Cisco unveils
AI-ready data
centre tech 

Networking leader unveiled new products across the breadth of its product portfolio at the Cisco Live conference in Amsterdam last week.

It also announced innovative partnerships and skills programmes to almost 18,000 IT professionals attending its flagship technology event in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region. 

“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 Cisco EMEA. “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.” 

Jeetu Patel, Cisco EVP and chief product officer, said: “Every business today is working overtime to understand the opportunities and challenges of adapting how they work and serve customers in the AI era.

“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.”  

New devices introduced at Cisco Live include the following 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 centre 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.