Cisco Unleashes Deluge of AI, Networking, Security Advancements

CISCO LIVE AMSTERDAM — Cisco on Tuesday unveiled several new offerings demonstrating what the IT and networking giant said is continued momentum in artificial intelligence (AI) across its portfolio.

Cisco Live Amsterdam is the company's flagship technology event in Europe, with more than 14,000 IT professionals in attendance. The new AI-fueled offerings span networking, security, collaboration and observability.

Cisco estimates that generative AI could add $4.4 trillion to global gross domestic product (GDP) each year; yet, there are challenges in place around enabling companies to get there. The recent Cisco AI Readiness Index, a survey of more than 8,000 private sector, business and IT leaders  across 30 countries, found that 95% of respondents have an AI strategy in place or under development. But only 14% are ready to integrate AI into their businesses.

Cisco Live Focused on 'Immense' AI Opportunity

Alex Pujols, vice president of global partner engineering at Cisco, tells Channel Futures that the opportunity at hand in AI is “immense.”

Cisco's Alex Pujols

“It already presents significant opportunities for partners as customers seek guidance in navigating the explosion of AI-enabled technologies and use cases,” he said. “Cisco will continue to build rich AI capabilities across its portfolio and will continue to aggressively invest in AI across our portfolio, particularly in the areas of observability, networking and security.”

One major opportunity is readying the 30 years of deployed ethernet infrastructure to deliver on the low-latency and high-throughput demands of AI/machine learning (ML) workloads, Pujols said.

“Cisco has been the leader in ethernet for nearly 30 years,” he said. “Through our work on standardizing and building the next generation of AI-capable ethernet networks, the next 30 years are going to be full of opportunities for Cisco and our partners.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Cisco Live Amsterdam 2024.