San Jose-based networking hardware and security solutions provider Cisco, during its Cisco Live 2025 annual conference, announced ambitious plans to empower enterprise customers. Chuck Robbins, Chairman and Chief Executive of Cisco Systems, outlined the company's vision to help businesses build artificial intelligence (AI)-centric data centres and future-proof their workplaces, all underpinned by a robust layer of digital resilience.

Robbins emphasized Cisco's commitment to transforming data centres to efficiently power AI workloads, regardless of their location. This transformation focuses on achieving seamless operations, comprehensive observability, and ubiquitous security. "We want to help you (enterprises) build AI-ready data centres. We want to help you future-proof your workplace. And we want to do that with an underlying layer of digital resilience," Robbins stated.

A cornerstone of Cisco's strategy involves significant collaborations with key technology leaders. The company has intensified its partnership with Nvidia, headed by Jensen Huang, to deliver the Secure AI Factory. This joint initiative provides enterprises with a secure and scalable platform to accelerate the creation and deployment of AI solutions, thereby driving business value. Furthermore, Cisco is collaborating with OpenAI on its newly-released Codex software engineering agent, a tool designed to assist network engineers in writing, testing, and building code.

Cisco's collaborative efforts extend further. Last month, Cisco and G42 broadened their strategic partnership to foster AI innovation across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States. Additionally, Cisco is involved with the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), a consortium including BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), MGX, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The company, founded by Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner in 1984, stated it is committed to facilitating enterprise customers with "massive innovation," enabling them to modernize and reimagine data centres with solutions such as Expanded AI Pods and the Unified Nexus Dashboard.

Robbins highlighted that Cisco's unique combination of networking and security offerings provides a significant competitive advantage that its rivals lack. He asserted that Cisco is foundational to data centre build-outs worldwide, positioning the company as a provider of "critical infrastructure" essential for navigating the AI era. "We need a huge amount of security into the underlying network in order to be able to apply network services. We believe that we have a meaningful role to play," Robbins explained.

Looking ahead, Robbins underscored the critical importance of fusing security with the network, particularly for the advancement of agentic AI. This integration is seen as essential for ensuring the reliability and safety of future AI systems.