Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking and security, highlighted innovative technology, partnerships, and skills programs to the over 17,000 IT professionals that attended its flagship technology event in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region. Cisco Live EMEA provides customers with a clear vision for how the company can help simplify IT in the face of increasing complexity, and a blueprint for securely adopting and utilizing AI to empower their businesses.
“Cisco is in a unique position to help guide our customers through the incredible change we’re seeing right now across industries,” said Oliver Tuszik, President of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Cisco. “From the changing nature of the workplace, to the AI revolution in data center and network infrastructure, and the need for digital resilience at all levels, Cisco has solutions for our customers’ biggest challenges.”
Cisco’s recent CEO research highlights the dilemma customers face today as they prepare for the impact of AI. More than 70% of CEOs shared concerns about losing ground to competitors and missing out on opportunities because of IT and infrastructure gaps. They recognize the need to invest in AI skilling and workforce upskilling, alongside the technology investments. CEOs also recognized the importance of trusted partners, with 96% reporting their reliance on them to assist in future-proofing their networks for AI.
Simplicity, Security and AI Readiness
Across its portfolio, Cisco is committed to building solutions that simplify operations, embed security at all levels, and provide customers with the technology they need to embrace AI.
“Every business today is working overtime to understand the opportunities and challenges of adapting how they work and serve customers in the AI era,” said Jeetu Patel, EVP and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. “At Cisco, it’s our mission to actively shape this future and help our customers around the world to win. That’s what the innovations in networking, security, data centers, and more that we unveiled at Cisco Live EMEA are all about. Our customers need trusted partners to navigate this shift and we’re answering the call.”
Cisco introduced and is delivering impactful innovations across the unmatched breadth of its product portfolio. This includes:
- AI infrastructure and data center solutions to enable enterprise and service provider customers to transform infrastructure to power AI workloads.
- Cisco N9300 Smart Switches with Hypershield: Cisco’s Smart Switches redefine adaptive and scalable AI data center architectures by embedding services directly into the network. Cisco Hypershield, which will be the first service available, eliminates the gap between security and networking layers by converging them into a single solution.
- Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall: The N9300 Smart Switch and Hypershield integration, along with advances in firewall, management, and licensing, will enable Cisco to deliver Hybrid Mesh Firewall optimized to protect AI applications in the data center and public cloud. Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall is a highly distributed security fabric managed under a single management console, delivering zero trust segmentation and protect application vulnerabilities in modern and AI applications.
- Cisco Agile Services Networking: The Cisco Agile Services Networking architecture provides a blueprint for service providers as they look to enable AI connectivity and monetize assured services. The innovations introduced to deliver this architecture include Silicon One-powered platforms, coherent pluggable optics and provider management and assurance software enhancements.
- Expansion of AI Server Family: New Cisco UCS C845A M8 server, based on the NVIDIA MGX reference architecture, brings flexibility to AI workloads. Its advanced architecture is designed to enable AI innovation, offering the computational power for intensive tasks and the efficiency required for rapid deployment.
- Innovations to modernize everywhere people and technology work and serve customers?.
- Universal Zero Trust Network Access: Cisco is extending its identity-first Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) with Hybrid Private Access to optimize in-office experience and keep sensitive data private. Along withPolicy Assurance to predict and prevent policy-related access disruptions, Cisco is enabling customers to make zero trust truly universal in both coverage and resilience.
- Zero Friction Workplace Connectivity: To deliver a full complement of integrated workplace wireless infrastructure solutions that provide innovative intelligence, security, and assurance, Cisco is introducing an expanded portfolio of Wi-Fi 7 access points for small and mid-size deployments, along with high-powered stackable access switches.
- Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center: To improve agent and customer service experiences, the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center is now generally available. This includes context transfer summaries, dropped call summaries, Agent Wellbeing and automatic customer satisfaction scores (Auto CSAT). The company has also announced that features including suggested responses, real-time transcription for agents, wrap-up summaries and mid-call summaries will be available in Q2 2025.
- Cisco Room Bar BYOD: According to a recent Frost and Sullivan report*, 56% of video-enabled spaces are currently Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD). To enable seamless collaboration in any space, Webex unveiled the Cisco Room Bar BYOD. The Room Bar BYOD allows you to join any meeting hosted on your laptop via USB-C and provides a cost-effective and scalable solution that features AI-powered capabilities to empower businesses with high-quality meeting experiences.
- Observability, assurance and security solutions that encompass a customer’s entire digital footprint so they can stay resilient.
- Cisco ThousandEyes Traffic Insights: Generally available in March, Cisco ThousandEyes Traffic Insights extends visibility deeper into on-premises networks by correlating traffic flows with synthetic measurements for end-to-end assurance of every digital experience. The out-of-the-box Cisco integration enhances digital resilience by enabling customers to accelerate remediation and rapidly pinpoint performance issues.
- New Cisco and Splunk integrations now available: Cisco Secure Application for Splunk AppDynamics and Cisco Talos Threat Intelligence now integrate with Splunk security solutions, enhancing visibility and threat detection. Application attack data from Cisco Secure Application for Splunk AppDynamics flows into Splunk Enterprise Security, enabling faster security investigations. Additionally, real-time threat intelligence from Cisco Talos is now available for Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk SOAR, and Splunk Attack Analyzer.
Solving AI Challenges
Cisco’s portfolio gives customers and partners solutions to accelerate AI adoption, but challenges remain. Recognizing the need to tackle the energy efficiency challenges imposed by AI workloads, as well as the deepening skills gap that has developed due to the ever-evolving AI landscape, Cisco has introduced new partnerships and programs at Cisco Live EMEA.
- Engineering Alliances: The Cisco Engineering Alliances program is designed to accelerate building new validated solutions to solve some of our customers’ most pressing challenges. Cisco has signed alliances with Vertiv, DeepCoolAI, Green Revolution Cooling and Asperitas to deliver liquid cooling solutions, addressing the ever-increasing thermal density in AI data centers. Additionally, Cisco has signed alliances with Panduit, MHT Technologies and ThinLabs to deliver end-to-end direct current microgrid solutions leveraging Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and Fault Managed Power (FMP) to reduce energy use in smart buildings.
- AI Skilling: Cisco continues to enhance its offerings in AI skilling by launching its newest AI Skills Journey program to build critical AI Infrastructure skills from entry to expert — available on u.cisco.com. As a part of this effort, Cisco Learning & Certifications has updated current certifications, including Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) and Internetwork Expert (CCIE). These updated certifications reflect the AI and cybersecurity skills needed to achieve impactful business outcomes. Select programs will be complimentary through March 24.
AI-led Customer Experience
Cisco also announced the first, jointly developed AI Agent from its strategic partnership with Mistral AI, one of Europe’s leading providers of AI solutions. The AI Renewals Agent greatly enhances and streamlines the renewal proposal creation process at Cisco by consolidating both structured and unstructured data from over 50 signals and sources and providing real-time sentiment analysis, summarized recommendations, intelligent automation, and personalization, all tied to customer outcomes and key performance indicators (KPIs). The new agent is the latest AI innovation for Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) organization and continues to demonstrate how Cisco is delivering against its vision of using AI to make every customer experience personalized, proactive and predictive, and delivering unique outcomes that exceed customers’ expectations.