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.
Cisco Systems Inc. held its second annual AI Summit this week, with a star-studded lineup of artificial intelligence celebrities. Unlike most vendor events, the Cisco AI Summit was designed to be a “meeting of the minds,” bringing together the “builders of the AI economy” to help the industry move past the hype and address the practical realities of a world being reshaped by AI.
For decades, the pinnacle of sports broadcasting was defined by how many satellite trucks one could park outside a stadium. But as we head toward the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics starting this week, that era is officially in the rearview mirror. NBCUniversal Media LLC has chosen Cisco Systems Inc. to deliver the AI networking technology for the Peacock Network’s “all-IP production” of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
I’ve seen many digital transformation efforts, but one recent example was unique: At the recent Cisco Systems Inc. Partner Summit event, I sat down with Grady Nichols, senior director of information technology operations at Mercy Ships, and Rob Kim, chief technology officer at Presidio Inc., and discussed how the two organizations are partnering with each other and Cisco to transform the way healthcare is delivered in underserved areas.
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.