San Diego- the sun’s shining, the breeze is cool, and Cisco Live! 2025 just kicked off, bringing all sorts of cool vibes and as expected, a boatload of announcements. But here’s the real talk: Cisco has come to play with their AI powered networking gear.
The slow brew of foundational AI components is moving into a new phase. We’re talking way past those simple chatbots that just spit out info. Cisco is going full throttle on infrastructure that supports “Agentic Operations,” where AI agents, apps, robots, and even humanoids are gonna team up with us humans to get stuff done.
This whole new AI world means fresh challenges for our tech gear, pushing us to rethink our entire infrastructure blueprint. And here’s the kicker: as businesses start actually using all those AI models they’ve been building (that’s “inference,” by the way), AI is moving from the cloud right back into enterprise data centers.
Deploying the latest networking tech in your company’s data center is about to become way more crucial than ever before.
So, what did Day One at Cisco Live! tell us? Buckle up, because your network just became the star of the show.
Scalable Devices, Purpose-built for AI
To tackle the escalating demands of AI, Cisco unveiled a suite of purpose-built, scalable devices designed to future-proof enterprise infrastructure. This includes powerful Cisco Catalyst 9350 and 9610 switches, fortified with Cisco Silicon One and integrated security coprocessors for intelligent, secure data handling. For secure routing, the Cisco 8000 secure router features new hardware with next-gen firewall capabilities, optimized for secure SD-WAN and SASE deployments.
Recognizing the need for seamless wireless connectivity in high-density environments, Cisco is launching Wi-Fi 7 APs in August, ideal for large spaces like auditoriums and stadiums, alongside a cloud-native Campus Gateway available in May 2025. A significant innovation for the factory floor is Wi-Fi wireless backhaul, tailored for industrial IoT and robotics, enabling “make before you break” handoffs to eliminate packet loss and latency during critical transitions.
Further solidifying their commitment to operational technology (OT) for AI, Cisco is rolling out an expanded Industrial Ethernet product line in July, featuring 19 new small form factor products like the Cisco IE3100/H, IE3500/H, and IE9300, each packing up to 720 watts per switch and embedding Cisco Cyber Vision for robust IoT security.
Data Center
Cisco’s vision for AI-ready infrastructure was a major focus, driven by a unified Nexus Dashboard. This dashboard now provides converged management and a consistent policy data plane, introducing critical new features like AI Networking and AI Job Monitoring to optimize performance for demanding AI workloads.
For data center compute, Cisco announced that the powerful NVIDIA RTX 6000 Pro GPU is now available within their Cisco C845 Server line, offering the horsepower needed for the most intensive AI processing, from training to inference.
Cisco Security Cloud
Cisco is significantly enhancing its Security Cloud offerings, focusing on comprehensive protection across hybrid environments. Key to this is the Cisco Cloud Protection Platform, introducing a hybrid Mesh Firewall that infuses security directly into the network by integrating firewall functionality into smart switches. This allows policies to be written once and enforced consistently across the entire mesh.
Two new products support this: the Cisco Secure Firewall 200 series, available in December, designed for branch deployments, and the Cisco Secure Firewall 6100 Series, launching in October, specifically for high-demand AI data centers.
Managing this distributed security is simplified by Security Cloud Control, a new multi-vendor, intent-based policy management application that can push policies even to third-party hardware.
For User Protection, Cisco is delivering Universal ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), simplifying their Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) strategy by converging SD-WAN solutions with Cisco Secure Access. This ensures consistent SASE enforcement across all Cisco infrastructure products, with continued development of tools and techniques for robust identity management.
Service Provide Offerings
Cisco is building on its Agile Services Networking framework, initially unveiled at Cisco Live Amsterdam earlier this year. They’ve announced two new high-performance routers, both leveraging the powerful Silicon One architecture.
These are the Cisco 8011, designed for converged access, and the Cisco 8711, geared towards edge routing. These routers are slated for release in September and November of 2025, respectively, promising enhanced capabilities for service providers.
Wrapping Up
So that is a wrap for Day 1. Stay tuned for a deeper dive into the products announced this week. As we work through the details and functional aspects of the new Cisco products there will be lots to share.
