At Cisco Systems Inc.‘s annual event, Cisco Live, this week in Las Vegas, it was no surprise that artificial intelligence was the top theme of the show and dominated most of the news and product innovations announced. Cisco has been successful in riding the AI wave and using it as a growth engine. Over the past year, revenue and profits have grown, and the stock price has doubled. The company has accomplished this by positioning itself as “critical infrastructure for the AI era” and by revamping its entire product line to back that claim.

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Five takeaways from the Cisco Live keynotes

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.

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Cisco gives customer experience a big dose of AI