Cisco Live Day 1 Recap
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.
NAND Insider Newsletter: Week of May 12, 2025
Each week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, May 10, 2025.
Research Note: UALink Consortium Releases UALink 1.0
The UALink Consortium recently released its Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) 1.0 specification. This industry-backed standard challenges the dominance of NVIDIA’s proprietary NVLink/NVSwitch memory fabric with an open alternative for high-performance accelerator interconnect technology.
Research Note: Verizon Trusted Connection
Earlier this month at MWC 2025, Verizon Business announced the release of its new Verizon Trusted Connection, a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Security Service Edge (SSE) platform that unifies secure connectivity and policy enforcement across enterprise devices, networks, and applications.
The new offering sees Verizon targeting midsize enterprises seeking to consolidate security and networking services under a single provider and management interface.
Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE for 5G
Earlier this month at MWC 2025, Palo Alto Networks announced the general availability of Prisma SASE 5G, its new cloud-delivered cybersecurity solution for enterprises leveraging 5G connectivity.
The offering expands the company’s SASE portfolio to provide integrated Zero Trust security for 5G-enabled infrastructure, including mobile users, IoT/OT devices, and SD-WAN endpoints.
Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: March 2025
We’re barely two months into the new year and already the enterprise infrastructure market is heating up.
Here’s what caught our attention over the past month:
March Survey Round-Up: AI is Booming, But Data Quality & Security Haunt Leaders
Who doesn’t love a good survey? We’ve combed through a bumper crop of new surveys on AI and tech trends for 2025 to find the bottom line: Executives can’t pump the brakes on AI spending — but lousy data, security holes, and an alarming skills gap could cause serious headaches.
Let’s look at what we’ve learned from February’s batch of surveys tell us about the state of enterprise IT.
Research Note: Check Point & Wiz Enter Strategic Partnership
Wiz and Check Point recently announced a strategic partnership to integrate cloud network security with cloud-native application protection. The collaboration will merge Check Point’s AI-driven cloud security and networking capabilities with Wiz’s Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).
NAND Insider Newsletter: March 3, 2025
Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, March 3, 2025.
Research Note: NVIDIA & Cisco Partner on Spectrum-X
Cisco and NVIDIA announced an expanded partnership to unify AI data center networking by integrating Cisco Silicon One with NVIDIA Spectrum-X.
The companies will create a joint architecture that supports high-performance, low-latency AI workloads across enterprise and cloud environments.
NAND Insider Newsletter: February 17, 2025
Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, February 17, 2025.
Infrastructure News Roundup: January 2025
January isn’t usually a big month for announcements related to enterprise infrastructure, but then this isn’t a normal January. Let’s look at what happened.
Research Note: Cisco AI Defense
Cisco recently introduced its Cisco AI Defense, its new enterprise security solution to address the growing risks associated with AI adoption in multi-cloud and multi-model environments.
Research Note: Enfabrica ACF-S Millennium
First detailed at Hot Chips 2024, Enbrica recently announced that its ACF-S “Millennium” chip, which addresses the limitations of traditional networking hardware for AI and accelerated computing workloads, will be available to customers in calendar Q1 2025.
Are IT Organizations Ready for the GenAI Revolution? Let’s Ask.
Over the past few months, we’ve seen surveys published by tech companies across the spectrum that show us how gen AI is forcing IT organizations to assess their readiness for its adoption and deployment. The surveys offer a comprehensive view of the industry’s current stance, showing enthusiasm balanced by caution around organizational and infrastructure challenges.
Let’s examine recent surveys from the tech industry itself to see what they say about IT’s readiness to tackle the challenges of generative AI.
NAND Insider Newsletter: Week Ending Nov 17 2024
Every week we send a newsletter to our list of tech industry insiders. Here’s an excerpt of what we shared for the week ending November 17.
Quick Take: Cisco’s Investment in CoreWeave and its AI Infrastructure Strategy
Cisco is reportedly on the verge of investing in CoreWeave, one of the hottest neo-cloud providers specializing in AI infrastructure, in a transaction valuing the GPU cloud provider at $23 billion. CoreWeave has rapidly scaled its AI capabilities by utilizing NVIDIA GPUs for data centers, becoming a key player in the AI infrastructure market.
Research Note: VAST Data’s New AI Updates & Partnerships
VAST made a wide-ranging set of AI-focused announcements that extend it’s already impressive feature set to directly address the needs of enterprise AI. Beyond the new features, VAST also highlighted new strategic relationships and a new user community that help bring VAST technology into the enterprise.
Research Note: Cisco FQ4 2024 Earnings
Cisco Systems reported its financial results for the fourth quarter (Q4) and full fiscal year 2024 (FY24), beating analyst expectations for both revenue and earnings.
HPE Networking- Not quite ready to take over the world and that’s okay.
An AI wave is soon to hit enterprise shores and is bringing a need to totally rethink enterprise network design, support models, and functional capabilities. HPE is spending billions to develop offerings for IoT, distributed computing, and artificial intelligence (AI).The years-long build is leading to HPE’s realization that a more advanced network offering is critical to the successful deployment of its AI portfolio, hence the pending Juniper acquisition.
Research Note: VAST Data/Cisco AI Collaboration
VAST Data and Cisco announced a new collaboration to deliver a robust, high-performance AI data infrastructure that integrates seamlessly with an Ethernet-based AI fabric designed to handle data at an exabyte scale. Each company brings specialized expertise to create a unified, high-performance AI data platform.
What is Intent-Based Networking?
Intent-Based Networking (IBN) is an advanced approach to network management and operation that uses high-level business goals and policies to automate and manage the network. Unlike traditional network management methods that require manual configurations and constant monitoring, IBN focuses on the desired outcomes or “intent” and uses AI, machine learning, and automation to achieve those outcomes.
Quick Take: Lenovo & Cisco Expand Relationship for AI Innovation
Ahead of Cisco Live, Lenovo and Cisco announced a global strategic partnership to deliver fully integrated infrastructure and networking solutions that accelerate digital transformation and AI innovation for businesses of all sizes.
Research Note: UALink Alliance & Accelerator Interconnect Specification
UALink is a new open standard designed to rival NVIDIA’s proprietary NVLink technology. It facilitates high-speed, direct GPU-to-GPU communication crucial for scaling out complex computational tasks across multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) or accelerators within servers or computing pods.
Quick Take: Cisco Completes Splunk Acquisition
Cisco announced that it’s completed its acquisition of Splunk, positioning Cisco as one of the world’s largest software companies, with the resulting organization promising to bring a new level of visibility and insights across organizations’ entire digital landscapes.
Research Note: Cisco FQ2 2024 Earnings
Cisco Systems, Inc., this week announced its financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal year 2024.
Research Note: Cisco Acquires Isovalent
Cisco, a global leader in networking and cybersecurity solutions, recently announced a strategic move to redefine the landscape of multi-cloud networking and security with its intent to acquire Isovalent.
Research Note: Cisco Fiscal Q1 2024 Earnings
Cisco Systems, Inc. released its fiscal Q1 2024 earnings results, beating both revenue and EPS consensus estimates. As a bellwether in the technology sector, Cisco often sets the tone for industry trends and expectations. We take a look at Cisco’s earnings in this research note.
Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Splunk
Last week, Cisco announced its intention to acquire Splunk for $157 per share in cash, representing approximately $28 billion in equity value.
Cisco and Nutanix Embark on Strategic Relationship
Cisco and Nutanix are collaborating to offer an integrated hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) product line that combines Cisco’s SaaS-managed compute and networking solutions with Nutanix’s software-defined storage platform.