There is a growing duality of opposing forces that needs to be dealt with if customers are to have success with artificial intelligence. My research shows that more than 90% of organizations believe the network to be more important to business operations than it was two years ago. At the same time, almost the same number believe it to be more complex. These opposing forces of complexity and importance needs to get solved if companies are to attain the return on investment they seek with AI.
Cisco Systems Inc. today announced its 8223 routing system, powered by its new Silicon One P200 chip — a new network system designed to unlock artificial intelligence’s potential through massive scale. Earlier this year, Nvidia Corp. introduced the concept of “scale-across” architectures as AI is now hitting the limits of a single data center. A “unit of compute” was once a server then evolved into a rack and then the entire data center.
As Cisco Systems Inc. held its WebexOne conference this week in San Diego, to no one’s shock the theme of the 2025 event was artificial intelligence — and, of all the markets Cisco plays in, the ones Webex addresses have the most direct end user impact. “We are squarely in the next era of AI, where we are moving from chat bots that answer questions to agents that are going to conduct tasks and jobs almost fully autonomously on our behalf,” said Cisco Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel.
It has been almost a year and a half since Cisco Systems Inc. acquired Splunk Inc. At the time, investors were happy because it was a good financial move. Cisco spent $28 billion and would get back about $4 billion a year in revenue that was accretive to profit margins. Splunk revenue is primarily subscription-based, which would accelerate Cisco’s march toward this model.
Jeetu Patel, Cisco Systems Inc.‘s president and chief product officer, told me before last week’s annual user event that it would be “the most consequential Cisco Live of the past decade and perhaps longer.” There were a few reasons for Patel’s bullishness. The first is artificial intelligence. The core tenet of my research is that share shifts happen when markets transition, and Cisco’s ability to articulate its strategy now will allow it to rise when the AI tide does.