Cisco: Latest news and insights

Cisco is the dominant vendor in enterprise networking, and under CEO Chuck Robbins, it continues to shake things up.

Its most recent mega-acquisition is its $28 billion purchase of Splunk, a bold move that adds revenue opportunities in observability, data analytics, AIOps, and genAI. And in the security arena, Cisco is building out its platform-based approach to enterprise security with elements such as its new Hypershield AI-native architecture. Meanwhile, Cisco continues to weather the tech industry’s ups and downs, balancing supply constraints, layoffs and restructuring plans.

Here’s the latest Cisco news and analysis.

Cisco pumps up data center networking with AI, large workloads in mind

Oct. 16, 2024: Cisco is boosting network density for its data center switch and router portfolio as it works to deliver the infrastructure its customers need for AI workloads and high-performance computing. Specifically, Cisco is scaling up its Nexus 9000 data center switches and Series 8000 routers for AI-ready networking.

Cisco revamps key DevNet sandboxes

Oct. 10, 2024: Cisco has expanded its DevNet sandbox environments to make it easier for network professionals to test and develop applications for key enterprise networking technologies. The new and upgraded DevNet sandboxes are dedicated to Catalyst Center, CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure automation, and Meraki products.

Cisco layoffs hit California workers

Sept. 20, 2024: Cisco’s rolling layoffs are taking a toll on workers in California. According to the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) system, which mandates a 60-day notification of large-scale layoffs, 842 employees impacted by the vendor’s current restructuring plan will come from the San Jose-San Francisco area. There is also speculation – not confirmed by Cisco – that some of its headquarters buildings will be closed.

Cisco ties AppDynamics to Microsoft Azure for cloud application management

Aug. 30, 2024: Cisco is now offering its AppDynamics application management suite as part of Microsoft Azure cloud services. Through the integration with Azure, Cisco’s AppDynamics platform can manage the performance of applications, virtual machines and other resources hosted on Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Cisco snaps up AI security player Robust Intelligence

Aug. 27, 2024: Cisco announced plans to acquire Robust Intelligence, a security startup with a platform designed to protect AI models and data throughout the development-to-production lifecycle. It’s paying an undisclosed amount to acquire the company, which Cisco has previously invested in through its Cisco Investments portfolio.

Cisco to cut 7% of workforce, restructure product groups

Aug. 14, 2024: Cisco is cutting 6,000 jobs in its second round of layoffs this year and combining its networking, security and collaboration groups into one unit led by Jeetu Patel. Cisco wants to use this restructuring to pump more resources into three growth areas: AI networking, security and collaboration.

Cisco expected to follow Dell with layoff announcement: Report

Aug. 09, 2024: A round of layoff announcements at Dell and Cisco are a result of both companies currently losing core market share to new industry competitors: Arista Networks for Cisco, in their core networking business, and low-cost PC manufacturers like Acer for Dell, an analyst said.

Cisco: AI can help security challenges created by IT/OT integration

July 31, 2024: When companies increase IT/OT integration, they can simplify operations, boost security and streamline decision making, according to Cisco’s industrial networking research.

Cisco Talos analyzes attack chains, network ransomware tactics

July 11, 2024: Cisco’s Talos security intelligence group analyzed ransomware groups to identify common techniques and offer recommendations to help security team better protect their businesses.

Cisco adds heft to cybersecurity push with acquisitions, new talent

July 09, 2024: With new leadership, key acquisitions, and an AI-driven, platform-based vision, Cisco is betting big on security. Its dominance in networking and telecommunications products and services is well established, but its role in cybersecurity is less cemented.

Cisco debuts CCDE-AI Infrastructure certification

June 07, 2024: Cisco announced a new certification program it says will empower IT pros to design infrastructure for AI and machine learning. The company’s new Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) AI Infrastructure certification is a vendor-agnostic, expert-level certification that will equip IT professionals with the ability to design modern AI/ML compute and networks now and as they evolve, says Par Merat, vice president of Cisco learning and certifications.

Cisco steps up observability play with Splunk tie-ins

June 07, 2024: Work has already begun to integrate Splunk, AppDynamics, and ThousandEyes as Cisco strengthens its observability lineup. At the recent Cisco Live event, execs from Cisco and Splunk detailed plans to create what they called a “unified observability experience” to help customers manage applications across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

AI takes center stage at Cisco Live

June 05, 2024: Cisco put AI front and center at its Live event, touting new networking, management and security products. CEO Chuck Robbins says the AI evolution is coming on fast, like the cloud transition on steroids. “You’re probably trying to figure out use cases, if you are haven’t already, and how you can use it,” said Robbins in his keynote address.

Cisco gears up to capitalize on Splunk deal, AI revolution

May 30, 2024: Despite a recent rough patch, Cisco has growth opportunities on multiple fronts. Its strategy starts with the $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, a bold move that adds $4 billion in annual revenue to Cisco’s roughly $55 billion base. More importantly, it creates revenue-generating opportunities across a variety of fast-growing markets: security, observability, data analytics, AIOps, and genAI.

AT&T taps Cisco fixed 5G wireless gateways for WAN service

May 30, 2024: Cisco Meraki has rolled out 5G fixed wireless access gateways, and AT&T said it will use them to offer a new service for business branch offices. The new Meraki MG cellular MG52 and MG52E gateways fill out the high-end of Meraki’s cellular gateway family and offer 2 Gbps/300Mbp throughput – which is twice the throughput of current high-end MG offerings.

Cisco research highlights network complexity, security challenges

May 22, 2024: IT leaders need more help managing and securing their distributed networking environments, Cisco asserts in its Global Networking Trends Report. “Network architectures are more sophisticated, more complex, and spread across more multi-clouds and multi-vendors than ever. IT leaders are also besieged by rising cybersecurity risks, increased demand from new app and workload types, and vastly distributed workforces and infrastructures,” said Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco networking.

Cisco, Nutanix strengthen joint HCI package

May 16, 2024: Last year, Cisco killed its Hyperflex platform and essentially turned over that business to Nutanix. Now, Cisco and Nutanix have significantly expanded their alliance with new management capabilities, AI components and networking extensions for their integrated hyperconverged infrastructure package.

Cisco adds AI features to AppDynamics On-Premises

May 10, 2024: A new virtual appliance for Cisco’s AppDynamics observability platform will give enterprise customers more deployment options as well as AI-driven capabilities for anomaly detection and root cause analysis, application security, and SAP monitoring.

AI features boost Cisco’s Panoptica application security software

May 07, 2024: Cisco has added a variety of new AI-based security features to its cloud-native security platform that promise to help customers more quickly spot and remediate threats. The features extend the vendor’s Panoptica platform, which is designed to secure cloud applications from development to deployment with a focus on protecting containerized, microservice applications running on platforms such as Kubernetes.

Cisco, Red Hat extend networking, AI integrations

May 03, 2024: Cisco and Red Hat are expanding their 15-year-old strategic partnership, this time to bolster networking, AI and cloud integrations. At the Red Hat Summit 2024, the two vendors will demonstrate how tightly integrating Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) with Red Hat’s OpenShift can help customers improve their network operations.

Cisco-backed startup Corelight raises $150 million

May 02, 2024: Cisco is part of a group that backed security startup Corelight with $150 million in Series E funding. The new funding will enable Corelight to further develop its technology, which transforms network and cloud activity as well as packet capture into evidence that security teams use to proactively hunt for threats, accelerate response to incidents, gain network visibility, and create powerful analytics results, according to the startup.

Cisco marries AI and security with cloud-based data center offering

April 18, 2024: Cisco announces AI-based Hypershield, a self-upgrading security fabric that’s designed to protect distributed applications, devices and data.

Cisco: AI networking adds to data center sustainability challenges

April 03, 2024: Data centers are notorious energy hogs, and the increase in heavy-duty networking and compute power required to handle AI workloads is only going to exacerbate the sustainability issue. But there are efforts underway to address the growth of AI and ML in data centers while keeping energy efficiency, cooling and performance in mind.

Beware the gap between security readiness and confidence levels, Cisco warns

March 27, 2024: Security readiness among enterprises has dropped in the past year, while the confidence level of many organizations is up. This disparity between confidence levels and security readiness suggests that companies may be overestimating their ability to navigate the threat landscape, Cisco reports in its newly released Cybersecurity Readiness Index.

Cisco: AI tools, better workspaces would boost in-office appeal

March 27, 2024: Cisco released its hybrid work study and found 72% of employees are positive about returning to the office, but they want better-equipped workspaces and more modern collaboration technologies. Office spaces at many companies are too focused on individual work rather than structured around spaces that can encourage collaboration, social interaction and creative brainstorming, according to the survey, which polled 14,050 employees and 3,800 employers in 19 countries worldwide. 

Cisco taps former Microsoft, Broadcom exec

March 25, 2024: Martin Lund will lead the group responsible for delivering the silicon, optics, and hardware for Cisco’s core switching, routing, and wireless offerings.

Cisco, Intel expand Wi-Fi 7 partnership

March 21, 2024: Joint development work by Cisco and Intel is aimed at delivering more reliable Wi-Fi connectivity and new capabilities for latency-sensitive applications.

Cisco aims AI advancements at data center infrastructure

March 20, 2024: The Splunk buy and Cisco’s partnership with Nvidia are part of its efforts to build data-center network infrastructure for supporting AI/ML workloads.

Cisco completes $28 billion Splunk acquisition

March 18, 2024: Cisco closed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, promising product innovations across its security, observability and AI portfolios with the integration of Splunk. Network security teams can use Splunk’s technology to gain better visibility into network traffic, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and SIEM systems.

Cisco Talos: 3 post-compromise tactics that threaten your network infrastructure

March 07, 2024: The bad actors who are perpetrating advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks aren’t just looking to access your network. They want to hang around to collect valuable data or lay plans for future attacks. Post-compromise threats are growing, Cisco says, and they’re aimed largely at aging network infrastructure and edge devices that are long past end-of-life stage and may have critical unpatched vulnerabilities. “… the older legacy components have more avenues for access, especially if the devices are out of support and they haven’t been updated in three or four years,” said Nick Biasini, head of outreach at Cisco’s Talos security research arm.

Cisco, partners to offer tailored IoT/OT packages

Feb. 29, 2024: Cisco has implemented a new blueprint that involves working more closely with partners to offer packages of networking and software components that meld IT elements with Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT).

Cisco to cut 5% of workforce amid restructuring; layoffs will impact 4,200 jobs

Feb. 14, 2024: After days of speculation, Cisco announced a restructuring plan that will see the networking vendor cut 5%, or about 4,200 jobs, from its 84,900 workforce as it plans to continue to focus on high-strength areas such as AI and security.

Cisco brings AI assistant to cloud app security service

Feb. 08, 2024: Cisco is launching a generative AI-based assistant to help customers handle cloud-native application security issues more quickly and efficiently. The Cisco AI Assistant for Panoptica will help businesses streamline, prioritize, and remediate risks and misconfigurations in multi-cloud environments, according to Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president of Cisco’s Outshift advanced development group.

Cisco launches Motific hub to streamline generative AI deployment

Feb. 07, 2024: Cisco is delivering a cloud-based service that gives enterprise customers a centralized hub for managing AI elements. Called Motific, the service promises to help streamline and accelerate the creation, deployment and management of generative AI-based applications for the enterprise.

Cisco, Nvidia target secure AI with expanded partnership

Feb. 06, 2024: Cisco and Nvidia have expanded their partnership to offer integrated software and networking hardware that promises to help customers more easily spin up infrastructure to support AI applications. The agreement deepens both companies’ strategy to expand the role of Ethernet networking for AI workloads in the enterprise. It also gives both companies access to each other’s sales and support systems.

Cisco, Hitachi deliver managed hybrid cloud services

Jan. 31, 2024: Cisco and Hitachi Vantara have unveiled the first fruits of their partnership, signed last year, that aims to bring managed as-a-service offerings to enterprise customers with hybrid cloud environments. The joint offering, Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud, includes a range of converged infrastructure services that meld compute, networking and software technologies from Cisco and storage capabilities from Hitachi.

Cisco looks to ease management of software agents

Jan. 26, 2024: Cisco AppDynamics rolled out a new management product that aims to take the pressure off operations teams tasked with maintaining a growing raft of application and infrastructure agents. Smart Agent for Cisco AppDynamics can help customers spot and update out-of-date software agents as well as quickly on-board and manage new agents through a centralized user interface, Cisco stated.

Cisco brings SSE technology to new Kyndryl services

Jan. 25, 2024: Kyndryl’s new managed services incorporate Cisco’s Secure Access platform, which includes zero-trust network access, secure web gateway, and firewall as a service.

Cisco, T-Mobile team to offer managed 5G service

Jan. 24, 2024: Cisco and T-Mobile have teamed to offer a managed 5G-based connectivity service for remote branches and small offices. The T-Mobile-managed package, called Connected Workplace, will make use of Cisco Meraki 5G cellular gateways as well as its network and visibility management platform. The Meraki software includes cloud-managed security features and a central Meraki dashboard for network management support. Together with T-Mobile’s unlimited nationwide business internet service, the offering will allow organizations to network everything from end users and IoT devices to point-of-sale systems and video installations.

Cisco sees headway in quantum networking, but advances are slow

Jan. 22, 2024: While core quantum networking technologies such as repeaters and photonics are being developed, it is security applications that are likely to be the first real-world developments that come out of the lab, according to Liz Centoni, executive vice president, chief strategy officer and general manager of applications at Cisco. 

Cisco buy highlights container networking, security

Jan. 17, 2024: Cisco’s acquisition of startup Isovalent, developer of open-source tools Cilium and Tetragon, underscores the potential of the popular eBPF kernel technology for multicloud networking and security.