A Generational Industrial Experience is in Store at Cisco Live San Diego

It’s that time of year when industry leaders and innovators gather for a week of collaboration to explore innovation, networking, security, and this year, artificial intelligence (AI). Being in San Diego, connecting with inspiring professionals, and presenting alongside amazing customers like Disney and Planet Farms makes this experience truly unforgettable. 

The Industrial IoT team is hosting key summits on manufacturing, utilities, and transportation. These conversations fuel our drive to innovate and deliver impactful solutions, making this year a bit more special for the Cisco industrial IoT team. 

It’s Industrial IoT’s year 

This year at Cisco Live San Diego, the spotlight is on Industrial IoT. With the urgency of cybersecurity, groundbreaking AI use cases, and the growing collaboration between IT and operational technology (OT) teams, Industrial IoT is paving the way for smarter, more secure operations. The Cisco Industrial Networking portfolio is expanding and advancing to tackle these challenges head on. Today, we are announcing a significant expansion of our industrial switching portfolio, the integration of Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (URWB) into our new Wi-Fi 7 portfolio, and an AI-based clustering enhancement to Cisco Cyber Vision.   

Growing our Industrial Ethernet family 

Our Industrial Ethernet portfolio is growing with the addition of 19 new rugged switches, featuring everything from IP30 to IP67 PoE and UPoE. 

Cisco IE3500 Rugged Series 

Cisco IE3500 

Our new industrial switches are purpose-built to address challenges head on. These new switches offer unparalleled PoE flexibility with 4-pair Power over Ethernet (4PPoE), faster uplinks to support the bandwidth demands of industrial AI applications, and a seamless merge of Layer 2 and Layer 3 transport into a single network using fabric technologies—ensuring scalability and flexibility for your assets, no matter where they are. 

As a product manager, there’s nothing more rewarding than hearing direct feedback from customers. It’s through these insights that we gain a deeper understanding of their real-world challenges and aspirations, which ultimately helps us drive innovation. 

I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with Enedis. Their feedback over the years has played a key role in shaping our roadmap, and they were naturally involved in the early field testing of some of our new products. 

their, which will allow us to deploy these switches in under 15 minutes with zero-touch across our 2300 substations in France. This will be very useful when, in the future, we upgrade our current deployment of IE4010 with IE9300 Rugged Series Switches, s of operational cost and time.” —Arnaud Saupin, Technical Leader Network Engineering, Enedis

I also had the pleasure of working with Nutrien and met Brock Richards, a passionate architect. He and the team at Nutrien inspired us to raise the bar. 

“As a leading global fertilizer producer, we must maintain a secure, high-performing network for worker safety, production, and seamless connectivity across our entire supply chain. Cisco IE3500 Rugged Series switches uniquely provide high-density PoE for cameras, LIDAR, Wi-Fi 7, and 5G APs, even in extreme underground environments. This, coupled with Cisco Silicon, delivers advanced networking features like VXLAN MP-BGP EVPN, enabling us to build a consistent, flexible, and secure network fabric across our diverse sites and use cases. The IE3500 is a true powerhouse that enables Nutrien’s mission to “Feed the Future”. —Brock Richards, Senior Global Solution Architect, Nutrien

Introducing Wi-Fi’s big brother 

A new era of wireless connectivity is here, and it’s nothing short of revolutionary. We are excited to announce the integration of Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul and Wi-Fi technology in a wide selection of our Wi-Fi 7, 6E, and 6 access points, enabling organizations to unlock new use cases and capabilities.   

Both technologies can now operate simultaneously on a single hardware platform and can be managed with the same tools organizations rely on, such as Catalyst Center. This approach streamlines deployment, simplifies management, and reduces the costs and complexities associated with worker training and licensing, and spectrum management. 

Back in February at Cisco Live in Amsterdam, I had the privilege of speaking with Fabio Oleari about the vision for the future of industrial networking at E80. It was great to hear the insights, and we are thrilled that E80 had the opportunity to experience the capabilities of our expanding portfolio firsthand.  

“We’re excited about the IE3100 Heavy Duty Series’ compact size and IP67 rating for enhanced resistance to moisture, dust, and vibration, alongside the new IE3500 Rugged Series’ feature set, poised to accelerate our innovation. The integration of Wi-Fi and Cisco URWB is also a welcome addition, letting us leverage the same access points for diverse use cases without duplicating infrastructure.” —Fabio Oleari, OT Cybersecurity Manager, E80 Group. 

OT security powered by AI   

After speaking with numerous customers, it’s clear that AI use cases in industrial environments require seamless communication across OT, IT, and cloud domains. To meet these needs, robust cybersecurity measures are essential—not only to swiftly detect malicious activity but also to effectively prevent intrusions. 

That’s why we’ve made Cisco Cyber Vision better than ever to give you unparalleled visibility into your industrial environment to identify thousands of assets seamlessly and understand their roles. Transforming the challenge of absorbing vast amounts of data into actionable security policies has never been more exciting.  

We’re leveraging AI clustering technology to simplify it all with new AI-powered security features, including asset clustering and identity threat detection for OT remote access.  

Segmentation is critical to prevent unwanted communications and stop the spread of malware, but first you need to group these assets to drive segmentation policies. Cyber Vision now includes AI-based asset clustering that automatically clusters assets into zones so organizations can implement segmentation in weeks not months.

Cisco Cyber Vision automatically clusters assets to simplify communication across OT, IT, and cloud domains 

In addition, Cisco Secure Equipment Access (SEA) can now detect identity threats such as remote access from unexpected locations or unusual working hours. With added support for Cisco AI Assistant, administrators no longer have to sort through thousands of audit trails for forensics. Instead, they can ask the AI assistant and get answers in seconds.  

The coolest demos in my 20 years at Cisco 

After 20 years at Cisco, I’ve seen countless innovations, but this year’s World of Solutions demos at Cisco Live stand out as the most groundbreaking yet, with 11 demos for our industrial IoT portfolio. 

For one of those demos, we created a guitar refurbishment factory to showcase how the industrial network is evolving into the nervous system of the modern factory. In this futuristic assembly line, guitars are meticulously inspected and tuned by AI-driven robotics, demonstrating the full spectrum of capabilities enabled by the network. From AI-powered machine vision and virtualized programmable logic controllers to industrial visibility, network segmentation, secure remote access, data extraction, and more, this demo highlights how advanced networking is driving innovation and efficiency in industrial environments. 

First, precision robots scan the guitar’s body for imperfections like scratches or dents (AI machine vision). Generative AI (GenAI) then steps in, suggesting creative fixes for these flaws, which are encoded into radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on each pallet. At the next station, the magic of music is found. As the guitar pauses before pickup, a robot plucks a string and GenAI listens to the tone, adjusting the tuning pegs to perfection. This process repeats for each string, ensuring every note is pitch perfect. Finally, the robot strums all the tuned strings. 

Redefining the future of industrial operations  

We’re at the start of a new era for industrial IoT and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s ahead. With input from our customers and a shared commitment to innovation, we’ve built an expanded portfolio powered by advanced AI and purpose-driven features. It’s designed to help you connect, secure, and optimize your critical infrastructure—enabling smarter, faster, and more resilient operations. Together, we’re not just preparing for the future of industrial operations—we’re shaping it. 

Unlock the full potential of AI with the Cisco AI-ready industrial networking portfolio. 

Industrial IoT New Products: Cisco Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series, Cisco IE3500 Rugged Series, Cisco IE3500 Heavy Duty Series, Cisco Catalyst IE3100 Heavy Duty,

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