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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Behind-the-scenes suppliers akin to Cisco maintain the cloud and web alive.
- The 40-year-old firm now positions itself as an AI infrastructure vendor.
- The problem: proactively supporting tens of millions, if not billions of gadgets worldwide.
It is the character of the market beast — take into consideration all of the previously booming tech suppliers which have disappeared through the years, both by acquisition or collapse: Digital Gear Company, Wang, Compaq, simply to call a couple of.
But, there are some which have advanced and tailored fairly aggressively via the many years — Microsoft from its private laptop roots to Azure and Copilot; Google from easy search engine to Google AI; Amazon from on-line bookseller to Amazon Internet Companies, Amazon Bedrock, and Amazon SageMaker; and Adobe from PostScript and PDFs to Firefly.
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I really feel as if a number of the spine firms we depend on to maintain the web and cloud working — Cisco and IBM come to thoughts — have taken a backseat, at the very least when it comes to consideration, to all of the razzle-dazzle of the AI age. In any case, AI can be nothing greater than a disconnected, dysfunctional spreadsheet with out the large, subtle international infrastructure wanted to help it.
So after I had the chance to speak to Cisco Methods not too long ago, I used to be greater than interested in how the 40-year-old networking {hardware} firm — bellwether of the industry within the Nineties — has been reinventing itself within the AI age. Finally, it’s purposing AI to assist firms construct their AI methods.
The corporate has positioned itself as an AI-driven infrastructure and companies supplier, particularly relating to supporting the tens of millions of {hardware} gadgets at buyer websites throughout the globe, stated Liz Centoni, govt vp and chief buyer expertise officer at Cisco.
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I not too long ago had the chance to take a seat down with Centoni, who has been with Cisco for 20 years, and discovered about Cisco’s journey from community {hardware} supplier to AI methods supplier. (I additionally spoke with Centoni in regards to the emerging role of customer experience officers.)
Cisco deserves extra respect
Apparently, issues are going very, very properly. “Cisco Methods deserves extra respect in AI, and its quarterly outcomes show it,” wrote CNBC’s Jeff Marks in a latest article. The corporate’s most up-to-date quarterly earnings report exhibits about $14.7 billion in income, an 8% leap over final yr’s quarter. Throughout fiscal yr 2025, the corporate noticed greater than $2 billion in orders for its AI infrastructure methods, the Wall Avenue Journal reports, properly over its preliminary $1 billion objective.
Such transformation begins from the within out. Internally, Cisco has embraced an AI-first strategy, stated Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer for Cisco, in an interview with CXOTalk. This consists of remodeling “the best way that we construct product, the best way that our merchandise get utilized by clients, the best way that we really get jobs executed inside the firm,” AI is now behind the corporate’s responses to help tickets, in lowering overhead prices, accelerating gross sales conferences, and dealing with authorized and accounting processes concerned with gross sales. Due to AI, Cisco “is a wholly completely different firm than what it was three years in the past,” Patel stated.
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On the core of any and all AI transformations is the necessity to up the shopper expertise — AI must be used as a software to higher perceive what clients need, and be capable of repair any issues rapidly, and even earlier than they occur.
Whereas not a direct Cisco buyer myself, I admit I’ve been fairly impressed these days with my web and stream suppliers’ responsiveness (I exploit each Verizon and Comcast) to points — glitches appear to self-heal rapidly, and cellphone calls to help begin off with automated distant pings to my tools to rectify issues. (I hope I did not simply jinx myself!)
Centoni stated that such AI-driven service, the flexibility to rapidly tackle issues with out a lot fuss, is on the core of Cisco’s service philosophy.
‘We’re an AI infrastructure firm’
“We began out as a networking firm, and we have grown into safety, serving to clients change their architectures to modernize their infrastructure,” she stated. “Now, we’re serving to clients with AI infrastructure. We’re an AI infrastructure firm. We assist them construct the stack on which to run AI, together with coaching and inference.”
Whereas it might appear that the world is advancing en masse into AI, Centoni noticed that a lot of Cisco’s clients are simply beginning to use AI in a complete method. Then, there are some who’re “constructing the massive language fashions and working AI workloads. We assist them with the companies they’ll provide to their clients, the use instances, and discovering what they wish to remedy with AI.”
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AI — and AI brokers — are serving to rapidly unravel configuration and community points, in addition to assist clients with enlargement plans, she continued. “Which means they’ll cut back the quantity of manpower time concerned. They add a brand new department to their campus, for instance, however do it with increased confidence and decrease danger.” For the longer term, the corporate is exploring agentic AI that may reply clients’ questions. “Even when the fashions not utterly educated, they’ll ask it questions like ‘the place does this VM sit?'”
An instance of AI in motion is Cisco’s strategy to firewall safety, which includes pure language processing inputs from directors to handle points, making it sooner and simpler to handle potential safety threats. Centoni famous: “How will we make it easy? As a result of if you happen to do not make it easy, your groups will discover a method to go round it, and safety just isn’t the area you need them to go round it.”
40 years’ value of buyer networking information
The objective is to coach fashions to “assist us perceive that buyer, in a a lot deeper method, than any human can,” Centoni stated. Cisco has 40 years’ value of buyer networking information inside its knowledgebase. “It is wanting on the total account historical past. It is taking a look at all of their telemetry and provides you alerts earlier than it even hits the shopper. And it might present actions, and suggestions. It goes past the break/repair.”
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The corporate’s objective is to make use of AI to “have interaction with clients in a much bigger method,” she stated. “And to start out to consider issues we might remedy for our clients, to get extra proactive, and tackle every thing in actual time.”
Cisco is an instance of a spine firm that, whereas not on the forefront of the AI pleasure, is maintaining calm and carrying on, thanks. The lesson for everybody — profession skilled, entrepreneur, and Fortune 500 govt — is within the energy to adapt, and guarantee these variations are all in regards to the buyer.