“Our lives are so much more complicated than they used to be,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told thousands of customers, partners, and press at Cisco Live in San Diego this week.
But Robbins stressed that Cisco is the company that cuts through that complexity to meet the networking and security challenges of the AI era — while continuing a 40-year tradition of being a trusted partner with an obsessive focus on the needs and challenges of its customers.
“As you try to achieve these outcomes and build the infrastructure to be ready for AI, quantum, and whatever's next, you have to have security. You have to build it with integrity, and you have to build it with a consideration for humanity. And that's underpinned by trust. We want to partner with you to bring that vision to life.”
Cisco Live is the company’s premier event to showcase the innovations and support that will, in fact, bring those visions to life. And this week there was a torrent of dazzling new AI-powered technology on display, including AgenticOps, AI Canvas, Universal Zero Trust Network Access, Hybrid Mesh Firewall, Duo Identity and Access Management — and with advanced agentic AI assistants and Splunk analytics integrated throughout the portfolio. Universal Zero Trust Network Access, Hybrid Mesh Firewall, Duo Identity and Access Management — and with advanced agentic AI assistants and Splunk analytics integrated throughout the portfolio.
But as Oliver Tuszik, Cisco’s EVP of global sales, stressed, whether innovating in AI, networking, security, observability, or data center, all are simplified with an integrated, platform-based strategy.
It’s a strategy that’s firmly centered on the customer.
“Your vision, your mission, what you're trying to achieve is driving us,” Tuszik said. “Whatever we do starts with you.”
Or as Liz Centoni, Cisco’s EVP and chief customer experience officer, put it, “Our goal is to make every customer feel like our only customer.”
Who better to illustrate that commitment than two top Cisco customers: Patrick Milligan, chief information security officer (CISO) of Ford Motor Co.; and Alan Rosa, SVP, CISO, and head of infrastructure and operations at CVS Health.
And in a third on-stage conversation, Centoni spoke with Harrison Chase, cofounder of Cisco partner LangChain, about how agentic AI is redefining the customer experience of the future.
A forty-year partnership focused firmly on the future
In an onstage conversation with Tuszik, Milligan expounded on a trusted 40-year Ford/Cisco relationship that began with the earliest router technology. And he shared his reflections on Cisco from his own long career at Ford — partnering with the company on everything from massive data-center rearchitecting and WAN acceleration to developing connected vehicles and Webex-powered workspaces.
“From Day One,” he said, “you guys established a level of trust with your innovation and assistance — not only on the technology side but on the business side.”
It’s a relationship that’s more important than ever, with challenges like AI and mounting security threats creating headaches for all CISOs.
“AI is a huge opportunity and a challenge,” Milligan said. “It’s not just figuring out how to enable and secure the agents we’re going to build ourselves, but also the ones that we’re going to be leveraging from our industry partners, suppliers, and providers. It’s a highly challenging environment.”
Like Cisco, Ford is also committed to adopting AI in the most transparent and responsible way.
“The principles and ethics associated with the responsible use of AI are very important to us,” Milligan continued. “Protecting our customer's data, ensuring we're engineering in privacy-by-design in everything we do is essential.”
Cisco is a key partner in getting AI right.
“As we build, deploy, and manage sophisticated AI capabilities at scale,” Milligan said, “Cisco’s networking and security solutions are an important part of the overall technology infrastructure.”
Looking forward, he expects the two companies to continue to achieve great things.
“What excites me about this relationship is what we can continue to do together,” Milligan concluded. “Who knows where things like AI are going to go, but what we do together gives us the opportunity to do great things.”
CVS Health, better health care with great networking and security
CVS Health is the second largest U.S. health care company, including retail pharmacy stores, a pharmacy benefits manager and a health care benefits provider. Like any successful company today, it’s hyper-focused on creating the best possible digital experiences — for customers, patients, providers and colleagues.
As with Ford, that includes a long-running collaboration with Cisco. Today, the partnership is focused on modernizing data centers and network infrastructure, including embedding AI capabilities to improve security, automation, and visibility.
To learn more, Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s president and chief product officer, welcomed Alan Rosa, CVS Health’s CISO and SVP of Infrastructure and Operations, to the Cisco Live stage.
To start, Rosa outlined some of the opportunities that his teams are most excited about.
“We're at an interesting inflection point,” he explained, “we're taking that opportunity to move beyond the traditional workload, by embedding AI capabilities inside of our fabrics. We're asking how do we prepare to deploy more advanced agentic solutions? And we're taking a security lens to all of it.”
CVS Health recently announced that over the course of the next 10 years, they will be focusing $20 billion of investments to enhance the health care experience, with an emphasis on tech-enabled improvements that help address friction in the health care system.
Looking forward, Rosa sees the company’s focus on customer needs and the health care experience driving all tech strategies.
“We're aspiring to build an integrated digital health experience,” he cited as one example, “which takes the best of our health benefits, our pharmacy benefits manager, and our retail pharmacies and brings them together — so that it's easier for our members and our patients to engage with us.”
Rosa also emphasized CVS Health's continued focus on its employees, fostering an inclusive culture, and promoting continuous learning.
"We have the best colleagues in the world," Rosa stated, underscoring the company's deep commitment to its workforce. This commitment extends to ongoing professional development and recognizes the pivotal role colleagues will continue to play in an increasingly AI-driven world.
As Patel said of Cisco’s role in that innovation journey, “it’s an honor to serve you.”
Partnering towards an agentic revolution in CX
Agentic AI promises to have a huge impact on customer experience. And Centoni shared the stage with a leading light in this game-changing technology: Harrison Chase, co-founder of LangChain.
As Cisco continues to invest in agentic CX to provide increased resiliency, simplicity, and time-to-value for customers, LangChain will be a key partner.
As Centoni said of the current agentic picture, “we're past the point of asking if agents will transform CX. The only question is how fast and who leads the infrastructures. The patterns are proven and the teams that architect the intelligence today will define what customer experience looks like tomorrow.”
As for the next step in agentic AI, Chase shared the latest in “ambient” agents.
“We define ambient agents as agents that are triggered by events,” he explained. “They run in the background. And if they're triggered by events, that means that I can scale myself as a professional because there's not a one-to-one interaction. So, there could be thousands, hundreds, thousands, millions of agents running in the background at the same time.”
Chase stressed that these ambient agents will still be beholden to human requests and guidelines, working to augment, not replace humans.
“Crucially,” he said, “ambient does not mean autonomous. We very much believe in human-in-the-loop interaction patterns. If you have an agent out there running, there's absolutely going to be cases where you're going to want to give it feedback and approve actions.”
Chase is especially excited at the potential of the Cisco/LangChain partnership.
“One of the things that we're really excited to work with you on,” he said, “is making sure that all of the agents that we build can run wherever Cisco customers want them. And that means on-prem, that means on device, that means in the cloud. We're excited to push those boundaries.”
However those boundaries are pushed, Centoni stressed that it will be in keeping with Cisco’s long tradition of customer-driven innovation.
“The goal,” she said, “is to give you foresight, faster adoption, and greater value every step of the way. Agentic CX is not just about better service. It will certainly provide you that. It's an opportunity to grow with you, to learn from you, and to adapt with your needs as your needs evolve and the world continues to change.”
