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Cisco Live 2025 set the tone for AI, security in networking

The networking giant's latest products underscore the importance of agentic AI and security within computing infrastructure.

Jim Frey
By
  • Jim Frey, Principal Analyst
  • Enterprise Strategy Group

    We provide market insights, research and advisory, and technical validations for tech buyers.
Published: 24 Jun 2025

As one of the most influential enterprise networking companies in the world, Cisco has a big impact on where the sector goes. At its annual Cisco Live U.S. conference, held in San Diego from June 8-12, the company delivered a clear statement about how AI will change everything and demonstrated something unexpected -- that it is possible to change itself, too.

Change is hard, particularly for a company as large and well established as Cisco, but change was in the air. It felt like a different Cisco than last year -- leaner, more focused and delivering major capabilities across the portfolio.

From my view, there are two key catalysts -- no pun intended -- in play. First is the AI revolution, which is causing every company to fall back, regroup and set a new path. AI sparked change at Cisco, but a spark cannot become a fire without the right hands to nurture it along. Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel, an outsider not constrained by the old cultural limitations, has worked closely with CEO Chuck Robbins to deliver the essential leadership to make this new Cisco possible. Almost every Cisco team member I spoke with at the event made specific reference to Jeetu's energy and focus as a key factor in the change.

There seemed to be more product announcements at this Cisco Live than any other in recent memory, including a raft of new networking products. Before I go through those, it's important to recognize the themes around which all the updates revolved.

AI adoption

AI is here, and everyone needs to start the transition now or be left behind. The AI adoption theme is no surprise, as every provider of network technology is beating the same drum. Juniper, Extreme, HPE and even Nvidia have all made announcements in the past few months regarding networking for AI, AI for networking or both.

Cisco talked not only about AI writ large, but specifically about agentic AI and how this next step of AI evolution is going to be the catalyst that affects the average enterprise business much more than generative AI. The big reason that agentic AI is so important is that it opens the door to mass deployment of AI agents that will be tasked with leveraging inferencing engines to analyze data where it resides, rather than centralizing all data before analyzing.

This will drive new criticality of networking, particularly in terms of tighter latency requirements, together with general growth in network traffic, driving bandwidth demands. These new requirements are supported by recent Enterprise Strategy Group research.

AI platforms

You need a platform architecture that makes the AI transition more than possible; it needs to be reachable. This is where Cisco has a strong story to tell. Cisco has always put its thrust behind custom silicon as a differentiator, and that is still the case here. All the new networking products are built using Cisco Silicon One chipsets, but Cisco went further, including AMD Pensando data processing units (DPUs) in the Nexus 9300 switches in February 2025. The combination of CPUs, neural processing units and DPUs delivers the capacity to support new functions and consolidate more capabilities directly into the network fabric.

Network security

Security must be endemic and pervasive throughout IT infrastructure. Enabled by a consistent platform, security capabilities need to be moved out and embedded within the network fabric, rather than implemented as centralized appliances and functions.

Cisco has long aspired to deliver a more complete and effective security story and is making solid progress by rallying around the combination of security for AI, AI for security, and distributed, embedded security controls.

To make good on this strategy, Cisco announced a long list of new products and features spanning its entire portfolio. Highlights worthy of note include the following:

  • New smart switches and routers for campus. After many years of promise, Cisco has successfully merged the Catalyst and Meraki platforms. The result is a new line of switches (C9350 Fixed Access and C9610 Modular Core Smart Switches) and routers (8000 Series), built on Cisco Silicon One application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). These new devices were designed to deliver the higher performance and lower latency required by AI traffic, while embedding security and programmability throughout.
  • New unified Nexus fabric. Also a longstanding request, Cisco has integrated management of Application Centric Infrastructure and Virtual Extensible LAN Ethernet VPN fabrics into a single continuous Nexus Dashboard experience.
  • New AI Factory networking. Cisco demonstrated the first products from its collaboration with Nvidia for AI-ready networking, including Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet networking based on Cisco Silicon One ASICs. This approach will support deployments via NX-OS, Nexus Hyperfabric AI and Software for Open Networking in the Cloud. Also announced were new AI POD models, including Nvidia Blackwell GPUs delivered in Cisco Unified Computing System servers.
  • AgenticOps. Cisco also launched an agentic management platform that includes a cross-domain AI assistant and a new, interactive, collaborative management console called AI Canvas.

    While many other management tools are coming to market with agentic storylines, Cisco's is unique in that it is built around its own Deep Network Model and integrates rich data sources, such as ThousandEyes network observability and Splunk log analytics, from day one.

Other products announced at the conference included new Wi-Fi 7 large-scale access points, unified cloud management and new ruggedized network switches for industrial IoT. On the security side, Cisco introduced Hybrid Mesh Firewall, expansions to its Universal ZTNA and a structured approach to enabling secure agentic AI.

One last session worth highlighting centers on a topic that is facing every enterprise at this very moment. As a strong advocate for the revolutionary effect of AI, Cisco has turned the lens upon itself when it comes to assessing how AI will change the way it operates and how its employees will work.

The company has been going through an extensive process to document how work gets done across the organization and the specific tasks within each role to identify where AI can either improve efficiency or execute the task fully. Estimates so far showed that 35%-40% of entry-level and midlevel roles will experience "high transformation." Interestingly, a significant majority of its employees are taking part in the process, and those doing so have, on average, gone from roughly 60% to 90% comfortable in how they will engage with and use AI in their jobs.

No one would argue that AI is affecting both people and businesses in fundamental ways, and Cisco has a clear plan to play a significant and constructive role. Cisco's strategy is comprehensive in scope, and even more impressive is the speed with which this large, established organization has been able to execute.

Jim Frey covers networking as principal analyst at Omdia's Enterprise Strategy Group.

Enterprise Strategy Group is now part of Omdia. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.

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