When it comes to building campus networks, there is a religion around stacking versus chassis-based systems. In my network engineer days, I lived on both sides of that holy war. Initially, it was chassis or nothing, but I worked for a big financial firm with large budgets and didn’t give much credence to other options. As time went on, I began to appreciate a stack’s flexibility and budget flexibility, as one could start with a small network stack and add to it when required.
Cisco Systems Inc. provided positive numbers in its fiscal fourth-quarter results Wednesday, and there’s a story behind those numbers. The networking giant posted a modest revenue beat of $13.64 billion, $100 million more than consensus estimates. Gross margin, boosted by the acquisition of Splunk Inc., came in at a whopping 67.5%, the highest number for Cisco in 20 years. Product order growth rose 14% year over year, 6% excluding Splunk.
There has been plenty of hype and ballyhoo around artificial intelligence and networking, but much of the vendor focus has been AI for networking, where AI is used to improve network operations. The other side of the AI coin is networking for AI, where a network must be designed and provisioned to support an AI implementation. Though many businesses will likely deploy AI in the cloud, making the supporting network the problem of the hyperscaler, 58% of respondents to a recent ZK Research/theCube Research study stated they have deployed or will be deploying AI in their own private data center.
Cisco Live was held last week in what has become my second home, Las Vegas. I had dubbed this the most important Cisco Live in the Chuck Robbins era, as the company is looking to put a stake in the artificial intelligence ground. Simultaneously, Cisco Systems Inc. is integrating its Splunk acquisitions and reshaping the security business in real time. For most companies, doing one of these things would be all-encompassing, but these are not typical times.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of Arista Networks Inc. as a publicly traded company, and to celebrate, the company held a special event at the New York Stock Exchange, which is not only the exchange that trades ANET stock but also one of the early Arista customers. However, the shindig at the NYSE wasn’t the only way the company marked the IPOiversary. Arista also announced some artificial intelligence-related news.