPFM, and AI/ML fabrics into a single pane of glass. These capabilities will be available in the next Nexus Dashboard release in July 2025. · Maximize AI Networking Performance: Customers can optimize AI workload operations with Cisco Intelligent Packet Flow. Available today, it dynamically steers traffic using real-time telemetry and congestion awareness across AI fabrics. With 'end-to-end' visibility across networks, GPUs, and distributed AI jobs, more issues are detected proactively. 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. · Expanded AI PODs: New configurable AI PODs enhance flexibility and scalability for diverse AI workloads, including training and fine-tuning. Cisco also continues to align with NVIDIA's innovation timeline; the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPU is now available to order with Cisco UCS C845A M8 servers. Together, the companies continue to work towards delivering validated solutions as part of the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA · Enabling Safe, Secure AI Adoption with NVIDIA: Cisco AI Defense and Cisco Hypershield provide visibility, validation and runtime protection of the end-to-end enterprise AI workflow, and are now included in the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design. With AI Defense, enterprises can secure AI agents built with leading open models and optimized with NVIDIA NIM and NeMo microservices. · Optics for Simple Upgrades: New 400G bidirectional (BiDi) optics enables customers to easily transition to 400G networks while preserving their existing duplex multi-mode fiber infrastructure ensuring cost efficiency, scalability and enhanced data center performance. The new optics will be available in the second half of the calendar year 2025. Building Up a New Neocloud Market As demand for AI-powered outcomes continues to increase, organizations are exploring new ways to scale quickly and stay adaptable, leading to the emergence of new GPU-as-a-service and Infrastructure-as-a-service providers – a new Neocloud market. Cisco, building on its expertise in designing and building some of the world's largest networks for global service providers, is playing a leading role in helping these providers establish their footprints. Announced partnerships include: · HUMAIN: Saudi Arabia's new AI enterprise is working with Cisco to help build the world's most open, scalable, resilient and cost-efficient AI infrastructure using Cisco Nexus, UCS, Hypershield and Splunk. · G42: The UAE-based global technology group announced a strategic collaboration with Cisco, laying the groundwork to advance AI innovation and infrastructure development across public and private sectors. · Stargate UAE: Cisco joined the Stargate UAE consortium as a preferred technology partner, providing advanced networking, security and observability solutions to accelerate the deployment of next-generation AI compute clusters. Setting Up Service Providers for Success in the AI Era Cisco's Agile Services Networking architecture is designed not just to handle the increase and change in network traffic characteristics of AI, but also to fundamentally shift service providers' network architectures so they can support and monetize new kinds of services. New innovations include: · New Devices: New converged access and edge router devices, powered by Cisco Silicon One. These devices expand the Cisco 8000 series portfolio, which has allowed service providers to reach new levels of network efficiency and functionality. · Agentic AI For Service Providers: A new multi-agentic framework for Cisco Crosswork Network Automation with AI capabilities to help accelerate operations and decision-making. This framework allows service providers to solve their most complex challenges through Cisco-built and customer-built AI agents, all working together towards a vision of autonomous networking. · Non-terrestrial (satellite) Networking: Seamless integration between terrestrial and satellite networks. This architecture supports robust service assurance, dynamic resource allocation, and new monetization opportunities in remote, underserved sectors like maritime, aviation, IoT, and disaster response. Additional Resources: · Executive Blog Post: Reinventing Infrastructure for the Next Wave of AI at Cisco Live · Executive Blog Post: Evolving AI-Ready Data Centers with Cisco Full Stack Solutions and Pervasive Security · Executive Blog Post: Expanding the Edge of Possibility: Cisco Agile Services Networking for the AI Era · Visit the Cisco Newsroom for all Cisco Live 2025 announcements. · Cisco Customer Experience helps customers get more from their technology investments. · Cisco Capital payment solutions provide choices – ways to pay for your technology in more than 100 countries. · Support AI-ready outcomes with new skills training in Cisco U.
Techday NZ
11-06-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Cisco surpasses AI order target, unveils new data centre tools
Cisco has announced a series of updates and partnerships intended to accelerate adoption of AI-ready infrastructure across enterprise and hyperscale data centres. The updates include expanded AI PODs, enhanced network management tools, and technical integrations with NVIDIA, as well as collaborations with emerging neocloud and global service providers. AI-driven data centre growth During the most recent quarter, Cisco surpassed its annual target of USD $1 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscale customers, reporting achievement of this milestone one quarter earlier than planned. The company's latest infrastructure updates are designed to allow enterprises and service providers to modernise their facilities for evolving AI workloads. This is being achieved through validated solutions, simplified upgrades, and unified management platforms that bring together various network domains under one dashboard. "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 at Cisco. "As billions of AI agents begin working on our behalf, the demand for high-bandwidth, low latency and power efficient networking for data centers will soar. Cisco is at the forefront, delivering advanced, secure networking technology that's foundational to the AI-ready data centers of the future." Matt Kimball, Moor Insights & Strategy, also highlighted the importance of secure connectivity for enterprise AI expansion, stating, "The criticality of secure connectivity becomes more apparent as AI use expands across the enterprise. Cisco's ability to deliver AI-ready infrastructure to its customers, along with its investment in AI-enabled operations differentiates the company." "It is this kind of partner and customer-first thinking that leads to AI-powered tools that abstract the complexity associated with deploying and managing AI infrastructure. AI reaching its full potential is dependent on a resilient network on which partners build and deliver solutions and services." Enterprise infrastructure upgrades Among Cisco's newly announced solutions is the Unified Nexus Dashboard, which consolidates management across local area networks, storage area networks, IP fabric management, and AI/ML IT environments into a single interface. This is intended to improve operational efficiency and visibility for data centre operators. The platform's latest release is scheduled for July 2025. Cisco has also released Intelligent Packet Flow, a traffic management feature designed to proactively steer AI workloads using real-time telemetry and congestion data. This aims to provide 'end-to-end' visibility linking networks, GPUs, and distributed AI compute jobs. In technical collaboration with NVIDIA, Cisco demonstrated integration of Cisco G200-based switches and NVIDIA network interface cards, enabling NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking via Cisco Silicon One. This integration supports various operating environments, including NX-OS, Nexus Hyperfabric AI, and SONiC deployments. The company has broadened its AI POD offerings, providing more configurable options for organisations deploying tailored AI workloads. Partnerships with NVIDIA continue, with the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPU now available to order with Cisco UCS C845A M8 servers, supporting the development of validated solutions as part of the Cisco Secure AI Factory initiative. On the security front, Cisco AI Defense and Cisco Hypershield are now included in NVIDIA's Enterprise AI Factory validated design. These solutions offer visibility, validation, and runtime protection for end-to-end enterprise AI workflows, supporting AI agents built on open models and optimised using NVIDIA microservices. Additionally, Cisco has introduced new 400G bidirectional optics to enable data centre operators to upgrade their networks while maintaining existing fibre infrastructure, with availability scheduled for the second half of 2025. Growth of the neocloud market Recognising the emergence of a 'neocloud' market segment, Cisco has signed partnerships with new GPU- and infrastructure-as-a-service providers. Projects highlighted include: HUMAIN in Saudi Arabia, which is constructing an AI infrastructure using Cisco networking, analytics, and security technologies, including Nexus, UCS, Hypershield, and Splunk. G42, a technology group in the UAE, announced a strategic collaboration with Cisco to develop AI infrastructure across both public and private sectors. Stargate UAE consortium has appointed Cisco as a preferred technology partner to support advanced networking, security, and observability for future AI compute clusters. Service provider advancements Cisco's Agile Services Networking architecture is being expanded to support both terrestrial and satellite service provider networks, responding to changes in network traffic generated by new AI applications. This includes new converged access and edge routers powered by Cisco Silicon One, additions to the 8000 series hardware portfolio, and the launch of a multi-agentic framework for Cisco Crosswork Network Automation. The latter provides tools for service providers to automate network operations using both Cisco and customer-built AI agents. The architecture is also designed for integration with satellite networks, allowing resource allocation and service delivery in sectors such as maritime, aviation, emergency response, and the Internet of Things.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Apple is falling behind & how it can pull ahead
Patrick Moorhead, founder and CEO at Moor Insights & Strategy, joins Asking for a Trend with Josh Lipton to discuss the factors behind Apple's (AAPL) bad year and what the company needs to do to pull ahead. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Asking for a Trend here. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Upturn
12-05-2025
- Business
- Business Upturn
The Six Five Summit: AI Unleashed 2025 Explores the Future of Artificial Intelligence
Austin, Texas, May 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Six Five Media today announced the speaker lineup for its annual Six Five Summit, set to take place virtually from June 16-19, 2025. This year's summit, themed 'AI Unleashed 2025,' will unpack the transformative power of artificial intelligence and its impact across various industries. The Six Five Summit: AI Unleashed will deliver four days of exclusive, on-demand content, featuring insights from the industry's most influential voices at the center of AI, tech, and their markets. Attendees will gain access to fresh video sessions and interactive thought leadership from top tech executives, with new content released daily. This year's agenda will include sessions exploring the intersection of AI with 14 different track topics: Automotive DevOps Cloud Infrastructure Enterprise AI Intelligent Edge Enterprise Applications Collaboration Modern Work Cybersecurity Semiconductors Sustainability Data & Observability Quantum Computing And, as the AI landscape continues to expand exponentially, this year's program will introduce a new track focusing on Channel Ecosystems & Marketing. 'We're excited to present a dynamic and comprehensive program that addresses the most pressing questions and exciting possibilities in the world of AI. The Six Five Summit eliminates the barriers of traditional conferences, offering direct access to the discourse shaping AI's newest chapter, without the constraints of travel or scheduling conflicts.' – Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy Check Out The Six Five Summit 2024 Recap Reel The previous Six Five Summit featured 60+ sessions from 40+ companies and 35+ C-Suite Execs across the tech landscape. In addition to this year's show opener, Michael Dell, Rene Hass CEO of Arm Holdings and Aaron Levie CEO of Box will each be featured as day-opening keynote speakers. Additional confirmed participants for 2025 include CXO's and Presidents from HP, Coherent, Lattice Semiconductor, AWS, Google Cloud, Marvell, Salesforce, IonQ, Oracle, Samsung Semiconductor, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, T-Mobile, Dell Technologies, SAP, Iron Mountain, and others, to be announced. 'AI is rapidly evolving, reshaping industries and creating unprecedented opportunities,' said Daniel Newman, Founding Partner of Six Five Media and CEO of The Futurum Group. 'The Six Five Summit: AI Unleashed will bring together the brightest minds in technology to explore the latest advancements, challenges, and opportunities in AI. We'll be diving deep into the key trends shaping the future of AI.' The summit will provide insider perspectives on the next wave of AI innovation from the leaders driving these technologies to market. Sessions will span critical industry sectors, including Semiconductors, Devices, Cloud, and Cybersecurity, and examine their intersection with pivotal AI trends such as: Agentic AI: Exploring the rise of autonomous AI agents. Exploring the rise of autonomous AI agents. Co-Pilots: Examining the integration of AI assistants into workflows. Examining the integration of AI assistants into workflows. Frontier Models: Discussing the development and implications of cutting-edge AI models. Discussing the development and implications of cutting-edge AI models. SLMs (Small Language Models): Analyzing the growing importance of efficient and specialized language models. Registration for The Six Five Summit: AI Unleashed 2025 is now open. For more information on speakers, agenda, and registration, please visit About The Six Five Summit The Six Five Summit is an annual, digital event hosted by Six Five Media, bringing together the leading voices in technology to discuss the most important trends and innovations transforming industries and markets. The summit provides a platform for in-depth analysis, thought leadership, and networking, with top tech CEO's and C-suite executives paired with insights and commentary from top analysts, pundits, and strategists in the industry, delivered directly to attendees' screens. About Six Five Media Six Five Media is a global technology media, and events company. They provide industry-leading B2B technology analysis and produce high-profile thought leadership content from the top voices in tech. Attachment Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same.
