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Welcome to the Agentic Period: People + Brokers Reaching Extra, Collectively


The world’s greatest challenges—whether or not remodeling companies, advancing science, or addressing societal points—are too complicated for people or AI to unravel alone. The actual magic occurs when the 2 collaborate, combining human ingenuity with AI velocity and precision. Welcome to the agentic period, a groundbreaking new chapter the place people and clever brokers be a part of forces to realize greater than ever earlier than.  

From apps to brokers 

For many years, we’ve relied on application-based software program to deal with duties. However the paradigm is shifting. We’re transferring past apps right into a world powered by agentic AI—autonomous methods able to understanding, performing, and studying in complicated environments. This agentic evolution is redefining how we work together with know-how. Brokers are extra than simply AI instruments—they’re your trusted collaborators. 

Right here’s what units brokers aside: 

  • Autonomous motion: As a substitute of passively responding to instructions, brokers bounce into motion to finish duties end-to-end. 
  • Reminiscence and context: Powered by massive language fashions (LLMs) and fine-tuned for particular functions and experience, brokers keep in mind previous interactions and function with a deep understanding of context. 
  • Scale: Quickly, there shall be tens of tens of millions of brokers working throughout industries, fixing issues sooner and extra intelligently than ever earlier than. 

Whereas the longer term is agentic, the rise of brokers brings new challenges for operational simplicity. How will we handle and orchestrate this huge new ecosystem? The reply: We’d like AI options to unravel AI issues. 

Reimagining administration within the agentic period 

Now that we’ve established that brokers are able to autonomous resolution making, deep understanding, and broader scaling, we have to basically rethink the way in which we handle and govern them. To totally harness their potential, we want a brand new form of administration console—one tailor-made for the agentic period. 

The efficient administration of brokers rests on three core ideas: 

  • Human within the loop: The agentic period isn’t about people or brokers working in isolation—it’s about partnership, and collaboration stays key. People carry judgment, creativity, and technique, whereas brokers contribute velocity, precision, and scale. 
  • Cross-domain context: To function successfully, brokers should bridge silos, drawing insights from information throughout totally different functions and methods. 
  • Function-built: Brokers should be specialised. Function-built fashions with deep area experience guarantee they excel at their assigned duties. 

These brokers additional want a brand new operational framework—what we name AgenticOps—designed to orchestrate, optimize, and scale the collaboration between people and clever brokers on this quickly evolving ecosystem. 

Introducing Cisco AI Canvas 

To satisfy this pivotal second and convey AgenticOps to life, I’m excited to introduce AI Canvas—an industry-first, generative UI shared workspace designed to redefine how groups and brokers work and win collectively. AI Canvas leverages a multi-data, multi-agent system built-in with Cisco AI Assistant to boost resolution making and analytics, enabling seamless collaboration amongst AI brokers for real-time insights and autonomous suggestions.   

  • Staff collaboration and IT troubleshooting: Whether or not it’s fixing IT points or driving innovation, AI Canvas permits troubleshooting, automation, and execution throughout the entire stack. AI Canvas enables you to discover and monitor collectively, in addition to diagnose and act—making use of modifications in actual time. 
  • No extra silos: By integrating information throughout networking, safety, collaboration, and the info middle, AI Canvas retains everybody within the loop, whilst information evolves. 
  • Deep community mannequin: Function-built for networking, fine-tuned on 40+ years of experience, and continually evolving, Cisco’s Deep Community Mannequin is essentially the most superior networking LLM within the {industry} and the engine that powers AI Canvas.   

A brand new period of risk 

The agentic period is right here—and it’s reshaping how we remedy issues, make selections, and innovate. By bringing people and brokers collectively, we will unlock new ranges of productiveness, creativity, and affect. Let’s embrace this future and construct it responsibly, guaranteeing that as our instruments develop smarter, so does our means to collaborate and lead with goal. 

Welcome to the agentic period. Collectively, we’re simply getting began. 

Most of the merchandise and options talked about are nonetheless in growth and shall be made accessible as they’re finalized, topic to ongoing evolution in growth and innovation. The timeline for his or her launch is topic to vary. 

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The Companion Alternative in Cisco’s AI-Prepared Community Structure


The announcement we made at Cisco Stay represents Cisco’s most vital networking innovation in a decade—and the largest associate alternative we’ve seen in simply as lengthy.

The Community Actuality Clients Can’t Ignore 

At the moment’s enterprise networks are being pushed to their limits—not simply by what’s coming, however by what’s already right here. As organizations rely extra closely on bandwidth-intensive, latency-sensitive functions like real-time collaboration, ERP, and CRM, efficiency expectations are rising quick. On the identical time, AI workloads are introducing totally new calls for: bursty, unpredictable visitors patterns and large east-west information flows that legacy infrastructure merely wasn’t constructed to deal with.

This twin stress—optimizing the efficiency of important enterprise functions now whereas making ready for the exponential calls for of AI—is making a strategic inflection level. And with many shoppers nearing end-of-service on key networking elements, the urgency to modernize is actual.

For our companions, this second presents a singular alternative: to assist prospects evolve from infrastructure that’s struggling to maintain up, to a future-ready basis that delivers right this moment and scales effortlessly for tomorrow.

Past {Hardware}: Full Structure Gross sales 

What makes this announcement completely different is architectural completeness. Whereas rivals give attention to particular person elements, Cisco is delivering the total resolution: next-generation {hardware} powered by our Silicon One know-how, AI-driven administration, built-in quantum-ready safety, and end-to-end visibility with embedded ThousandEyes.

For companions, this implies you’re not simply promoting switches and routers anymore. You’re promoting enterprise transformation. You’re providing the muse that allows AI initiatives whereas making certain operations stay safe and resilient. That interprets to bigger deal sizes, deeper buyer relationships, and strategic advisor standing.

The Differentiated Benefit: Constructed for What’s Subsequent 

What units Cisco’s AI-Prepared Safe Community Structure aside isn’t simply what we’ve constructed—it’s how we’ve redefined what’s attainable. This launch represents the one end-to-end structure engineered for the AI period, throughout three foundational pillars:

  1. Operational Simplicity Powered by AI

As enterprise networks face exponential demand from AI brokers, real-time analytics, and dynamic workloads, conventional IT operations can not sustain. Cisco’s AgenticOps mannequin transforms operations from reactive to proactive. Our AI Assistant and AI Canvas carry pure language diagnostics and cross-domain troubleshooting right into a unified expertise, whereas our unified Meraki Dashboard provides IT groups a single view and management throughout switching, wi-fi, routing, WAN, and industrial environments. That is AI managing AI—accelerating decision and restoring confidence.

  1. Scalable Units Prepared for AI

AI workloads require a brand new class of infrastructure—engineered for low latency, excessive throughput, and edge-ready computing. Cisco delivers purpose-built {hardware} throughout each area: Good Switches with sub-5 microsecond latency, Wi-Fi 7 entry factors for dense AI-device environments, and Safe Routers with built-in SD-WAN and quantum-ready encryption. These will not be upgrades—they’re foundational parts constructed for tomorrow’s digital operations, accessible right this moment.

  1. Safety Fused into the Community

Within the age of AI, the assault floor is increasing quickly—and bolt-on safety is not sufficient. Cisco embeds safety into each layer of the structure, from quantum-safe Safe Boot on the gadget degree to post-quantum MACsec encryption in transit and AI-aware segmentation that detects and stops lateral threats at machine pace. That is safety that’s not added after the actual fact—it’s constructed into each connection, each circulation, and each interplay.

Once you stroll right into a buyer assembly with Cisco’s AI-Prepared structure, you’re not pitching remoted merchandise. You’re providing the one actually built-in, scalable, and safe basis constructed for the AI-powered enterprise. That’s what provides you—and your prospects—a aggressive edge.

For a deeper technical dive into how this structure addresses the basic challenges of AI-driven enterprises, I encourage you to learn Anurag Dhingra’s weblog on the AI-Prepared Safe Community Structure.

Your Aggressive Positioning 

Most enterprise networks had been designed for human-driven workflows—not for the pace, scale, and unpredictability of AI. As AI turns into central to enterprise operations, legacy infrastructure shortly turns right into a constraint. The true alternative dealing with prospects right this moment is whether or not to modernize proactively to assist their AI methods—or wait till efficiency bottlenecks drive a reactive improve. Cisco’s new structure empowers prospects to take management of this transformation on their phrases, with confidence and readability.

With Cisco’s new structure, you assist them select the proactive path. The unified administration platform simplifies their operations, AI-powered instruments assist their groups scale, and built-in safety provides them confidence as they increase their digital footprint.

What This Means Proper Now 

This know-how is offered instantly by Cisco and our licensed companions. Clients are actively searching for options to assist their AI initiatives, and plenty of are dealing with {hardware} refresh timelines that create pure promoting alternatives.

The companies that transfer shortly to modernize their community foundations will acquire aggressive benefits over people who delay. Your function is to assist prospects perceive that this isn’t simply an infrastructure improve—it’s an enabler of their digital transformation technique.

The AI-driven enterprise is right here. The infrastructure to assist it’s prepared. The query is whether or not you’ll be positioned because the trusted advisor who helps your prospects navigate this transformation efficiently.

Your success within the AI period begins with the correct basis. At the moment, we’re supplying you with that basis and the aggressive edge that comes with it.

 


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Azul considerably cuts down on false positives in Java vulnerability detection with newest replace to Azul Intelligence Cloud


Azul has introduced an replace to its Vulnerability Detection answer that guarantees to scale back false positives in Java vulnerability detection by as much as 99% by solely flagging vulnerabilities in code paths which can be truly used. 

In response to Azul, typical scanners scan JAR recordsdata for elements by identify, quite than what the JVM truly hundreds.

Erik Costlow, senior director of product administration at Azul, defined due to the way in which Java functions work, every part incorporates many courses, and although a part could also be within the Widespread Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, an utility may not be loading the a part of the part that’s weak. 

“Log4j, for instance, has over 10,000 courses, and there’s solely like 5 or 6 of them which can be truly weak. So, what we discover is that many individuals use the weak issues, however they use it in a protected approach,” he mentioned.

As one other instance, CVE-2024-1597 describes a essential (9.8 out of 10 rating) vulnerability in pgjdbc, which is a PostgreSQL JDBC driver. The vulnerability permits SQL injection if PreferQueryMode=SIMPLE is used. Nevertheless, the entry within the CVE database says “Observe this isn’t the default. Within the default mode there isn’t any vulnerability.”

A developer might be utilizing this part and except they exit of their approach and use PreferQueryMode=SIMPLE, they’re protected, Costlow defined. 

“What occurs is many individuals take a look at this rating, and so they say it’s a ten out of 10, drop every little thing, dedicate my engineers to cope with this safety vulnerability,” mentioned Costlow. “However the fact is, the vast majority of them are utilizing it within the default mode, by which case there’s no vulnerability. So, if I’ve taken my individuals off all of the vital work that they’re doing, and I’ve mentioned, ‘go repair this vulnerability, patch it proper now’ as a result of it’s a essential 10 out of 10, I’ve simply wasted an enormous period of time.”

In response to Costlow, such a situation the place a developer could be utilizing a vulnerability part, however not truly activating the a part of it that’s weak is pretty frequent. 

The newest replace to Azul Vulnerability Detection makes use of a curated information base that maps CVEs to courses which can be used at runtime. The corporate constructed this by trying on the CVE database and asking how most of the elements truly associated to Java. Subsequent, it went by way of these elements and found out what elements of them are problematic and why. 

This curated database allows Azul to flag if one of many weak courses within the CVE database is definitely being utilized by the elements in a Java utility, or if the applying is utilizing different courses of a weak part that aren’t thought of to be weak items. 

“What Azul does with vulnerability detection that’s completely different from most of the different scanners is we frequently watch that utility to say, ‘did you truly use the factor?’ It’s one factor to have the weak part. Folks have weak elements. There are various issues that pose a threat to you, however the query is, do you truly use it in a approach that poses a threat to you? What we discovered, is that fairly typically that reply isn’t any,” Costlow mentioned. 

Reinventing Infrastructure for the Subsequent Wave of AI at Cisco Dwell


Final week I shared my standpoint on the way forward for AI and previewed our bulletins at Cisco Dwell. Effectively, at this time is the day. This morning, we dropped an amazing quantity of reports, all tied collectively beneath a standard theme — serving to our prospects navigate the shift to agentic AI.  

Why This Cisco Dwell Issues

This yr’s Cisco Dwell is probably the most consequential in a while. Not solely is the extent of innovation thrilling, however so is the timing. We’re constructing the vital infrastructure for the AI period, and the following wave of AI is right here with agentic AI. To harness its potential, we have to reevaluate most of the architectural assumptions we made in earlier eras of computing, networking, and safety.  

That’s why we’ve introduced a spirit of reinvention to the whole lot we introduced at Cisco Dwell.  Listed here are some highlights:   

AI-Prepared Information Facilities  

It’s laborious to overestimate how necessary information facilities are to the way forward for AI and the way dramatic the transition will likely be from conventional to AI-ready datacenters.  

As agentic AI turns into ubiquitous, the networks that join compute clusters and information facilities would be the key to optimizing the entire system. Furthermore, as coaching and inference workloads faucet into non-public information, safety turns into much more important. Belief and safety are stipulations for broad AI adoption.  

At Cisco Dwell we’re tackling these challenges all through the stack:   

  • Nexus Dashboard: Our prospects have lengthy requested for a single unified console to handle bodily and digital clusters throughout community configurations and materials. Right here it’s. Nexus now brings collectively NX-OS and ACI, and we will likely be including Hyperfabric later this yr.    
  • Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing unit with NVIDIA: We introduced our blueprint for Safe AI Factories with NVIDIA earlier this yr, with an emphasis on open architectures and embedded safety. I’m joyful to share that we’ve absolutely built-in our switches with NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X structure, and actually our switches are the primary non-NVIDIA switches to work with NVIDIA NICs.    
  • AI Protection within the Safe AI Manufacturing unit: For those who’re working with open-source AI fashions and NVIDIA, our AI Protection expertise needs to be a part of your structure. AI Protection validates that your fashions are appearing the way you need them to, after which it enforces your security and safety guardrails at run time. Now could be the time to maneuver quick and innovate. With AI Protection you received’t must commerce off security and safety for velocity.  
  • Dwell Defend: Why anticipate the proper second to patch when you’ll be able to outsmart exploits in real-time? Dwell Defend flips the script on {hardware} vulnerabilities. Once we spot a CVE, we now have a compensating management that your community admins can deploy with a click on. No downtime. Your gadgets keep protected when you resolve when (or if) to patch. Life won’t ever be the identical!  

To take a look at all the info middle information at Cisco Dwell, ensure to learn our full announcement. We additionally shared an unimaginable array of safety improvements geared to agentic AI.  

Future-Proofed Workplaces  

The way forward for work is distributed, AI-powered, and hyper-connected. This future will little doubt drive visitors progress and new safety issues throughout campus, department, and industrial networks.   

At Cisco Dwell, we targeted on delivering new applied sciences and instruments that may assist already overwhelmed IT groups meet the second, together with:  

  • AgenticOps: AgenticOps is our new method to community operations that reimagines how you’re employed by placing AI on the middle of your expertise. The imaginative and prescient of AgenticOps is to proactively assist you to handle and troubleshoot your networks with intelligence and ease.    
  • The Cisco Deep Community Mannequin: On the coronary heart of AgenticOps is a brand new LLM purpose-built for the complexities of actual networks that we name the Cisco Deep Community Mannequin. Educated on Cisco’s many years of networking experience, Deep Community outperforms general-purpose fashions, with better 20% greater precision and accuracy on networking duties, whereas additionally being leaner in dimension.  
  • AI Canvas: AI Canvas is a revolutionary new device that may immediately create customized dashboards and pull collectively information and visualizations on the fly, making collaboration between NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps seamless. AI Canvas can also be powered by Cisco’s Deep Community Mannequin. 
  • New networking gadgets: To attach our future proof workplaces, we introduced a full portfolio of next-generation gadgets which can be purpose-built to satisfy the calls for of AI workloads. That is the most important refresh of core networking gadgets in at the very least a decade, and we’re extremely happy with them.  

To see the complete image of how we’re future proofing workplaces at Cisco Dwell, learn the complete information (hyperlink to press launch).  

Digital Resilience  

A very powerful requirement of your infrastructure at this time is that it stays safe and obtainable.   

All of us function in advanced environments. Outages and points are inevitable. The distinction between good and nice, although, is how briskly you find out about an issue and how briskly you remediate it. That’s the definition of resilience, and it’s essentially an information drawback.   

Cisco has visibility into extra vital information to drive your digital resilience than anybody else, and we’re bringing that information collectively for you within the Splunk information platform. At Cisco Dwell, we continued to drive deeper integrations between Cisco and Splunk. You’ll be able to be taught all about them in our Splunk resilience weblog. 

We’re Simply Getting Warmed Up

 Consider it or not, these are only a handful of the highlights from Cisco Dwell. Right now, we’re transferring with extra urgency and focus than ever earlier than. And we have to. AI is altering that quick and the chance is larger than something I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.    

In the end, I consider there’ll solely be two sorts of corporations on the planet: those that embrace AI and those that battle to remain related.   

Our purpose is to guarantee that whenever you construct on Cisco, you’ll be one of many winners.   

AI is altering that quick…and the chance is larger than something I’ve seen in my lifetime.
— Jeetu  

 


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Cisco reinvigorates knowledge middle, campus, department networking with AI calls for in thoughts



“We have now numerous … enterprise knowledge middle prospects which were utilizing bi-directional optics for a lot of generations, and that is the subsequent technology of that characteristic,” mentioned Invoice Gartner, senior vice chairman and normal supervisor of Cisco’s optical techniques and optics enterprise. “The 400G lets buyer use their present fiber infrastructure and reduces fiber rely for them to allow them to use one fiber as a substitute of two, for instance,” Gartner mentioned.

“What’s actually modified within the final yr or so is that with AI buildouts, there’s a lot, rather more optics which might be a part of 400G and 800G, too. For AI infrastructure, the 400G and 800G optics are actually the dominant optics going ahead,” Gartner mentioned.

New AI Pods

Taking intention at next-generation interconnected compute infrastructures, Cisco expanded its AI Pod providing with the Nvidia RTX 6000 Professional and Cisco UCS C845A M8 server bundle.

Cisco AI Pods are preconfigured, validated, and optimized infrastructure packages that prospects can plug into their knowledge middle or edge environments as wanted. The Pods embody Nvidia AI Enterprise, which options pretrained fashions and growth instruments for production-ready AI, and are managed via Cisco Intersight. The Pods are based mostly on Cisco Validated Design principals, which provide prospects pre-tested and validated community designs that present a blueprint for constructing dependable, scalable, and safe community infrastructures, in keeping with Cisco.

Constructing out the form of full-scale AI infrastructure compute techniques that hyperscalers and enterprises will make the most of is a large alternative for Cisco, mentioned Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group. “These are full-scale, full-stack techniques that might land in quite a lot of enterprise and enterprise service utility eventualities, which might be an enormous story for Cisco,” Newman mentioned.

Campus networking

For the campus, Cisco has added two new programable SiliconOne-based Sensible Switches: the C9350 Fastened Entry Sensible Switches and C9610 Modular Core. Each are constructed for AI workloads, similar to agentic AI, generative AI, automation and AR/VR.