By releasing upgrades to its networking and security portfolios, Cisco is actively pursuing its goal of revolutionizing cloud networking. With a focus on important IT goals like security, automation, user experience, and AI-powered apps, the tech giant’s most recent initiatives seek to provide clients a smooth, integrated approach for managing and safeguarding networks.
Cisco aims to portray itself with these new product upgrades as a pioneer in developing an AI-driven, secured, and user-friendly networking management platform.
“As a market leader in both networking and security, and with visibility into over 1 billion endpoints, Cisco is in a unique position to build the industry’s premier AI-driven, secure and simple networking management platform, Cisco Networking Cloud,” said Jonathan Davidson, EVP and GM, Cisco Networking. “Whether it’s autonomous operations or simply delivering a trouble-free experience to an end user, endpoint and network data is key to AI-driven intelligence. The best data produces the best result, and Cisco has the best data.”
Juan Vela, Vice President of Customer Solutions Marketing at Cisco, underlined the scope of the company's strategy by emphasizing its all-encompassing approach to the market and its capacity to use its industry-leading security portfolio for native integrations. Furthermore, Cisco would provide great visibility via ThousandEyes, which goes beyond the networks that are under the direct control of clients.
Deploying SASE Systems, Catalyst Switches
Integrating its networking and security portfolios is a key component of Cisco's strategy, which aims to close the communication gap between the networking and security teams within the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture. The new Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, which now combines with Cisco Secure Access, Cisco's Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution, serves as an example of this convergence. By streamlining network administration and security across thousands of locations with a single dashboard, this integration would make it possible to quickly construct scalable, secure SASE systems and does away with the need for extra appliances.
Cisco has also upgraded its network management platforms and added a new cloud monitoring tool for Catalyst wireless switches as part of its quest for a unified portfolio experience. With the help of this application, users may control a subset of Catalyst wireless devices straight from the Meraki dashboard, giving them a comprehensive cloud-managed perspective of their access networks. The majority of Catalyst WIFI 5 Wave 2, WIFI 6, and WIFI 6E access points, as well as the Catalyst 9800 Wireless Controllers, are supported devices.
Cisco also introduced the new Catalyst 9300-M switches, which are intended for native administration from the Meraki dashboard, as an addition to its hardware innovations. This breakthrough would demonstrate Cisco's dedication to cloud innovation while representing a major step towards full cloud management for the Catalyst switching line.
Additionally, Cisco introduced UCS X-Series Direct, a product designed specifically for edge applications needing high computing power and connectivity, expanding the UCS X-Series lineup. This new architecture, which embodies a self-contained system with integrated Fabric Interconnects for smooth administration using Cisco Intersight or UCS Manager, enables the support of a significant number of big applications with little equipment.
Adoption of AI/ML
New AI Validated Designs have been introduced by Cisco as part of its innovative strategy to assist clients in creating high-performance computing and data center network fabrics. In order to reduce risks and hasten the adoption of AI/ML, these designs provide automation and visibility that are suited to AI-driven corporate scenarios. They also give solutions that have been verified across a variety of use cases.
Cisco shows its dedication to spearheading the cloud networking revolution by releasing these strategic upgrades and launches, which provide solutions that not only satisfy present technical needs but also open the door for future developments. Cisco once again seems to place itself at the forefront of the industry, prepared to assist its global community of developers and organizations in navigating the challenges of digital transformation, thanks to its focus on integrating networking and security, as well as its commitment to improving user experience through AI and cloud monitoring tools.
