Cisco is the dominant vendor in enterprise networking, presided over by CEO Chuck Robbins, who continues to drive transformative changes.

The company’s recent significant acquisition is its $28 billion purchase of Splunk. This strategic acquisition enhances Cisco’s capabilities in observability, data analytics, AIOps, and genAI, expanding their revenue streams. In terms of security, Cisco is enhancing its enterprise security offerings with the introduction of its Hypershield AI-native architecture, among other initiatives. Despite facing global tech industry challenges such as supply chain issues, workforce reductions, and organizational restructuring, Cisco remains resilient and adaptive.

Keep up with the latest developments in Cisco news and insights.

Sept. 20, 2024: The ongoing layoffs at Cisco are impacting its workforce in California significantly. The state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), which requires a 60-day notification for significant layoffs, reports that 842 employees will be affected in the San Jose-San Francisco area as part of the company’s current restructuring efforts. Additionally, there are unconfirmed reports that Cisco may also be planning to close some of its headquarters buildings.

Aug. 30, 2024: Cisco is now offering its AppDynamics application management suite as part of Microsoft Azure cloud services. Through the integration with Azure, Cisco’s AppDynamics platform can manage the performance of applications, virtual machines and other resources hosted on Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Aug. 27, 2024: Cisco announced plans to acquire Robust Intelligence, a security startup with a platform designed to protect AI models and data throughout the development-to-production lifecycle. It’s paying an undisclosed amount to acquire the company, which Cisco has previously invested in through its Cisco Investments portfolio.

Aug. 14, 2024: Cisco is cutting 6,000 jobs in its second round of layoffs this year and combining its networking, security and collaboration groups into one unit led by Jeetu Patel. Cisco wants to use this restructuring to pump more resources into three growth areas: AI networking, security and collaboration.

Aug. 09, 2024: A round of layoff announcements at Dell and Cisco are a result of both companies currently losing core market share to new industry competitors: Arista Networks for Cisco, in their core networking business, and low-cost PC manufacturers like Acer for Dell, an analyst said.

July 31, 2024: As IT/OT integration accelerates within companies, operations are simplified, security enhanced, and decision-making processes streamlined, Cisco’s industrial network research suggests.

July 11, 2024: The Talos security intelligence team at Cisco examined ransomware groups to expose prevalent strategies and deliver advice that aids security teams in fortifying business defenses.

July 09, 2024: With a renewed leadership, strategic acquisitions, and an AI-driven, platform-centric approach, Cisco is intensifying its focus on security. Already a leader in networking and telecommunications, Cisco is now strengthening its position in cybersecurity.

June 07, 2024: Cisco announced a novel certification program touted to prepare IT professionals for designing AI and machine learning infrastructure. The new Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) AI Infrastructure certification, described by Par Merat, vice president at Cisco learning and certifications, is an expert-level, vendor-neutral credential aimed at crafting the future of AI/ML compute and networking infrastructures.

June 07, 2024: Integration efforts with Splunk, AppDynamics, and ThousandEyes are underway as Cisco enhances its observability solutions. During Cisco Live, key leaders from Cisco and Splunk shared their vision for a “unified observability experience,” aimed at aiding customers in managing applications whether deployed on-premises, in hybrid, or in multi-cloud settings.

June 05, 2024: At its recent Live event, Cisco highlighted AI as a pivotal technology, introducing new advancements in networking, management, and security. CEO Chuck Robbins described the rapid advancement of AI akin to an enhanced cloud transition, urging attendees to explore practical AI applications and integration.

May 30, 2024: Despite recent challenges, Cisco sees significant growth avenues, propelled by its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk. This strategic move not only boosts Cisco’s revenues by $4 billion annually but also opens new doors in security, observability, data analytics, AIOps, and genAI markets.

May 30, 2024: New 5G fixed wireless access gateways have been launched by Cisco Meraki, with AT&T incorporating them for a novel business branch office service. The Meraki MG cellular MG52 and MG52E models significantly enhance throughput, offering 2 Gbps/300Mbp, doubling the capability of its existing top-tier gateways.

May 22, 2024: IT leaders need more help managing and securing their distributed networking environments, Cisco asserts in its Global Networking Trends Report. “Network architectures are more sophisticated, more complex, and spread across more multi-clouds and multi-vendors than ever. IT leaders are also besieged by rising cybersecurity risks, increased demand from new app and workload types, and vastly distributed workforces and infrastructures,” said Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco networking.

May 16, 2024: Last year, Cisco killed its Hyperflex platform and essentially turned over that business to Nutanix. Now, Cisco and Nutanix have significantly expanded their alliance with new management capabilities, AI components and networking extensions for their integrated hyperconverged infrastructure package.

May 10, 2024: A new virtual appliance for Cisco’s AppDynamics observability platform will give enterprise customers more deployment options as well as AI-driven capabilities for anomaly detection and root cause analysis, application security, and SAP monitoring.

May 07, 2024: Cisco has added a variety of new AI-based security features to its cloud-native security platform that promise to help customers more quickly spot and remediate threats. The features extend the vendor’s Panoptica platform, which is designed to secure cloud applications from development to deployment with a focus on protecting containerized, microservice applications running on platforms such as Kubernetes.

May 03, 2024: Cisco and Red Hat are expanding their 15-year-old strategic partnership, this time to bolster networking, AI and cloud integrations. At the Red Hat Summit 2024, the two vendors will demonstrate how tightly integrating Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) with Red Hat’s OpenShift can help customers improve their network operations.

May 02, 2024: Cisco is part of a group that backed security startup Corelight with $150 million in Series E funding. The new funding will enable Corelight to further develop its technology, which transforms network and cloud activity as well as packet capture into evidence that security teams use to proactively hunt for threats, accelerate response to incidents, gain network visibility, and create powerful analytics results, according to the startup.

April 18, 2024: Cisco announces AI-based Hypershield, a self-upgrading security fabric that’s designed to protect distributed applications, devices and data.

April 03, 2024: Data centers are notorious energy hogs, and the increase in heavy-duty networking and compute power required to handle AI workloads is only going to exacerbate the sustainability issue. But there are efforts underway to address the growth of AI and ML in data centers while keeping energy efficiency, cooling and performance in mind.

March 27, 2024: Security readiness among enterprises has declined over the past year, although the confidence level within many organizations has increased. A noted gap exists between the confidence and actual security readiness, indicating that companies might be overrating their capability to handle security threats, according to Cisco’s latest Cybersecurity Readiness Index.

March 27, 2024: Following the release of its hybrid work study, Cisco found that 72% of employees feel positive about returning to the office; however, they demand enhancements in workspace facilities and modern collaboration technologies. According to the study, which surveyed 14,050 employees and 3,800 employers across 19 countries, many company office spaces are still designed for individual work, rather than promoting collaboration, social interactions, and creative thinking.

March 25, 2024: Martin Lund will oversee the team tasked with developing the core components such as silicon, optics, and hardware for Cisco’s key switching, routing, and wireless solutions.

March 21, 2024: Cisco and Intel have joined forces to focus on enhancing Wi-Fi connectivity and innovating new functionalities for applications sensitive to latency.

March 20, 2024: The acquisition of Splunk and the collaboration with Nvidia by Cisco are developments targeted at creating a state-of-the-art data center network infrastructure that caters to AI/ML workloads. More information can be found here.

March 18, 2024: Cisco successfully completed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk. The merger promises to bring about innovations within Cisco’s security, observability, and AI sectors through the integration of Splunk’s capabilities. Network security professionals are expected to achieve enhanced oversight into various network aspects such as traffic, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems due to this acquisition.

March 07, 2024: Advanced persistent threat (APT) actors aim not just to infiltrate network systems but to maintain presence to harvest valuable data or prepare for further attacks. Issues with older network infrastructure and edge devices, which often have unaddressed vulnerabilities due to their age, are becoming significant targets. Nick Biasini of Cisco’s Talos touches on this issue here.

Feb. 29, 2024: Cisco is advancing its integration strategies by partnering more closely with other companies to deliver specialized bundles that incorporate networking and software solutions which combine IT with Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT). Details can be found here.

Feb. 14, 2024: After days of speculation, Cisco announced a restructuring plan that will see the networking vendor cut 5%, or about 4,200 jobs, from its 84,900 workforce as it plans to continue to focus on high-strength areas such as AI and security.

Feb. 08, 2024: Cisco is launching a generative AI-based assistant to help customers handle cloud-native application security issues more quickly and efficiently. The Cisco AI Assistant for Panoptica will help businesses streamline, prioritize, and remediate risks and misconfigurations in multi-cloud environments, according to Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president of Cisco’s Outshift advanced development group.

Feb. 07, 2024: Cisco is delivering a cloud-based service that gives enterprise customers a centralized hub for managing AI elements. Called Motific, the service promises to help streamline and accelerate the creation, deployment and management of generative AI-based applications for the enterprise.

Feb. 06, 2024: Cisco and Nvidia have expanded their partnership to offer integrated software and networking hardware that promises to help customers more easily spin up infrastructure to support AI applications. The agreement deepens both companies’ strategy to expand the role of Ethernet networking for AI workloads in the enterprise. It also gives both companies access to each other’s sales and support systems.

Jan. 31, 2024: Cisco and Hitachi Vantara have unveiled the first fruits of their partnership, signed last year, that aims to bring managed as-a-service offerings to enterprise customers with hybrid cloud environments. The joint offering, Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud, includes a range of converged infrastructure services that meld compute, networking and software technologies from Cisco and storage capabilities from Hitachi.

Jan. 26, 2024: Cisco AppDynamics rolled out a new management product that aims to take the pressure off operations teams tasked with maintaining a growing raft of application and infrastructure agents. Smart Agent for Cisco AppDynamics can help customers spot and update out-of-date software agents as well as quickly on-board and manage new agents through a centralized user interface, Cisco stated.

Jan. 25, 2024: Kyndryl’s new managed services incorporate Cisco’s Secure Access platform, which includes zero-trust network access, secure web gateway, and firewall as a service.

Jan. 24, 2024: Cisco and T-Mobile have teamed to offer a managed 5G-based connectivity service for remote branches and small offices. The T-Mobile-managed package, called Connected Workplace, will make use of Cisco Meraki 5G cellular gateways as well as its network and visibility management platform. The Meraki software includes cloud-managed security features and a central Meraki dashboard for network management support. Together with T-Mobile’s unlimited nationwide business internet service, the offering will allow organizations to network everything from end users and IoT devices to point-of-sale systems and video installations.

Jan. 22, 2024: As advancements in core quantum networking, including repeaters and photonics continue, it is the security aspects that are anticipated to emerge as the inaugural practical applications from the laboratories, as stated by Liz Centoni, the executive vice president, chief strategy officer, and general manager of applications at Cisco.

Jan. 17, 2024: The purchase of startup Isovalent by Cisco, known for creating the open-source instruments Cilium and Tetragon, highlights the significant potential of the well-regarded eBPF kernel technology in multicloud networking and security.

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