Cisco Live 2024 in Las Vegas brought excitement and much discussion about Cisco’s artificial intelligence (AI) innovations. Cisco executives emphasized the incredible power of the company’s AI strategy at every step, especially when it comes to meeting customer needs. Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Cisco, and this is especially true for AI. Customer demand for AI-powered technology is very high, and the opportunities for partners are enormous. AI is a prime example of how we can work together to be better as partners bridge the gap between Cisco AI technology and unique customer use cases.
Cisco enables partners to help customers harness the power of AI
At Cisconian, we are proud of our history and expertise in AI and the use of AI to enhance our products. As Cisco expands its AI portfolio, our unique differentiator continues to be our unparalleled ability to give our customers access to vast amounts of relevant data while providing the infrastructure they need for AI. Our acquisition of Splunk not only creates the world’s largest software company, but our complementary capabilities in AI, security, and observability will unlock the immense value of data for customers of all sizes.
Cisco is investing in increasing the AI maturity of our partners
The accelerating urgency among customers to adopt and leverage AI-powered technologies is creating significant opportunities for partners to build profitable AI practices. Cisco is committed to ensuring that our AI services contribute to both our partners’ business objectives and bottom line, making everyone smarter and every organization better. Cisco is moving the needle faster than ever to help our partners and customers achieve more and achieve greater success. This is evidence of the recent adoption of AI and the promise of more in the future.
Empower your partners with AI
At Cisco Live, we announced several AI releases designed to strengthen our partners’ capabilities and help them succeed in their collective AI journey, delivering more value to our mutual customers.
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric — Cisco’s fully managed Data Fabric-as-a-Service
This innovative, full-stack, cloud-managed AI solution is designed to eliminate deployment complexity and streamline AI implementation. Partners can help customers design, deploy, and manage large-scale AI-based networks through user-friendly interfaces or APIs. With Cisco handling the infrastructure, partners can focus on driving business objectives and accelerating time to value, while customers can maximize the value of AI to drive innovation and growth. It’s about meeting where our mutual customers are and how they want to leverage Cisco technology.
Cisco AI Fundamentals for Partners
The first phase of the AI Partner Specialty Training Series begins with AI fundamentals and provides partners with the knowledge they need to optimize their infrastructure for AI workloads using Cisco technology. Partners will explore the fundamentals of AI, including key concepts and terminology, and examine Cisco’s AI strategy, risks, governance, and real-world use cases, as they progress through the classification of AI solutions, mastering the implementation of AI solutions in, on, and through Cisco platforms. With a mission to improve the entire partner ecosystem and improve customer outcomes, Cisco is inviting all partners to invest in this personalized learning from the free Cisco Black Belt.
Register for AI Fundamentals training for partners at Cisco Black Belt Academy.
And this is just the beginning. In the coming months, Cisco will provide more opportunities for partners to be recognized for their ability to sell, deploy, build, and operate Cisco AI technology. This includes expanded training with advanced concepts to help partners develop more complex AI solutions, as well as early access to specialized tools and Cisco AI-based products. Stay tuned for future announcements, including at our Partner Summit, about how we plan to support our partners’ AI practices. Also, check out my session “The Cisco-Partner AI Opportunity” at Cisco Partner Launch Experience.
Exciting New AI Award
Given the high demands of our customers, our commitment to AI and partner empowerment is part of everything we do. As previously announced, Cisco is championing partners leveraging AI through a new AI-specific award category in the annual Global Partner Innovation Challenge. This new AI award will focus on innovation, impact, collaboration with Cisco, technical feasibility, and scalability, and will award $200,000 in prize money. Last year, 41% of submissions incorporated AI, and we’re confident that number will continue to grow. Register for the Partner Innovation Challenge.
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