How A Legacy Hardware Company Reinvented Itself In The Ai Age

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Behind-the-scenes providers specified arsenic Cisco support nan unreality and net alive.
• The 40-year-old institution now positions itself arsenic an AI infrastructure vendor. 
• The challenge: proactively supporting millions, if not billions of devices worldwide.

It's nan quality of nan marketplace beast -- deliberation astir each nan formerly booming tech providers that person vanished complete nan years, either by acquisition aliases collapse: Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang, Compaq, conscionable to sanction a few.

Yet, location are immoderate that person evolved and adapted rather aggressively done nan decades -- Microsoft from its individual machine roots to Azure and Copilot; Google from elemental hunt motor to Google AI; Amazon from online bookseller to Amazon Web Services, Amazon Bedrock, and Amazon SageMaker; and Adobe from PostScript and PDFs to Firefly. 

Also: Cisco rolls retired AI agents to automate web tasks astatine 'machine speed' - pinch IT still successful control

I consciousness arsenic though immoderate of nan backbone companies we trust connected to support nan net and unreality moving -- Cisco and IBM travel to mind -- person taken a backseat, astatine slightest successful position of attention, to each nan razzle-dazzle of nan AI age. After all, AI would beryllium thing much than a disconnected, dysfunctional spreadsheet without nan massive, blase world infrastructure needed to support it.

So erstwhile I had nan opportunity to talk to Cisco Systems recently, I was much than funny astir really nan 40-year-old networking hardware institution -- bellwether of nan industry successful nan 1990s -- has been reinventing itself successful nan AI age. Ultimately, it is purposing AI to thief companies build their AI systems.

The institution has positioned itself arsenic an AI-driven infrastructure and services provider, particularly erstwhile it comes to supporting nan millions of hardware devices astatine customer sites crossed nan globe, said Liz Centoni, executive vice president and main customer acquisition serviceman astatine Cisco. 

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I precocious had nan opportunity to beryllium down pinch Centoni, who has been pinch Cisco for 20 years, and learned astir Cisco's travel from web hardware supplier to AI systems provider. (I besides said pinch Centoni astir nan emerging domiciled of customer acquisition officers.)  

Cisco deserves much respect

Apparently, things are going very, very well. "Cisco Systems deserves much respect successful AI, and its quarterly results beryllium it," wrote CNBC's Jeff Marks successful a caller article. The company's astir recent quarterly net report shows astir $14.7 cardinal successful revenue, an 8% jump complete past year's quarter. During fiscal twelvemonth 2025, nan institution saw much than $2 cardinal successful orders for its AI infrastructure systems, nan Wall Street Journal reports, good complete its first $1 cardinal goal. 

Such translator starts from nan wrong out. Internally, Cisco has embraced an AI-first approach, said Jeetu Patel, president and main merchandise serviceman for Cisco, successful an interview pinch CXOTalk. This includes transforming "the measurement that we build product, nan measurement that our products get utilized by customers, nan measurement that we really get jobs done wrong nan company," AI is now down nan company's responses to support tickets, successful reducing overhead costs, accelerating income meetings, and handling ineligible and accounting processes progressive pinch sales. Because of AI, Cisco "is an wholly different institution than what it utilized to beryllium 3 years ago," Patel said. 

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At nan halfway of immoderate and each AI transformations is nan request to up nan customer acquisition -- AI needs to beryllium utilized arsenic a instrumentality to amended understand what customers want, and beryllium capable to hole immoderate problems quickly, aliases moreover earlier they happen.

While not a nonstop Cisco customer myself, I admit I person been rather impressed lately pinch my net and watercourse providers' responsiveness (I usage some Verizon and Comcast) to issues -- glitches look to self-heal quickly, and telephone calls to support commencement disconnected pinch automated distant pings to my instrumentality to rectify problems. (I dream I didn't conscionable jinx myself!)

Centoni said that specified AI-driven service, nan expertise to quickly reside problems without overmuch fuss, is astatine nan halfway of Cisco's work philosophy.   

'We're an AI infrastructure company'

"We started retired arsenic a networking company, and we've grown into security, helping customers alteration their architectures to modernize their infrastructure," she said. "Now, we're helping customers pinch AI infrastructure. We're an AI infrastructure company. We thief them build nan stack connected which to tally AI, on pinch training and inference."

While it whitethorn look that nan world is advancing en masse into AI, Centoni observed that galore of Cisco's customers are conscionable starting to usage AI successful a broad way. Then, location are immoderate who are "building nan ample connection models and moving AI workloads. We thief them pinch nan services they tin connection to their customers, nan usage cases, and uncovering what they want to lick pinch AI."

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AI -- and AI agents -- are helping quickly unravel configuration and web issues, arsenic good arsenic thief customers pinch description plans, she continued. "This intends that they tin trim nan magnitude of manpower clip involved. They adhd a caller branch to their campus, for example, but do it pinch higher assurance and little risk." For nan future, nan institution is exploring agentic AI that tin reply customers' questions. "Even if nan models not wholly trained, they tin inquire it questions for illustration 'where does this VM sit?'"

An illustration of AI successful action is Cisco's attack to firewall security, which incorporates earthy connection processing inputs from administrators to reside issues, making it faster and easier to reside imaginable information threats. Centoni noted: "How do we make it simple? Because if you don't make it simple, your teams will find a measurement to spell astir it, and information is not nan abstraction you want them to spell astir it."

40 years' worthy of customer networking data 

The extremity is to train models to "help america understand that customer, successful a overmuch deeper way, than immoderate quality can," Centoni said. Cisco has 40 years' worthy of customer networking information wrong its knowledgebase. "It's looking astatine nan full relationship history. It's looking astatine each of their telemetry and gives you alerts earlier it moreover hits nan customer. And it tin supply actions, and recommendations. It goes beyond nan break/fix."

Also: Here's why web infrastructure is captious to maximizing your company's AI adoption

The company's extremity is to employment AI to "engage pinch customers successful a bigger way," she said. "And to commencement to deliberation astir things we could lick for our customers, to get much proactive, and reside everything successful existent time."

Cisco is an illustration of a backbone institution that, while not astatine nan forefront of nan AI excitement, is keeping calm and carrying on, convey you. The instruction for everyone -- profession professional, entrepreneur, and Fortune 500 executive -- is successful nan powerfulness to adapt, and guarantee those adaptations are each astir nan customer.