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Key takeaways of zdnet
- Scene providers like Cisco keep clouds and internet alive.
- The 40 -year -old company now holds itself as an AI infrastructure seller.
- Challenge: Support millions of people if not billions of devices worldwide.
This is the nature of the animal of the market – all east think of technical providers who have disappeared for years, either from acquisition or collapse: Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang, Complex, just for a few names.
Nevertheless, there are some that have developed and adapted quite aggressively through decades – Microsoft to Azure and Copilot from their individual computer roots; Google simple search engine to Google AI; Amazon to Amazon Web Services, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Sayamkar; And Adobe from Postscript and PDF to Jugnu.
Apart from this: Cisco rolled out AI agents to automate network tasks on ‘machine speed’ – it is still under control.
I think some backbone companies we trust to keep the Internet and Cloud on-Misco and IBM come to mind-in case of less attention, AI has taken a backseat for all the dazzling-dazzle of age. Finally, AI will be more than a disconnected, a disconnect, without a disconnect, lax -sheets without the huge, sophisticated global infrastructure required to support it.
So when I recently got an opportunity to talk to Cisco Systems, I was curious about the 40-year-old networking hardware company-how- Bell of industry In the 1990s – AI is re -established in the era. Ultimately, this is the purpose of AI to help AI make its AI system.
The company has deployed itself as an AI-managed infrastructure and service provider, especially when it comes to supporting millions of hardware equipment on customer sites worldwide, Liz SantoniExecutive Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer in Cisco.
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I recently got an opportunity to sit with Santoni, which has been with Cisco for 20 years, and learned about Cisco travel from network hardware provider to AI system provider. (I also talked about the emerging role of customer experience officers with Santoni.)
Cisco is worthy of more respect
Obviously, things are going very well. “Cisco Systems is worthy of more respect in AI, and its quarterly results prove it,” CNBC’s Jeff Marx has recently written ArticleThe company’s most recent Quarterly income report Revenue shows about $ 14.7 billion in revenue, leap of 8% in the previous year’s quarter. During the financial year 2025, the company saw more than $ 2 billion in the orders of its AI Infrastructure System, The Wall Street Journal. ReportsMore than your initial $ 1 billion.
Such a change starts from inside to outside. Internal, Cisco has adopted the AI-first approach, said Jeetu PatelChairman and Chief Excise Officer for Cisco, A Interview With cxotalk. In this, “The way we manufacture the product, the way our products are used by customers, the way we actually work within the company,” AI is now behind the company’s reactions to support the tickets, reducing overhead costs, accelerating sales and handling legal and accounting processes involved with sales. Because of AI, Cisco is “a completely separate company that used to be three years ago,” Patel said.
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There is a need to increase customer experience at the core of any and all AI changes – AI needs to be used as a tool so that better to understand what customers want, and be able to fix any problem quickly, or before they occur.
While there is not a direct Cisco customer themselves, I believe that I have recently been greatly impressed with my internet and stream providers accountability (I use both Verizon and Comkast)-Glich quickly self-healing, and to improve your devices to start my devices to start with automatic remote pinges for my equipment. (I hope I was not just a ginx!)
Santoni stated that such AI-managed service, the ability to quickly address problems without much disturbance, is at the core of Cisco’s service philosophy.
‘We are an AI Infrastructure Company’
“We have started as a networking company, and we have increased in security, help customers to change their architecture to modernize their infrastructure,” she said. “Now, we are helping customers with AI Infrastructure. We are an AI Infrastructure Company. We help them to make a stack, on which to run AI with training and estimates.”
Although it may seem that the world is pushing N Mass in AI, Santoni noticed that many Cisco customers are just starting to use AI in a wider way. Then, there are some that “manufacturing big language models and running AI workloads. We help them with services that they can introduce to their customers, use cases, and finding what they want to solve with AI.”
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AI – and AI agents – are quickly helping to expose configurations and network issues, as well as helping customers with expansion plans, she continues. “This means that they can reduce the amount of manpower involved. For example, they add a new branch to their premises, but do it with high confidence and low risk.” For the future, the company is searching for agentic AI that can answer customer questions. “Even if the models are not fully trained, they can ask it like ‘Where does this VM sit?”
An example of AI in action is Cisco’s approach to firewall safety, which incorporates natural language processing inputs from administrators to address issues, which makes it faster and easier to address potential safety threats. Santoni said: “How do we make it simple? Because if you do not make it simple, your teams will find a way to move around it, and security is not the place you want to go around it.”
40 year old customer networking data
Santoni stated that the target is “to help that customer understand this, in a much deeper way than any human,” it is to help understand it. Cisco has a 40 -year -old customer networking data within its knowledgebase. “It is looking at the history of the entire account. It is looking at all their telemetry and gives you alert even before hitting the customer. And it can provide action, and recommendations. It becomes beyond the break/fix.”
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The company aims to “appoint AI to engage with customers in a large way,” he said. “And to start thinking about things that we can solve to our customers, to be more active, and can address everything in real time.”
Cisco is an example of a backbone company, who is not at the forefront of AI stimulation, while calm and carrying, thanks. Lessons for all – career professional, entrepreneur, and Fortune 500 Executive – is in the power to adapt, and to ensure that they are about the customer.
