Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured the imagination of enterprises like never before, with 95% of business and IT leaders surveyed in Cisco’s recent AI Readiness Index saying they have an AI strategy in place or in development. However, only 14% feel their organisations are truly ready to harness the power of AI, pointing to challenges around infrastructure, security, privacy and ethics.
Cisco is aiming to change that with major AI momentum across its portfolio, unveiled this week at its marquee Cisco Live EMEA event in Johannesburg, South Africa. The announcements span AI advancements in networking, security, collaboration and observability.
“We have the infrastructure to power AI, the portfolio optimised to secure it, the visibility and tools to ensure the best user experience and the expertise to help our customers get the outcomes they need,” said Oliver Tuszik, SVP and President of EMEA at Cisco.
The Global AI Prize is Up For Grabs
Cisco cited estimates that generative AI (GenAI) alone could add a staggering $4.4 trillion to global GDP annually. With so much at stake, it’s no wonder enterprises are racing to embed AI, even as they grapple with potential downsides like biased algorithms, job losses and misinformation.
To accelerate secure and ethical AI deployments, Cisco teamed up with Nvidia this week to deliver new AI infrastructure solutions for data centres. The joint offerings promise simplified management while providing the massive compute power needed for AI workloads.
Enhancing Security With AI
AI is also making security smarter in Cisco’s portfolio. New capabilities launched this week include AI-powered analytics for Cisco Identity Intelligence to spot hidden threats and automated recommendations from Cisco’s AI Assistant for Security to bolster defences.
“Within the Cisco Security Cloud, there has been continued AI innovation to deliver a unified, AI-driven, cross-domain security platform,” wrote Cisco in its press release.
Smoothing IT Operations With AI Ops
On the observability front, Cisco updated its offerings with an AI-based natural language interface to simplify troubleshooting. Its AIOps application leverages automation to keep IT teams humming along efficiently.
Cisco also introduced Motific, its first SaaS product for managing GenAI deployments securely across organisations. The cloud-based service provides centralised visibility and control over sensitive data, security policies and costs.
More Tailoured AI Infrastructure
With the floodgates open for AI adoption, Cisco is ensuring it provides the right data centre infrastructure for varying use cases. That includes advancing its X-Series Direct for edge environments and expanded converged/hyperconverged solutions based on its AI/ML data centre blueprint.
Webex By Cisco Gets Brainier
Cisco is injecting more IQ into its popular Webex collaboration suite as well. New capabilities leverage AI to summarise meetings and documents, suggest tone changes to messages, enable real-time translation and detect potential agent burnout.
The wide-ranging AI updates to Cisco’s portfolio underscore its goal of enabling businesses to implement AI responsibly. With investments across infrastructure, security, operations and applications, the tech giant is aiming for organisations to hit the ground running with AI that delivers measurable outcomes.