We are squarely in the artificial intelligence event season with MWC just wrapping up and Nvidia GTC and RSAC on deck. The talk of every show this year has been about moving AI from vision to reality. However, it’s often the case that the transition from AI experimentation to production-grade, value-generating systems hits a wall because of infrastructure availability and readiness.
Over the past 18 months, the enterprise technology narrative has been dominated by a singular, persistent theme: artificial intelligence, more specifically agentic AI. From CES to NRF to the World Economic Forum, every vendor, service provider and analyst firm has been preaching the gospel of AI.
One topic that comes up every year at MWC, the telecommunications industry’s largest and de facto standard event, is modernizing telco networks to enable them to create new, revenue-generating services. However, again at this year’s conference in Barcelona, revenue growth for service providers remains elusive, despite the industry having spent billions on building out its 5G infrastructure and introducing many digital experience products.
Over the past year there have been plenty of media reports discussing artificial intelligence failures and highlighting the negative aspects of it. I’m of the belief that AI will eventually be infused into every aspect of our lives and change the way we work, live and learn.
Cisco Systems Inc. has long been regarded as the market leader in networking, but over the past few years, the company has strived to position itself as “critical infrastructure for the artificial intelligence era.” It now seems to be making headway with that as the stock hits an all-time high. This week at Cisco Live EMEA, in Amsterdam, Cisco delivered another payload of innovation targeted at helping customers move their AI from the “chatbot phase,” and jump into the agentic era.