Cisco Doubles Down on AI, Infrastructure, WAN Monitoring and Security – Cisco Live 2024
Cisco Doubles Down on AI, Infrastructure, WAN Monitoring and Security at Cisco Live 2024
Cisco held its annual US edition of Cisco Live in Las Vegas and it didn’t disappoint. 2024 showcased Cisco’s unwavering commitment to Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI at the Edge, and AI assistants across its product portfolio. Some significant capabilities were shown with its Thousand Eyes Monitoring offering and Cisco was selling the Splunk story on Security, given its huge spending on the acquisition. This blog dives into the major stories we saw at Cisco Live 2024.
AI Infrastructure – Cisco Has Been Quietly Investing
What many do not give Cisco credit for – and it is partly because embedded GPUs and FPGAs are not sexy – is Cisco’s investment in its hardware – to make it AI-ready. Cisco announced that it was continuing its relationship with Nvidia – which for the Collaboration Endpoints – goes back almost 8 years. So today, all Webex Video Endpoints are AI ready – and given the hype around AI PCs (and the need for replacing aging fleets of Windows PCs), Cisco was years ahead in seeing this trend since a large part of its install base of Video Endpoints already is AI ready.
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI Clusters will help Enterprises with Edge Computing
Cisco does sell infrastructure and now it is offering its new Nexus Hyperfabric AI Clusters to help enterprises with one of the biggest trends that has put the Cloud providers on notice: Edge Computing. The truth is that not all AI needs to run in a remote cloud data center. In many cases, it needs to run out on the edge – and that means edge devices and local data centers.
Cisco announced a slew of products most notably 6000 series switches, NVIDIA AI Software, NIM Microservices (which is based on Open Source Kubernetes Kubeflow), NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs, and an AI server reference architecture based on NVIDIA MGX. It all comes together with the Vast Data Platform that offers unified storage and database.
All Cisco Divisions Embracing AI Assistants
Although not all AI assistant developments made it to the main stage, it’s clear that AI assistants are a priority for every division at Cisco. What’s notable is that the framework and infrastructure for these AI assistants originate from the Collaboration division.
For Cisco, having a common approach to Assistants puts Cisco in the same league as Google and Microsoft, with the Cisco Collaboration leading the way with its Intelligent Assistant that has been available for three years.
The new Cisco AI Assistants will include:
- AI Assistant for App Dynamics
- AI Assistant for Security
- AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center
- AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center developers
Thousand Eyes for Wide Area Network Monitoring Steals the Show
If there was any product that was continuously endorsed by customers, it was Thousand Eyes. If we try to net it out, Thousand Eyes can monitor almost all activity on a network, and now at Cisco Live, they announced enhanced capabilities, and third-party data access so almost anything on a Wide Area network can be discovered and monitored.
In an age of IOT, this is the real deal. Aragon feels that the use cases for Thousand Eyes are unlimited and go way beyond security.
The Splunk Show Comes to Cisco Live
If you aren’t in the Security market – and you heard the Splunk pitch – you would think that Splunk is all you need. However, that just isn’t even close to reality. Splunk is great for observability and security analytics. The $27 Billion acquisition of Splunk does help to beef up Cisco’s Security offerings but it was a heavy price to pay. The great news is that with Splunk and Thousand Eyes – the world just got smaller.
Overall Cisco can use its war chest of cash to keep buying AI security offerings. See Aragon’s Market Insights Guide to AI in Cyber Security for all of the providers who are in this market.
The AI Investment Fund – A Good Start
All that said, the billion-dollar AI investment fund is needed and one could argue that $1 Billion is nowhere close to enough. However, it is a good move and it signals that Cisco is serious about AI – particularly with its long-term NVIDIA relationship. With its AI Fund, Cisco needs to keep buying more AI applications and AI capabilities – particularly in Networking and Security.
Customer Buzz at Cisco Live – got bigger with Tom Brady.
Having been to so many events for so many years, event buzz is a thing. You can tell if an event has a buzz or if it is a blah or boring event. Cisco Live had a buzz and that is probably because Cisco is definitely listening to its customers and with better interoperability than ever. On top of that -with a complete focus on AI and AI infrastructure – Cisco is helping customers prepare for an AI future.
It could not get better with a closing fireside chat between Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins and NFL Legend Tom Brady. Tom mesmerized the audience with a discussion about competing and winning.
Bottom Line
Cisco did not disappoint in its product updates and overall focus on AI. While some of the AI assistants are still in development, customers left Cisco Live feeling a commitment to AI that goes beyond the application focus that others are hyping. With Edge computing being the next wave to enable AI-based computing, including real-time responses and actions, Cisco’s quiet thunder on its Edge AI approach will help many enterprises prepare for an AI future.
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