Cisco is promoting the integration of security in network infrastructure, such as its Catalyst switch, claiming that this is crucial to AI applications. “agentic AI.”
We imagined if a switched had dedicated compute that could run workloads separately from the network traffic routing…
At a recent Cisco Innovation Tech Talk, hosted by JP Morgan Switchzilla discussed their efforts to help customers develop AI-ready datacenters that can handle the increased traffic forecasts for infere
“Right now as an industry, we’re moving from this era of the version one of AI, which was a bunch of chatbots that intelligently and interactively answered questions that people had, to the new version of AI, which is agents being able to conduct tasks and jobs almost fully autonomously on behalf of humans,” said President and Chief Product Officer Jeetendra “Jeetu” Patel. He claimed that this shift will result in fundamentally different infrastructure requirements for monitoring and assurance of data fabric. Patel said.
This was also discussed earlier this month at the Cisco Live conference, in San Diego, when Cisco announced its unified management tool ( ) called Cloud Control. Patel stated that the introduction of AI agents will require IT teams “re-rack the entire datacenter and rebuild the network.”
“We want to be the vendor of choice that does the networking safety and security capabilities for that build-out of the datacenter,” in the Tech Talk session. He claimed that Cisco developing its silicon allows it to own the entire stack, from the chips to network infrastructure, security infrastructure, models, and data platform.
As part of the “agentic ops” strategy discussed at the conference, using AI will be a part of the solution for securing this busy AI-ready architecture. Cisco also announced smart switches at its event in Amsterdam, in February. Patel said.
“So we announced a smart switch, which is a top-of-rack switch that essentially has a DPU (data processing unit) chip on it from AMD in that switch. And what that allows you to do is analyze live traffic and be able to do a bunch of use cases, but Hypershield, which is our product, is able to get an enforcement point on the switch itself,” he explained.
“We wanted to take security, bake it into the fabric of the network and run it on the switch. And so we were able to do that with the datacenter.”
The idea to integrate security into the network has been around for a while – VMware NSX virtualization includes security functions like filtering since at least a decade ago. But Cisco is integrating their capabilities directly into their switch hardware in a manner that shouldn’t affect the switch’s performance. Cisco is confident that it has a breakthrough here. Patel claims that this fusion of networking and security is “applicable to any class of customers that we have,” – and that “we’re just starting out.”
This is a new category of architecture which will need to be explained to customers.
“If you look at our networking friends, they don’t have a security stack. And if you look at our security friends, they don’t have a networking stack. We’re the only ones that have both and what we’ve been able to do is take that stack and combine it together where security is baked into the fabric,” Patel explained.
One possible consequence for corporations is the fact that network operations and security operations are being combined. This could cause some disruption.
Cisco, however, clearly believes that this is necessary. It would be, since it wants to sell even more switches. CloudBees CEO: Customers are slowing down with ‘black box code’ from AIs.
“So, when you start to think about that, there’s going to be a massive level of infrastructure updating that’s going to be required. I think in the fullness of time, you will need to make sure that every datacenter needs to get an architectural shift in how they think about their network, how they think about the network being secure.”
Of course, this is if agentic artificial intelligence takes off. The Register reported that at the HPE Discover Show this weekmany enterprise customers were enthusiastic about the technology’s potential, but they didn’t want to be first in line to test it. (r)
