Cisco Systems

Gurudatt Shenoy, Senior Vice President of Data Center and Provider Connectivity at Cisco Systems, discusses how AI requires service provider networks that can manage high traffic volumes, performance-sensitive workloads, and secure traffic within sovereign boundaries. He explains that Cisco addresses these requirements through its new Cisco Silicon 1 technology and routing infrastructure systems specifically designed for AI-era demands.

Bill Gartner, SVP & GM, Optical Systems and Optical Business Unit at Cisco Systems, presents the company's optical innovations at OFC, including multi-rail optical line systems supporting 128 fibers in a single rack and a new 12.8 terabit transponder with 800-gig pluggable optics. He highlights Cisco's leadership in coherent pluggable optics for AI infrastructure.

Tom Foottit, VP Products at Cisco Systems, presents Cisco Crosswork assurance and automation, highlighting how the company uses AI to enable autonomous networks through advanced data collection and analysis capabilities. He introduces Integrated Performance Measurement (IPM), a new technology providing granular network visibility.

Vijoy Pandey, SVP & GM, Outshift by Cisco at Cisco Systems, discusses the AGNTCY project, an open-source initiative backed by major technology companies that aims to build an "internet of agents" enabling autonomous AI agents to collaborate across different vendor environments. He explains that AGNTCY provides an architectural framework with four key capabilities - discovery, composition, secure communication, and performance evaluation.

Tom Foottit, Director of Product Management, and Amish Servansing, Product Manager, at Cisco Systems, showcases advanced service assurance capabilities through provider connectivity and Crosswork solutions at MS World Congress, featuring a collaboration with Colt's IQET network. The presentation highlights how operations teams can monitor L3 VPN services and analyze network connectivity issues through weather map-style visualizations and detailed topology tracking across Europe.

Ravi Shah, Director, Corporate Strategy at Cisco Systems, discusses how AI use cases are driving unprecedented infrastructure adoption as hyperscalers deploy XPUs and GPUs requiring proportional networking growth across scale-up, scale-out, and scale-across architectures. He explains the industry's focus on achieving 400 gigabit speeds through ecosystem collaboration addressing engineering challenges, while emphasizing the forum's role in enabling thought leaders to leverage open standards like Ethernet and advance AI infrastructure development.

Adee Ran, Architect of Ethernet at Cisco Systems, discusses his standards work with IT and UltraEthernet, emphasizing the collaborative effort required across industries to develop next-generation networking technologies. He explains that achieving mature next-generation technology requires inventing numerous components, such as optical modules with doubled improvements in signal integrity, power consumption, cost, and manufacturing yield, though the timeline for these innovations remains uncertain.

Stefano Testa, Director of Sales, SD-WAN EMEA at Cisco Systems, points out that discussions at the Summit are expanding beyond SD-WAN to include SASE, ZTNA, and AI technologies. Testa highlights the importance of focusing on organizational processes and business outcomes, while Cisco shares their AI initiatives and functionalities incorporated into their solutions.

Jiri Chaloupka, Principal Engineer Technical Marketing at Cisco Systems, explores the progression of internet technology towards AI-driven networks, emphasizing the need to build upon existing Ethernet standards while addressing new AI-specific challenges. He underscores the importance of industry collaboration and standardization to support the unique requirements of AI networks, including high bandwidth, low latency, and large-scale GPU interconnectivity.

The key challenge for NFV is the operationalization, the automation, and the management that will be required for organizations to succeed. JL Valente, VP/GM Service Provider Solutions, Cloud Platform and Solutions Group at Cisco, takes a look at what's coming to NFV in 2020 and beyond.