Cisco supremo Chuck Robbins is adamant about not getting left in the digital dust again, especially not in artificial intelligence (AI) arena.
Cisco was the networking kingpin that got a bit of a shock when cloud computing came knocking. But Robbins does not want the same thing to happen with AI. He reckons Cisco has the upper hand this time, unlike the cloud kerfuffle when they were behind the eight ball.
With a £22.04 billion Splunk deal in the bag, Cisco’s strutting into the AI arena with a swagger, ready to outshine the competition with some snazzy ample data security and observability tricks.
The tech world is abuzz with anticipation of glimpses of the Cisco-Splunk lovechild at the RSA Conference in May. More goodies are promised at Cisco Live and Splunk .conf24 in June. Chuck’s betting on three aces to win the AI game: a solid infrastructure for running hefty AI workloads, chatty product interfaces thanks to AI assistants, and letting customers dive into vast data lakes for top-notch security and performance.
Cisco’s Silicon One architecture, designed to flex its muscles with large AI workloads, is at the core of this tech bonanza. But the real excitement lies in the budding partnership with Nvidia to craft AI infrastructure for data centres. This dynamic duo is about merging Cisco’s networking prowess with Nvidia’s GPU and AI expertise.
And let’s not forget the AI Assistants Cisco has baked into its gear, like the ones for Webex and Cisco Firewall, which make it easy for users to tinker with settings or create new policies.
Cisco’s also rallying its partners for its AI crusade, with a shiny new AI specialisation track on the horizon and a sprinkle of AI magic in its existing partner programmes.
Robinson wants to beef up Splunk’s partner strategy, as they’re not quite the channel champs they reckon they are.
Meanwhile, Cisco keeps a wary eye on Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s pending £11.02 billion move for Juniper Networks. But Chuck’s not losing any sleep over it. He’s confident that when push comes to shove, customers will pick Cisco’s secure, high-performance networks jazzed up with AI over fancy dashboards any day of the week.
