Networking giant Cisco on Tuesday promoted a new release of its data centers focusing on the growing appetite of companies for artificial intelligence and security.
At Cisco Live in San Diego, the company has introduced new hardware and tools that promise “future proof” data centers for AI workloads, and several new partnerships with NeoCloud providers.
Using its proprietary Agent AI offering, Cisco has announced a multi-agent framework for service providers to leverage Cisco AI assistants, allowing Cisco agent offers to be mixed with its own agent tools.
In a keynote address on Tuesday, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said the company's data center offering reflects the rapid pace of technology innovation. “We are currently experiencing one of the largest data center expansions in human history,” he said. “It's an incredible exponential curve, just getting faster every day.”
As proof of demand, the company noted that orders for hyperscalar AI infrastructure were blown beyond its 2025 billion dollar target and exceeded its planned target.
These innovations are really committed to trying to simplify the deployment of AI.
Zeus KerabaraAnalyst and Founder, ZK Research
Zeus Kerravala, analyst and founder of ZK Research, said that Cisco's data center will release it to strengthen its market leadership position in the race to employ AI across the enterprise.
“No one's going to do it 'big and better' than Cisco,” he said. “They have scale… And I think what you're looking at is when AI started out as a range of hyperscalers and some big companies.
Will Townsend, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, described the Cisco data center upgrade as “substantial.”
“I liken a complete modern infrastructure stack to a three-legged stool, providing the necessary calculations, networking and security features,” he said in an email interview. “From my perspective, Cisco's announcement addresses all three elements and helps businesses unlock the possibilities of generating and transforming agent AI applications and workloads at scale.”
Hardware and Management Tools
The company has detailed the new unified dashboard, expanded its AI Delivery Products (PODs) and introduced new optics for network transitions.
Cisco said the Unified Nexus dashboard will allow customers to simplify network operations by integrating services across LAN, SAN, IP Fabric for Media Solutions and AI/ML fabrics. These features will be available in the next Nexus dashboard release in July.
Intelligent Packet Flow is available on Tuesday as it is a tool that allows you to manipulate traffic with real-time telemetry and congestion recognition across AI data management and development. This tool increases visibility for customers across networks, GPUs, and distributed AI workloads and pairs them with Cisco AI assistants. The AI Assistant will be featured on the Nexus dashboard next year.
Cisco is also expanding its AI inference package, AI Pods, with the help of Nvidia. You can now order Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000 and order with Cisco's UCS C845A M8 server.
The expanded AI POD product “provides support edge, lag, training, and large-scale cost reductions and large-scale cost, including NVIDIA accelerated computing, networking and AI software.”
AI agents report obligations
Cisco's Agent AI Framework will arm the Crosswork Network Automation Platform with new AI capabilities and fully integrate with Cisco AI Assistant, allowing Cisco and customer agents to work together.
As agent AI becomes more entrenched, inter-agent operations become a larger enterprise roadmap. In a recent research report, Cisco said Agent AI could handle 68% of customer service and support interactions by 2028.
Companies are competing to find ways to use Agent AI, but Kerabara said those efforts could take time to come true and provide returns on investment.
“We want to know how Agent AI is hired,” he said. “I think there's going to be “crawls, walks, running” where companies plan to use it to automate more capabilities, but they'll keep humans in the loop for a while. ”
Extending Neocloud Partnerships
Cisco also said it has formed a strategic partnership to support the Neocloud market.
The partnership includes pushing for the construction of Human and Saudi Arabia's AI plants, using Cisco Nexus, Unified Computing System, HyperShield and Splunk products. The G42 is a UAE-based global technology group working to advance private and public sector AI. and Stargate UAE, a group of favourite technology partners, including Cisco, which enhances AI infrastructure in the Middle East.
Kerravala said the partnership could be focused on specific geographic locations, but the results would benefit the global IT ecosystem.
“Customers want options on how and where to buy,” he said. “The ability to buy these things as services is more appealing to many organizations. Just like the UAE and initiative, governments may provide these services to businesses to promote AI adoption.
A veteran journalist with over 20 years of experience, Shane Snider covers IT infrastructure with Informa TechTarget.
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