Cisco Continues Elevating Partner AI Capabilities to Meet Customer Demand

At Cisco Live 2024 in Las Vegas, there was as much discussion as excitement around Cisco’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation. Across every stage, Cisco executives highlighted the incredible power of our AI strategy, especially in meeting customer needs. Innovation is at the heart of everything Cisco does, and this is particularly true for AI, where customer demand for AI-powered technologies is extraordinary, and partner opportunities are substantial. AI is a prime example of how we are greater together, with partners bridging the gap between Cisco AI technology and unique customer use cases.

Cisco enables partners to help customers harness the power of AI

Cisconians are proud of our AI history and expertise as well as using AI to enhance our own products. As Cisco expands its AI portfolio, our unique differentiator remains our unmatched ability to provide the infrastructure that AI requires, alongside giving customers access to an enormous amount of relevant data. Our acquisition of Splunk has not only created one of the largest software companies globally, but our complementary capabilities in AI, security, and observability will unlock the tremendous value of data for customers of all sizes.

Cisco investing to scale partners’ AI maturity

The accelerating urgency for customers to deploy and leverage AI-powered technologies is driving a substantial opportunity for our partners to build profitable AI practices. Cisco is committed to ensuring our AI offering serves both partners’ business goals and bottom line, making everyone smarter and any organization better. Cisco is moving the needle faster than ever before, helping partners and customers achieve more and succeed bigger, evidence of the recent AI launches and the promise of more to come.

AI launches to enhance partner capabilities

At Cisco Live, we announced several AI launches designed to enhance partner capabilities and success in our collective AI journey, offering more value to our shared customers:

Cisco Nexus HyperFabric — Cisco’s fully managed data fabric-as-a-service

This revolutionary full-stack, cloud-managed AI solution is designed to eliminate deployment complexities and streamline AI implementations. Partners can assist customers in designing, deploying, and managing their AI-based networks at scale—all through a user-friendly interface or APIs. With Cisco handling the infrastructure, partners can focus on driving business objectives and accelerating time-to-value, while enabling customers to harness the full value of AI to propel innovation and growth. It’s about meeting our mutual customers where they are and how they want to consume Cisco technology.

Cisco’s AI Fundamentals for Partners

The first stage of our AI partner specialization training series starts with AI Fundamentals, equipping partners with the knowledge needed to optimize infrastructure for AI workloads using Cisco technology. Partners will explore AI basics, including key concepts and terms, progressing through the taxonomy of AI solutions, as well as Cisco’s AI strategy, risks, governance, and real use cases to master AI solution implementation—in, on, and through Cisco’s platforms. With the mission of elevating our entire partner ecosystem and empower customer outcomes, Cisco invites all our partners to invest in this personalized learning journey from Cisco Black Belt, available free of charge.

Register for the AI Fundamentals for Partners training in Cisco Black Belt Academy. 

And this is just the beginning. In the coming months, Cisco will provide partners with more opportunities to be recognized for their ability to sell, deploy, build upon, and operate Cisco AI technologies. This includes expanded training with advanced concepts to help partners develop more complex AI solutions, as well as specialized tools and early access to Cisco’s AI-based products. Stay tuned for more announcements, including at Partner Summit, about how we’re planning to support our partners’ AI practices. Also, check out my session in the Cisco Partner Launch Experience called The Cisco-Partner AI Opportunity.

Exciting New AI Award

Given the high customer demand, our commitment to AI and empowering partners is part of everything we do. Previously announced, Cisco is championing partners who leverage AI through a new AI-specific award category in the annual Global Partner Innovation Challenge. This new AI award features a $200K USD prize, focusing on innovation, impact, Cisco alignment, technical feasibility, and scalability. Last year, 41 percent of submissions incorporated AI—a number we are confident will continue to increase. Register for the Partner Innovation Challenge.

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