Cisco has unveiled new data center hardware, networking, security, and IT management solutions as it looks to expand its share of the AI infrastructure market.
At the Cisco Live conference in San Diego today (June 10), the company announced AI Canvas, a shared generative AI workspace where network, security, and IT teams can collaboratively visualize telemetry data, identify root causes, and remediate networking bottlenecks, while identifying security vulnerabilities.
AI Canvas, built with AI agents, includes an AI assistant that enables administrators to interact with the tool using natural language. AI Canvas – which Cisco will test with customers this fall – is part of the company’s “AgenticOps” strategy, which uses AI agents to automate IT operations. It analyzes real-time telemetry from Meraki, ThousandEyes, Splunk, and others and can suggest or even automate remediation.
Analyst Will Townsend of Moor Insights & Strategy said the tool is compelling for data center operators.
“What Cisco is doing is basically taking 40-plus years of knowledge in troubleshooting issues and putting that into a large language model,” Townsend said in an interview with DCN.
“It’s completely customizable and provides an opportunity to use generative AI to troubleshoot and remediate issues.”
Cisco said it is the “infrastructure company that powers AI during the agentic movement.” Image: Alamy.
AI Focus
The AI Canvas announcement reflects Cisco’s strategic focus on agentic AI, which company executives see as the next phase of the AI revolution. With its hardware, networking, and security announcements today, the company is positioning itself to further take advantage of the booming AI infrastructure market.
“We’re moving from this amazing wave that started two-and-a-half years ago with ChatGPT… to now moving to agents that can complete tasks and jobs fully autonomously, on behalf of a human,” said Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s president and chief product officer, during a media briefing.
“We are the infrastructure company that powers AI during the agentic movement.”
Nexus Dashboard Developments
At Cisco Live, Cisco also announced a raft of networking innovations, including a new unified Nexus Dashboard. The company said this dashboard enables organizations to consolidate the management of their data center networks, including storage area networks and AI/ML fabrics.
The new unified Nexus Dashboard, available in July 2025, converges Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Cisco’s NX-OS VXLAN EVPN fabrics.
“It’s an attempt to flatten network management, so you don’t have all these disparate networks that require individual management,” said Townsend.
Cisco also announced the availability of Cisco Intelligent Packet Flow, which enables customers to optimize AI workloads by providing real-time telemetry and visibility across networks, GPUs, and distributed AI jobs.
“Cisco is weaving together a lot of their observability and telemetry capabilities, and in doing so, it provides heightened network assurance,” Townsend said. “So, you can detect traffic flow issues and optimize it.”
More From Cisco Live 2025
On the network security front, Cisco extended its Smart Switch portfolio with two new switches with built-in security management that can be deployed top-of-rack in data centers or in campus networks, Townsend said.
In February, Cisco launched its family of N9300 Series Smart Switches, which combine networking and security services. These switches help data center operators streamline infrastructure and support AI workloads.
At Cisco Live, the company also announced:
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Hybrid Mesh Firewalls, including the new Cisco Secure Firewall 6100 Series, which offers 200 Gbps per rack unit.
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Configurable AI Pods, including servers, storage, networking, and AI software. The company said customers can order the new high-end Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPU on Cisco UCS C845A M8 servers.
“You can run your inference workloads a lot faster where real-time responsiveness matters: on the edge or across the distributed network,” said analyst Matt Kimball of Moor Insights & Strategy.
Overall, Townsend said Cisco is delivering in the three key areas necessary for AI infrastructure: networking, security, and compute. The company has put a lot of resources into product development, and it reflects in the Cisco Live announcements, he said.
“I liken a complete modern AI infrastructure stack to a three-legged stool, providing the requisite compute, networking, and security functionality,” Townsend said. “From my perspective, Cisco’s announcements address all three elements to help enterprises unlock the transformative potential of generative and agentic AI applications and workloads at scale.”
