Partnerships, validated designs strengthen Cisco offerings
Cisco’s AI offerings also include Nvidia technologies, such as Spectrum-X-based switches that are part of Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia.
Cisco also works with AMD and its Instinct AI GPUs for networking and compute stack in large AI clusters. In addition, Cisco integrates AMD Pensando DPUs for advanced network and security acceleration.
“The journey to AI is not something that any single vendor or offering can give the customer everything they need. Instead, partnerships help provide more options and best-of-breed solutions. Customers want vendors to collaborate to create a better solution,” wrote Alan Weckel co-founder and analyst of the 650 Group, in blog about Cisco networking. “For example, Nvidia and Cisco’s partnerships allow for Cisco’s networking stack to integrate with Nvidia’s ASICs and GPUs to provide a lower TCO and an easier-to-manage solution. Similarly, Cisco and AMD collaborated on both the AI stack and a DPU to enable a Smart Switch (adding programmable data-plane functions), thereby enhancing the networking layer,” Weckel stated.
Enterprise customers require simplified network operations to scale, often seeking validated designs and architectures, wrote Weckel. “Cisco addresses this segment of the market with the Nexus 9000 and Nexus Dashboard, which allows for simplified network management. Telemetry-driven visibility and policy automation help teams correlate workload health with fabric behavior. Enterprise customers can benefit from adopting Smart switches, which enhance networks by adding embedded security capabilities.”
