Annually, Cisco’s Companion Innovation Problem jogs my memory of one thing easy however highly effective: our companions aren’t simply constructing options — they’re constructing what’s subsequent.
Immediately, I’m proud to launch the eighth Annual World Companion Innovation Problem — and it’s our greatest, boldest yr but. With almost $1 million in prizes, this yr’s problem displays the exponential tempo of innovation we’ve seen throughout the Cisco ecosystem over the previous 12 months.
Final yr’s winners confirmed us what’s attainable when imaginative and prescient meets execution.
Presidio took the grand prize with their SignBridge answer, delivering real-time American Signal Language interpretation in Webex conferences by a devoted video feed. Utilizing superior diffusion fashions, this answer creates visible representations of spoken content material, fostering inclusivity in workplaces, faculties, and healthcare settings. SignBridge represents the form of forward-thinking innovation that breaks down communication limitations for hundreds of thousands globally.
Madison Applied sciences received the AI Innovation Award with their “Stage Crossing Security with AI” answer, enhancing railway intersection security by Cisco Meraki MV52 cameras, IR1101 Industrial IoT routers, and edge computing. Initially in idea stage when awarded, the funding served as a catalyst for deeper use case validation and commercialization. The answer now gives real-time monitoring and alerts for unsafe circumstances, serving to railway operators meet Australia’s stringent security necessities whereas enhancing operational effectivity.
These are simply two examples of what can occur when Cisco companions take our platform and run with it. And this yr, we’re going even additional.
2025 Award Highlights
$250,000 World Grand Prize — the very best ever awarded.
The return of the AI Innovation Award ($200K), celebrating real-world functions of synthetic intelligence.
Continued concentrate on Partnering for Goal, with $25K awards in numerous classes.
At Cisco, we’ve spent the final yr accelerating our innovation throughout safety, observability, hybrid work, and AI. However we all know that scale and influence occur with our companions. The Companion Innovation Problem exists to spark these breakthroughs, elevate our shared success, and switch concepts into international alternatives.
Submissions are open now and shut September 5, 2025.
Winners might be introduced dwell at Companion Summit 2025 in San Diego. Whether or not you’re already constructing or simply getting began, that is your second. I can’t wait to see what you create.
We’d love to listen to what you assume. Ask a Query, Remark Under, and Keep Linked with #CiscoPartners on social!
As enterprises discover ever extra use instances for generative AI (genAI) and agentic AI, their skill to realize optimum enterprise outcomes from these use instances will rely upon the energy of their hybrid multicloud networks.
Sometimes, these workloads demand higher-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity for centralized software supply (LLM improvement), and AI on the edge (inferencing). If IT leaders fail to design a community that may deal with the massive information volumes and distinctive visitors patterns of AI workloads, they danger slowing down their AI initiatives.
The complexity of hybrid multicloud networks
Hybrid multicloud networks have been by no means easy. Connecting and securing disparate environments usually depends on a number of options, a few of that are expensive whereas others lack interoperability and observability. Community groups for years have been combating the battle of making an attempt to scale back connectivity prices with out sacrificing resiliency, safety, and efficiency.
Enter AI, which exacerbates present hybrid multicloud networking challenges, together with:
1. Elevated information gravity
GenAI, for instance, thrives on huge portions of information. AI functions not solely want entry to centralized datasets but in addition generate substantial new information for continuous refinement. The result’s an internet of interdependencies the place information locality and proximity to GPU sources matter as a lot as, if no more than, uncooked capability. Shifting information between clouds and on-premises techniques to assist AI processing provides one other layer of logistical complexity.
2. Latency sensitivity
GenAI workloads, corresponding to real-time inference or retrieval-augmented technology (RAG) techniques, are latency delicate. Whether or not producing text-based buyer assist responses in actual time or delivering details about an account to a salesman throughout a gathering, these workloads go away no room for delays. Edge infrastructure can supply some aid by lowering latency for AI inference, however integrating edge-based AI deployments into an already-fragmented hybrid infrastructure is not any small feat.
3. Skyrocketing prices
Working AI workloads entails scaling GPU and community sources extensively, particularly when coaching or fine-tuning fashions throughout multicloud environments. Greater bandwidth necessities, frequent information transfers, and insufficient routing mechanisms can drive up community prices. On the identical time, overprovisioning bandwidth leads to enterprises paying for companies they don’t use.
4. Safety and compliance challenges
GenAI intensifies issues round information privateness and compliance. Delicate proprietary information should usually be used to coach and refine fashions, and this information sometimes straddles private and non-private cloud environments. This dynamic raises questions on methods to securely deal with and course of information whereas assembly regional regulatory necessities. These dangers are amplified if conventional community administration instruments lack sturdy safety layers.
Future-proofing multicloud networks for genAI
It’s extremely advisable to re-architect hybrid multicloud community to arrange for the rising calls for of genAI. IT leaders ought to take into account deploying software-defined networking platforms to centralize administration and allow seamless orchestration. Organizations also needs to deploy edge infrastructure to ship latency-sensitive AI functions, putting inference and restricted coaching workloads close to customers.
A hybrid strategy, combining personal information repositories for delicate coaching with multicloud flexibility for non-proprietary workloads, gives a sensible path ahead. Partnering with cloud-neutral platforms, corresponding to Equinix, will help enterprises overcome connectivity challenges whereas sustaining safety, scalability, and AI readiness.
GenAI has the potential to revolutionize industries by enhancing buyer experiences, boosting worker productiveness, and streamlining and automating enterprise processes, however provided that enterprises are prepared to handle the brand new calls for AI places on the community . The time to begin is now.
Study constructing a hybrid multicloud networking technique that units you as much as thrive on this new world.
Quickly mutating DNA areas had been mapped utilizing a multi-generational household and superior sequencing instruments.
Understanding how human DNA adjustments over generations is essential for estimating genetic illness dangers and tracing our evolutionary historical past. Nonetheless, a number of the most variable areas of our DNA have been tough for researchers to entry, till now.
Scientists from College of Utah Well being, the College of Washington, PacBio, and different establishments have used superior DNA sequencing applied sciences to create probably the most detailed map of genetic change throughout generations. Their research revealed that sure elements of the human genome change way more quickly than beforehand believed, opening the door to deeper insights into the origins of human illness and evolution.
“It’s mutations that finally differentiate us from different species,” says writer Lynn Jorde, PhD. “We’re getting at a really primary property of what makes us human.”
The outcomes are printed within the journal Nature.
The organic “pace of sunshine”
By evaluating the genomes of fogeys and their kids, the group was in a position to measure how ceaselessly new mutations happen and are handed down. Jorde explains that this mutation fee is as elementary to human biology because the pace of sunshine is to physics. “That is one thing you really want to know—the pace at which variation comes into our species,” says Jorde, professor of human genetics on the Spencer Fox Eccles College of Drugs on the College of Utah. “The entire genetic variation that we see from particular person to particular person is a results of these mutations.” Over generations, these adjustments have produced all the pieces from variations in eye shade to the power to digest lactose to uncommon genetic problems.
Utilizing a number of sequencing applied sciences to research the genetics of a four-generation household allowed researchers to see how human DNA adjustments over time. Credit score: Wesley Thomas / College of Utah Well being
The researchers estimate that each human has practically 200 new genetic adjustments which might be totally different from both father or mother. Many of those adjustments happen in areas of DNA which might be particularly tough to review.
Aaron Quinlan, PhD, professor and chair of human genetics in SFESOM and an writer on the research, says that earlier efforts to review human genetic change had been restricted to the elements of the genome that mutate the least. However the brand new research used superior sequencing applied sciences to disclose probably the most quickly altering areas of human DNA—areas that Quinlan describes as “beforehand untouchable.”
“We noticed elements of our genome which might be loopy mutable, nearly a mutation each era,” he says. Different segments of DNA had been extra steady.
Jorde says that the brand new useful resource could be an necessary assist for genetic counseling by serving to reply the query, “You probably have a baby who’s affected with a illness, is it prone to be inherited from a father or mother, or is it prone to be a brand new mutation?” Illnesses brought on by adjustments in “mutation hotspots” usually tend to be distinctive to the kid, slightly than having been handed down from their dad and mom. Which means the danger of the dad and mom having different children with the identical illness is decrease. But when a genetic change was inherited from the dad and mom, these dad and mom’ future children have the next danger of getting the illness.
The platinum pedigree
The researchers’ discovery hinged on a Utah household that has labored with genetics researchers for the reason that Nineteen Eighties as a part of the Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humain consortium, proving invaluable for the Human Genome Undertaking.
4 generations of the household have donated DNA and consented to its evaluation, which allowed the researchers a very in-depth take a look at how new adjustments come up and are inherited from dad and mom to kids. “A big household with this breadth and depth is an extremely distinctive and priceless useful resource,” says Deborah Neklason, PhD, analysis affiliate professor of inner drugs in SFESOM and an writer on the research. “It helps us perceive variation and adjustments to the genome over generations in unimaginable element.”
To get an entire, high-resolution image of genetic variation over time, the group sequenced every individual’s DNA utilizing a number of totally different applied sciences. Some applied sciences are finest for detecting the smallest doable adjustments to DNA; others can scan monumental swaths of DNA at a time to search out massive adjustments and see elements of the genome which might be in any other case tough to sequence. By sequencing the identical genomes with a number of applied sciences, the researchers achieved one of the best of each worlds: accuracy on each a small and huge scale.
In future work, the researchers hope to increase their complete sequencing methods to extra individuals to see if the genetic fee of change is totally different for various households. “We noticed actually fascinating stuff on this one household,” Quinlan says. The following query is, “How generalizable are these findings throughout households when making an attempt to foretell danger for illness or how genomes evolve?”
The sequencing outcomes shall be made freely accessible in order that different researchers can use the information in their very own research, opening the door to additional insights into human evolution and genetic illness.
Reference: “Human de novo mutation charges from a four-generation pedigree reference” by David Porubsky, Harriet Dashnow, Thomas A. Sasani, Glennis A. Logsdon, Pille Hallast, Michelle D. Noyes, Zev N. Kronenberg, Tom Mokveld, Nidhi Koundinya, Cillian Nolan, Cody J. Steely, Andrea Guarracino, Egor Dolzhenko, William T. Harvey, William J. Rowell, Kirill Grigorev, Thomas J. Nicholas, Michael E. Goldberg, Keisuke Okay. Oshima, Jiadong Lin, Peter Ebert, W. Scott Watkins, Tiffany Y. Leung, Vincent C. T. Hanlon, Sean McGee, Brent S. Pedersen, Hannah C. Happ, Hyeonsoo Jeong, Katherine M. Munson, Kendra Hoekzema, Daniel D. Chan, Yanni Wang, Jordan Knuth, Gage H. Garcia, Cairbre Fanslow, Christine Lambert, Charles Lee, Joshua D. Smith, Shawn Levy, Christopher E. Mason, Erik Garrison, Peter M. Lansdorp, Deborah W. Neklason, Lynn B. Jorde, Aaron R. Quinlan, Michael A. Eberle and Evan E. Eichler, 23 April 2025, Nature.
The work was supported by funding from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being (grant numbers R01HG002385, R01HG010169, U24HG007497, 5K99HG012796-02, R00HG011657, R35GM118335, and GM147352), the Terry Fox Analysis Basis (grant quantity 1074), and the Canadian Institutes of Well being Analysis (grant quantity 159787).
Researchers report the next conflicts of curiosity: Evan Eichler is a scientific advisory board (SAB) member of Variant Bio, Inc. Charles Lee is an SAB member of Nabsys and Genome Perception. David Porubsky has beforehand disclosed a patent software (no. EP19169090) related to Strand-seq. Zev Kronenberg, Cillian Nolan, Egor Dolzhenko, Cairbre Fanslow, Christine Lambert, Tom Mokveld, William Rowell, and Michael Eberle are staff and shareholders of PacBio. Zev Kronenberg is a personal shareholder in Section Genomics. The opposite authors declare no competing pursuits.
Cisco XDR has at all times been predicated on the data that each buyer and each SOC is totally different. With hundreds of merchandise in the marketplace clamoring for consideration and budgets, the probability of any XDR answer supporting all of your group’s wants is minimal.
For these causes, Cisco XDR is constructed on high of a foundationally open structure with documented open-source protocols and RESTful APIs. If a expertise your staff depends on isn’t supported out-of-the-box in Cisco XDR, that may be addressed by the seller of that product, and even your self.
If software program improvement was simple, everybody would do it. For this reason we’re taking steps to decrease the obstacles to entry for customized integrations, and we’re asserting some necessary developments at Cisco Reside in San Diego in June. These adjustments will make it simpler to not solely write customized content material, however to additionally discover and share content material written by the Cisco XDR neighborhood.
This yr, we’re excited to host DEVNET-2236, DEVNET-2387, and the DevNet Innovation Zone demo sales space, the place we’ll showcase groundbreaking updates for Cisco XDR. Don’t miss out on the chance to study, join, and collaborate with our staff and the broader DevNet neighborhood.
Cisco XDR integrations can provide a number of totally different outcomes relying on what the expertise does and the way you wish to use it. A safety product, and even networking, collaboration, productiveness, and different merchandise, will be leveraged from inside XDR to do all this and extra:
Present its safety occasion knowledge into the incident technology and evaluation pipeline
Take part in menace looking and investigation duties in XDR by offering occasion knowledge and/or menace intelligence
Show metrics, statistics, and different operational knowledge in XDR’s shared dashboard, corresponding to blocking malicious periods or recordsdata
Talk and observe investigation and response exercise
Begin your Cisco Reside San Diego expertise with a deep dive into the newest developments in Cisco XDR. Whether or not you’re a DevNet fanatic, a safety skilled, or somebody captivated with innovation: that is your probability to see how Cisco XDR is taking incident response, automation, and neighborhood collaboration to the subsequent degree. Proceed studying for the small print!
What to Anticipate From Session DEVNET-2236
When: Monday, June ninth, at 3:00 PM The place: DevNet Theater
In this session, we’ll discover how one can unlock the complete potential of Cisco XDR with customized integrations and automation. Right here’s a glimpse of what you’ll study:
Customized Integrations: Uncover the right way to use virtually any product to achieve the outcomes described above, as relevant. New options in XDR have opened new pathways to participation within the Incident technology and correlation pipeline, and we’re excited to share extra information about these.
Customized Workflows for Automation: Tune your incident investigation and response processes to match your distinctive safety wants.
Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF): Be the primary to see how one can convey your individual knowledge into XDR’s knowledge warehouse utilizing this open commonplace (OCSF v1.4). We’re asserting some thrilling options round this, and we are going to present you a sneak peek!
Group Options and XDR Content material Explorer: Discover ways to collaborate seamlessly with the DevNet neighborhood to share and innovate round XDR integrations.
This session is designed to encourage and empower you to take your safety operations to the subsequent degree. Whether or not you’re simply getting began with XDR or are already a complicated consumer, this session has one thing for everybody. Every part that we are going to demo will likely be made out there as quickly as potential after the session.
For people who keep till the tip of the DevNet session, there will likely be a present on the finish: you’ll obtain a coupon for a free professional suggestions session in your first OCSF workflow!
When: Monday, June ninth, at 2:00 PM The place: DevNet Theater
Be part of us for an thrilling session on an AI-assisted automation challenge in Cisco XDR, that’s designed to uplevel Safety Analyst effectivity. This challenge bridges the hole between handbook “fast lookup” instruments and automatic intelligence, empowering you to streamline investigations and customise workflows to your staff’s wants.
That is what you’ll study within the session:
enhance the day of a Safety Analyst by automating entry to widespread investigative sources, like IP geolocation, area possession, or MAC tackle vendor particulars
use a customizable, open XDR framework instrument to pivot to exterior sources and fetch desired knowledge immediately into the XDR UI
save time with an AI agent that not solely retrieves knowledge but additionally generates summaries and performs meta-analysis utilizing LLMs to determine patterns, anomalies, and crimson flags throughout incident observables
This session is an “artwork of the potential” demonstration, full with GitHub hyperlinks that will help you discover and implement these thrilling capabilities in your individual surroundings.
Go to Us on the DevNet Innovation Zone Demo Sales space
When: Monday, June ninth, from 9:00 AM to five:00 PM The place: DevNet Innovation Zone
Ask questions and get hands-on insights from our specialists
Discover how customized workflows, integrations, and neighborhood options can rework your safety operations
That is your probability to work together immediately with the staff behind Cisco XDR and get customized steering on the right way to take advantage of these thrilling updates.
Closing Off the Day in Type
Because the day involves an finish, be part of us for drinks and networking on the demo sales space beginning at 5:00 PM. This can be a nice alternative to:
Share your suggestions on what you’ve seen and realized
Join with like-minded professionals and the DevNet neighborhood
Rejoice the spirit of innovation and collaboration that defines Cisco Reside!
Let’s shut the day on a excessive observe collectively. See you there!
We’d love to listen to what you suppose. Ask a query and keep related with Cisco Safety on social media!
“Facility water loops generally have good water high quality, generally unhealthy,” says My Troung, CTO at ZutaCore, a liquid cooling firm. “Generally you’ve gotten organics you don’t wish to have contained in the technical loop.”
So there’s one set of pipes that goes across the knowledge middle, accumulating the warmth from the server racks, and one other set of smaller pipes that lives inside particular person racks or servers. “That inside loop is a few type of technical fluid, and the 2 loops trade warmth throughout a warmth exchanger,” says Troung.
The most typical method in the present day, he says, is to make use of a single-phase liquid — one which stays in liquid type and by no means evaporates right into a fuel — resembling water or propylene glycol. However it’s not essentially the most environment friendly choice.
Evaporation is a good way to dissipate warmth. That’s what our our bodies do after we sweat. When water goes from a liquid to a fuel it’s referred to as a part change, and it makes use of up power and makes the whole lot round it barely cooler.
After all, few servers run scorching sufficient to boil water — however they will boil different liquids. “Two part is essentially the most environment friendly cooling expertise,” says Xianming (Simon) Dai, a professor at College of Texas at Dallas.
And it is likely to be right here earlier than you assume. In a keynote deal with in March at Nvidia GTC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the Rubin Extremely NVL576, due within the second half of 2027 — with 600 kilowatts per rack.
“With the 600 kilowatt racks that Nvidia is asserting, the trade must shift very quickly from single-phase approaches to two-phase,” says ZutaCore’s Troung.
One other highly-efficient cooling method is immersion cooling.
In response to a Castrol survey launched in March, 90% of 600 knowledge middle trade leaders say that they’re contemplating switching to immersion cooling by 2030.
However immersion cooling does have its downsides. In response to the survey, 38% of respondents are involved concerning the potential for leaks, 31% say that it’s too time-consuming to implement, and 31% fear about upkeep challenges.
Colocation supplier Equinix, which has greater than 260 knowledge facilities in 72 markets, has liquid cooling already accessible at 100 of them — and continues to construct new liquid-cooled amenities and retrofit older ones.
However it hasn’t seen a lot demand for immersion cooling but, says Phil Learn, the corporate’s senior director of knowledge middle companies. “It’s undoubtedly an space we’re monitoring,” he says. “It could possibly be attention-grabbing sooner or later.”
At the moment, nevertheless, the expertise nonetheless has some points. For one factor, there’s the load, he says. “You’re principally placing the load of a small automotive on a knowledge middle flooring.”
After which there’s the difficulty of the sorts of liquids which might be used for immersion cooling. “Equinix has a powerful sustainability posture and PFAS chemical substances are very problematic for us,” he says. “However we see these utilized in immersion cooling — and in two-phase cooling as properly.”
It’s not clear but precisely how the trade will handle the facility and cooling necessities of next-generation AI servers. Perhaps AI will provide you with some recommendations.
