Cisco Live! 2026: AI Is Taking Away the Luxury of Time

The most interesting thing at Cisco Live! 2026 wasn't a product announcement.

It was a shift in tone.

For years, technology leaders have had the luxury of studying change before responding to it. They could build a roadmap, socialize a strategy, secure a budget, and move forward on their own timeline.

AI is taking that luxury away.

Across nearly every conversation this week, the same tension kept surfacing. The technology is improving faster than organizations are adapting to it. Security teams are watching the window between vulnerability and exploit shrink dramatically. Infrastructure teams are preparing for a world where software doesn't just serve users, but acts on their behalf. And leaders are being forced to rethink operating models that were designed for a much slower era.

In this episode, WWT leaders and industry experts explore what that shift means in practice. From AI-driven security threats and agentic operations to token economics and infrastructure modernization, the conversation focuses less on the technology itself and more on the consequences of its success.

Because the question is no longer whether AI will change the enterprise.

The question is how quickly the enterprise can change itself.

Support for this episode provided by: Cohesity

The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. 

Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.

The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.

Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments. 

Transcript

Something Felt Different This Year

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, we are live out at Cisco Live 2026 in sunny Las Vegas where the conversation unfolding is very much less look what's coming and more. This is here, this is real. Now how do we operate it, secure it, and move forward? Enterprise AI is very much a pressure test for most organizations at this point. The models are moving faster, security risks are compressing from months to hours, and agents are about to put new strain on every part of the infrastructure stack. All this is creating a new infrastructure operating model where networks, security, observability, and automation converge. So on today's bonus episode, we're asking what Cisco Live signaled and how IT leaders need to be thinking of them. This conversation will unfold over two parts. First, we're talking with ZK Research's Zias Caravala and WWT's Joe Berger and Neil Anderson on AI speed security, agent-driven infrastructure pressure, tokenomics, and the operational shift now facing IT leaders. Then, we'll step back with WWT's Brian Orbals and Laura Keener to talk about what it all means for customers and their IT teams, and we'll start to identify a path forward. From Worldwide Technology, this is the AI Proving Ground Podcast, live from Cisco Live. Let's get to it.

AI's Biggest Problem Isn't the Technology

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah, I I think from a and it was an announcement, I guess. When you look at a lot of the stuff Cisco showed, not at the infrastructure layer, but the stuff that sits above it with Cisco IQ, the analytics that they have, even with cloud control, you know, the ability to manage the end infrastructure end-to-end. I think all of that helps companies at operationalize AI. I think we've got a lot of good technology out there, but where companies struggle is putting it all together, understanding how to tweak it, tune it, run it, uh observe it. Observe it. Yeah. Am I paying too much for it? I think the demo they showed this morning actually, that who knew that that one token cost you 12 cents, right? Where if I use this model, it only costs three cents, that sort of thing. So I, in fact, I think Cisco's tagline of their critical infrastructure for, or no, critical infrastructure for AIR is very limiting, actually. I think they do much more than infrastructure. And I thought a lot of the demos they did today weren't about the box, it was about the operational tools above it, what was really where what the industry needs. And I think it's a good pivot for Cisco.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, I mean, Neil, I mean, that's you know, putting it all together, that that that can sound easier than it actually is. What do we need to do to take it from here? And what do organizations need to do to prepare?

SPEAKER_05 2:46

Yeah, and the way I look at it is, you know, Cisco has invested in all these sort of foundational things for a while. Sometimes we even wonder, well, that's a feature, but like what's what's that going to do for customers? But what resonated with me this week was they're all those foundational elements are now they're being brought to life to solve real customer problems. Perfect example is like Cisco Live Protect, perfect tool for going and dealing with mythos response and being able to mitigate certain you know behavior things that you know may not want deep into your infrastructure. Before you can get that patch in place, it's a nice way to sort of turn on a mitigation. But there's so many examples like that. But I do agree, they've they've really up-leveled now. The messages here were not really product level, they were around directions and strategy and architecture, very different.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Joe, are organizations that you're interacting with kind of on a regular basis, are they ready to make that shift and ready to jump full force into that strategy, or is there going to be a learning curve here?

SPEAKER_04 3:44

I I definitely think there's gonna be a learning curve, but I think I think Cisco has finally gotten to the point they're simplifying how to actually do it. I think for so long it's been either these weird point solutions, and maybe they all didn't come together correctly, or there's pieces of it that kind of fit, but it wasn't simple. This was really the first time I've seen Cisco really be concise on this message of years of diff acquisitions and product announcements and different themes. And they seem like they finally wrapped it up together and made it easy to consume and said, Okay, here's where we're gonna play. Here's our value prop, and here's all the different technologies and and stacks underneath that come together. So it's a benefit of a single product, though.

The Patch Window Is Disappearing

SPEAKER_02 4:28

100% yeah, they got it. Live protect's an interesting example of that, Neil, because when you think historically, Cisco does a great job of issuing CVEs, right? Every time it's an exploit, but then what does that mean for the customer? Now I gotta go apply a patch, yeah, right. And so now I gotta take the network down to apply that patch, and then I issue another one. And I actually think with AI threats coming and the ability to detect AI threats, we're gonna see more CVEs issued faster because you can catch more things and there's more things to catch. But now, what does that mean for a customer? I've got to be applying patches every six hours, right? So live protect's a great way to for customers to be able to know they're protected, but not have to go through the downtime of a lot of people. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 5:13

I think that's you said it well. The key is yes, there is going to be more CVEs issued. There's no doubt in my mind. The time to exploit is down to hours, not days or months. And so you're just not going to be able to take your infrastructure down frequently enough to ply all those patches. I think the the live protect is exactly as you said, Zias, like being able to just mitigate it for now until I can get a real patch into the cycle, that's going to be absolutely essential. The only danger is well, customers just live with the patch.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's some out there who might. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Well, what I mean, what it is. So this is the earliest we've had mythos uh brought up on an episode on episodes, which is really it's only been four minutes. It's only been a few minutes. That does seem to be a at least the most frequently used word I've heard around here over the course of this week by design, or is that just part of the hype cycle right now?

SPEAKER_04 6:02

No, I think it's real. Yeah. I mean, if you look at what they're finding with mythos and what it's exposing, I think every every customer's concern, if they're not, they should be. And there's also a lot of opportunity I'm what it can do for you, but it's definitely the talk of the town right now. And every every customer meeting we're in, every advisory board, every conference we're at, it's front and center every time. I'm glad seeing Cisco taking a head on. Yeah, well, what's I think more important is what it signals, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Like yeah, Mythos was announced what it about six weeks ago, four weeks ago. Right. And now it's the talk of the town. And when's the next mythos coming? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe tomorrow, right? That's the hype cycle of AI right now. In fact, Chuck was joking on stage every week. New model got released since he started a skin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:45

Yeah, I think it was more of it was like the I the chat GPT or the iPhone moment. Yeah. That we all kind of realized, okay, we've known that the time to exploit is going way, way down, and the ability to patch hasn't really changed. I think it just brought to the foreground that wow, we really are going to have to accept that we're living in a different world in exploits are going to come at rapid fire because of AI. And we're going to have to use AI and other tools to, you know, essentially patch the infrastructure differently and think about that differently. Uh, almost like I think about it as like, hey, I put my iPhone on the nightstand at night, and when I wake up in the morning, oh, I had an iOS update, right? I think we're gonna have to think about that kind of speed of risk mitigation in the infrastructure, you know, and not be taking the network down every time to do it. It's gonna have to be seamless and without rebooting anything.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Yeah, I asked Tom Gillis how how long it takes for customers to get to that comfort point, he thinks, you know, where instead of just patching, just or issuing raising the shield, just install the patch. Yeah, and he he thinks maybe two years to build uh the the trust. I actually think it'll be fashion that I think customers will go through the pain of having to do it and you know it'll work, it'll work, and then just let it do it, right? Yeah, especially for critical vulnerabilities, right?

SPEAKER_05 8:02

Well, what's the alternative? The alternative is you're gonna have to make a decision on do I take the risk of the outage for patching or do I take the risk of the breach? Yeah, and you're you know, you're gonna have to make that decision every day.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

What goes into some of that decision framework?

SPEAKER_05 8:16

What do they what do they have to be making that decision to actually Well, I think you know, outages, it really depends. Like if you're talking about an outage on a fab floor, like one of the customers talked about on stage here this week, that is that's unacceptable. You can't do that, right? If you're talking about about an outage potential for a carpeted office, you know, maybe that's not so bad, right? You you could take the risk of that. Um, so I think it's really gonna depend on the environment where you're where you're patching that infrastructure. Yeah.

The Career Question Everyone Is Asking

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Zias, you're you know, as plugged into anybody or as uh into the industry as anybody around here. What other what other signals are you walking away with right now from from Cisco Live, just beyond some of the announcements, beyond mythos and what we just talked about?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, I think you know, from uh I I think from a skills perspective, everybody asks me, like, are we gonna do layoffs? Are there gonna be more jobs? And I'm a firm believer that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. I just don't think we know what those jobs are. And I was listening to G2 talk about how 90% of Cisco product now is done by AI code creation, and then that created a bottleneck and code review. But I don't know if if you think about all the processes that we have, where the bottlenecks are, we'll use AI to automate those bottlenecks, but we'll create new ones. I don't know if we know enough to know what those new bottlenecks are until we're in them. But I more and more I'm pretty confident that when we're at the end of this AS, whatever that is, that I do think we will see a rise in tide. We'll see more jobs created, we'll see you know productivity go way up. But there will be a bit of pain as we go through that phase of we're eliminating jobs, we're automating things. Oh, now we need to stop. Now we need different types of things. But I think for the IT pro, it's very important that they embrace AI, keep their skills current, because there's going to be a world of opportunity out there. And I and I think it's a it's a good signal for the IT pro that's willing to actually embrace change.

SPEAKER_05 10:10

Yeah, we Joe and I were literally with a client's last week, and one of the clients said, I'm I'm not eliminating jobs. I have to hire more people.

SPEAKER_04 10:17

I think he said he's already hired two additional jobs because they're moving so fast, they need more resources.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

The most common thing I hear though is IT uh CIO saying we've held our hiring flat. Yeah, flat. Right. And but then we've actually been able to do you know three, four, five X more work, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:35

Yeah. This firm, they're they're a research firm, and they're able to do the research so much faster now that they're having to hire more people to validate the research and take it to their clients. So it's creating jobs for them. Not everybody will be in that situation, but I I do agree with you that I'm fond of a saying heard years ago, which is you know, AI is not going to replace people's jobs. People that know how to use AI are going to replace people's jobs.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

Yeah. And you kind of hit on one of these areas that we're already starting to see this shift happening, especially as in the developer community of engineering, as they start adopting coding assistance, the role of the engineer is different. They're not writing code like they used to, but now they're the orchestrator or the storyteller. And it's a different skill set they have to have. Now, having legacy foundations in code helps, yeah. But that that skill is now changing. And so, to your point, maybe that job starts going away, but a new job gets formed out of this. So that transformation is clearly underway. We're seeing a lot of customers adopting those tool sets, but just the skills have to get adopted, or you gotta learn a new trait to kind of go into this new modern world.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Yeah, I think one of the big takeaways too is I think we're seeing the birth of the new Cisco 100. I think this it's been a company that Chuck's been transforming since it took over, you know, the 12 years, 11, 12 years ago now. Do you do you think this feels different than last year? Yeah, yeah. I think the I think have it as you know, G2's been in place two years as chief product officer. The the transformation is complete. Like last year, they had a little bit of Meraki catalyst integration. I don't know. A little canvas. Yeah, I don't think it's very long before Meraki goes away as a brand. They just have one set of products. You can cloud manage, you cannot. I think everything now is built through the lens of easy to use. I think even in the keynote, historically, Cisco always led with here's our new box. Yeah, this this year, you know, Cisco Cloud Control was the product that they wanted to showcase. Yeah, every demo was done in cloud control. Um and I think this is a a different Cisco. And I I think it took a you know, it took them a while to get here.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

Yeah, and to your point, Zias, it was not a new box, yeah. It was a it was a new way of orchestrating all of Cisco's platforms and forecasts. Yeah, a couple of new boxes.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

It was a new chipset, too. Yeah, the new silicon, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Well, Neil, take that a little bit more. The the birth of a new Cisco. How how do you interpret what Zia just said right there? I mean, is that no?

SPEAKER_05 12:54

I think it's true. I I think more than ever, Cisco's thinking about this problem of wow, our our products are really, really hard to deploy and operate. We've got to really attack that. So when you when I see things like Cisco Cloud Control, Cisco AI Canvas, uh, agentic operations, those have to do with the the experience of IT to operate these products at AI speed. And I think that's where the new, I think that's part of the rebirth is okay, we got to stop thinking about just having the biggest, baddest switch

A Different Cisco Emerges

SPEAKER_05 13:24

that can move that many more packets. We got to think about operational experience.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Yeah. Yeah. One thing I'd like to see them dive deep in, or somebody, maybe you guys, is the this whole term tokenomics is thrown around, right? And NVIDIA uses it to describe we our infrastructure, even though it's the most expensive, we produce tokens at the lowest possible cost. But tokenomics is much more than that, right? It's understanding should I be running this process on the most expensive model? Do I want to optimize for cost or performance? Do I, you know, how do I deploy things in a multi-cloud environment, right? The world of tokenomics is very, very complicated.

SPEAKER_04 14:01

And I'm not sure most customers don't want to have it. That's actually the conversation that came up quite a bit. Neil mentioned our advisory board last week. The the clients that have already started getting pretty mature at this, that's where they're at now. Is okay, we've turned these things on. Now we're watching the bill go up. How do we start optimizing how I'm using the different LLMs? What we went through that cloud, right? Yeah, we did this in ops that we did for cloud.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Now we're doing it for tokens.

SPEAKER_04 14:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah. But I think it's a great role for a company like yourself, yeah. Uh, you know, to be that that uh advisor. Yeah, to be able to help them understand exactly what cloud tokenomics means because like I said, everybody says it, very few people understand it.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

But yeah, I mean, there was a what an article just a week or two ago about hyperscaler spending half a billion dollars on on tokens. Yeah. And it's funny because then you know half the half the population is now bragging about the the cost that that they have as it relates to tokens. If if it's similar to to the age of cloud, new, I

Your AI Bill Is About to Get Complicated

SPEAKER_01 15:00

mean, what are some of the the lessons learned during that period of time that we can still apply here, or is it a whole new ballgame?

SPEAKER_05 15:05

Well, I mean, first of all, you have to be able to see it. That's that's essential. How many tokens are being used by what for what? And uh, you know, yeah, there is this term called token maxing, which is people have figured out that if their executives are looking at tokens as my measure of am I adopting AI? Sure, I'll drive as many tokens as you want, right? They may not be productive, but I'll drive but they're burning tokens.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Well, Jensen said that, right? That if you're if your developers aren't using all the tokens, you should fire it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:34

It's not that clean though. You know, like so what is the new measure of productivity and and productive use of AI? We talked with some clients about they're measuring the number of stories delivered as an outcome for in their software. That's a that's a metric. That's a better metric than just measuring pure token usage because you just don't know. So I think that's a that's one lesson is what the the things you measure may be different, but I think there's a lot of similar lessons. Like if you don't, if you can't see it and you don't have a way to govern it, you you do risk like kind of running your costs amuck.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

So I mean it's clear that you know, this is becoming we we haven't really touched too much, we've skirted around it on on all this impact on infrastructure.

When Agents Start Talking to Agents

SPEAKER_01 16:12

And that's typically kind of the the sweet spot that we are talking on here. So, what is the impact right now, Neil? We can start with you down there on what type of stress is this putting on on the tech stack and and and what are we gonna see moving forward?

SPEAKER_05 16:24

Well, I think, you know, well, we talked about the the mythos pressures. There's certainly pressure on the infrastructure to be able to keep up with the number of deficiencies and and vulnerabilities that we're gonna see. That's gonna put strain on the infrastructure teams for sure. Things like how do you how do you control or govern which agents can talk to which other agents and which cannot? That's gonna put strain on the infrastructure to solve that in a security and policy perspective. And then, you know, we we we there's lots and lots of people using AI. And so there's a the traffic itself has just grown tremendously, flying back and forth between these agents as well as people to agents and people to the cluster. And so it's it's it's I think it is gonna put a strain on the infrastructure for capacity, security, and policy, and and then just how quickly can I remediate it when there's a problem?

SPEAKER_04 17:14

Hey, hey, Neil, quick question for you on that. Then, especially on the network side, and I think Chuck was the one who put this slap, or maybe it was G2. Chatbots, you see the spikes, right? Because it's people interaction, but as you start looking at agent, it's just always spiked. How does that affect the network?

SPEAKER_05 17:28

Yeah, that's a I love that slide. Yeah, I think it was G2's slide that he showed. You know, yeah, chatbots are kind of spiky, yeah, but agents are like steady strength.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

It's constant, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:38

That's a constant 24 by seven packet blast on your infrastructure and your network.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

I think we have no idea the impact it's gonna have, but it's gonna be big, and I think you're gonna see almost every company have to go through not only a data center modernization of network repression, but a campus one. Yeah, yeah. You think about like a lot of that traffic generated on devices like laptops over Wi-Fi. How much uh how much bought you know, agent traffic did you throw over Wi-Fi? You're gonna have agents create new agents, and then you gotta worry about secure them, you gotta worry about the remediation. You look at like, you know, I know you work a lot with Veeam, you know, yeah, they bought the company security AI to be able to roll back data. There's a lot, the entire way we run IT has to change, right? And we have to think more about resiliency than anything. But I think from a network perspective, we're gonna this industry is gonna go through a very long, you know, upgrade cycle, one that we probably haven't seen since Y2K, frankly.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

And I I do think Cisco's message this week is starting to really set them up as that sort of infrastructure layer to do that. Like, like I said, like I haven't seen anyone get this concise around here's where we want to play for this new world. Yeah, now the execution of it, obviously, that's gonna take a little bit of time. Cisco's got a lot of product sets, but where they're headed, I mean, I haven't seen a lot of vendors do this yet. At least not tell that grand of a story. So I was pretty impressive. Well, they've got the most complete portfolio, so observability, security, they've done a nice job rolling Splunk in the game. Yeah, Splunk's finally coming in in the fold. We've been waiting a little bit for that. So we're glad to see that coming in. Yeah.

The Decisions Leaders Can't Delay

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Well, I know we're running short on time for our time here on the stage, but just before we go, let's just talk about you know, a key priority that our listeners, our customers should be thinking about as they head into the back half of 2026 in light of what we've learned here at Cisco Live. We'll just go down the row here. Joey, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 19:29

I I think the biggest thing is lean in. Go learn this. As you said, it's not just the individuals who have to understand what this is gonna do to their career, organizations have to start planning for this stuff. I mean, this is a new world, it is coming so quick on everybody. You've got to start making plans and start looking two to three years out around what this is gonna be. I mean, we don't know what's gonna happen next week with some of these models, yeah. But you get an idea of how fast this is gonna happen. And if your infrastructure isn't ready, if you don't have the security, the governance, you're gonna put yourself in a world or be behind the competition. So lean in now and start start getting into it.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Yeah, I think the key messages here are move fast, fail fast. I think the the risks of doing nothing are far greater than the risk of deployment and failing. Yeah, yeah. And I think from an IT perspective, agility is everything. You have to have a modern foundation in place so when the next mythos happens or whatever happens, you can pivot your strategy. Because if you're stuck into a certain architecture or you know, uh any kind of foundational platform that that you can't pivot off of, you're really stuck. And so I think it whatever you do, it has to favor agility. And if you can't do that, then you're gonna be moving backwards, frankly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:49

Neil? Yeah, my my key one is the days of letting your your infrastructure go end of life, end of service, and being okay with that. You're not getting security updates. So it's kind of a nudge nudge wink wink. The days of just replacing that sweat one for one year. Yeah, sweating it for 10 years, replacing it, and then you replace it with like for like, but you don't change the way you're operating it. I I think those days are gone. I I think the the new paradigm is going to be that your infrastructure is gonna have to be up to date. Yeah, both the the equipment itself as well as the software and the patching that's got to be there. You're gonna have to react in real time to make sure that those vulnerabilities are out of your system. And and concepts like zero trust, again, that we've kind of said, yeah, it's a little bit of a background project, those are gonna be absolutely critical. You're gonna have to do it. Well, especially in the era of physical AI, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:44

We haven't we didn't really talk touch on that, but there is a world of more connected devices coming, all with your own local processing, all with your own AI. And if you think your environment's messy today, just wait a couple years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Okay, clearly the lesson there is that A AI is changing how fast IT teams need to operate and how security teams need to respond. Infrastructure can't be passive anymore, it has to be flexible and ready to adapt for whatever's next. And that sets up our next part of the conversation with Right and Forest. This episode is 455. Strengthen resilience, accelerate recovery, and reduce IT costs. Zero trust security and advanced AI and machine learning, obesity data cloud, is trusted

Why IT Feels Like Controlled Chaos

SPEAKER_01 22:30

by customers in more than 140 countries, including 70% of the global 500. I do want to talk about, you know, of course, Cisco Live. What type of signals, Brian, are you seeing here? Maybe not necessarily like announcements, but what do those announcements signal to the broader industry about what's unfolding around AI, around security, and how IT teams need to react?

SPEAKER_03 22:50

I think Chuck summed it up well yesterday in his keynote. This is the fastest that we've ever seen things move. And I think the the other factor that is becoming really obvious for our clients and for us as we engage with them is you don't have time to wait and think and plan at the at the at the typical model that you might have used in the past. So the the entire operational construct of how our clients are thinking about what they do is changing. And it's moving faster there. They've got competing forces across infrastructure modernization and cybersecurity concerns and certainly AI. And you know what we hear is budgets aren't going up. So that it just creates a lot of, I would say a bit of chaos. And so that that that's an opportunity for them to think differently about how they operate. I think it also opens the door for a reconsideration of how they've architected things in the past. And so I think we're just on the brink of a really exciting time for our clients, for us, for our partnerships with Cisco, and and looking forward to what that journey is gonna entail. But we're in it together.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah, so Laura, I mean, if it if it's a chaotic market, but we need to jump in and actually get going, yeah, what's transpired here, whether it's over the keynote or what you're seeing out here on the show floor, that's gonna help organizations take those first couple steps to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Yeah, I think, you know, to part of what Brian's saying, the energy and spirit of just speed and agility is palpable, right? Like whether it's in the keynotes, whether it's in the technology discussions or customer conversations, everyone is looking for that speed to consume, speed to be at a place of confidence and trust in some of the emerging technology, some of the AI capabilities. Um, and so I think what I'm feeling and seeing and hearing bounced back from customers and other partner contexts is just the pace has never been more fast, right? And that's exciting because I think we've all seen technology evolve quickly, but never at this kind of pace. And so to have customers reacting to that pace where maybe they didn't in the past, they were a little more slow and steady. Now it's hunger everywhere, which is super exciting. But you're you're hearing that in all the energy here this week.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Yeah. Brian, it definitely feels like a shift from, you know, whereas a couple years ago is more about vision and excitement, and then maybe last year was more about maybe integration. This year is very much a do-do-do. How you know, whether it's you know, agents entering the mix or certainly mythos and securities creating a stir that enters into every conversation, what should organizations be actually looking at in terms of what's real versus what they can just kind of put to the side for

The Shift From Vision to Delivery

SPEAKER_01 25:23

now?

SPEAKER_03 25:23

Well, I you know, I'll I'll maybe answer it a little bit differently in that I agree. If you look over the last several years of this event uh and just what's going on in the market in general, I see Cisco emerging right now as certainly a leading tech innovation organization, but they're delivering, right? It's not, it isn't about vision, it is about truly delivering. And that's what we saw there in the keynotes was a lot of live demos, which is risky. It's always risky. Yeah. But I applaud them for showing stuff in real time and demonstrating what they've been working on. I've been more impressed, I think, over the last 12 months with what they've done truly to integrate the portfolio and to look at less about a bunch of parts and more about an integrated system, because that's frankly what our clients need. In this chaotic world of rapid change and all these competing forces hitting them all at once, they need more simplicity. They need more confidence that the things they're deploying are going to help deliver the outcomes that they're looking for without a lot of burden and effort, both on the architecture and on the operation side. So I think it's incumbent upon organizations like Cisco to help, you know, de-risk the way that clients operate, help them on that journey. Back to, you know, getting started. You just have to get started, wherever that may be. But I think organizations like Worldwide and Cisco are in a really good position to help our clients really unpack where they should, you know, lay their first steps. And I think we've got the the portfolio together to really deliver on the things that they ultimately have to bring to the business to remain competitive, to remain safe, to remain innovative and productive. And I'm I'm really excited and pleased with what I've seen so far this week. And I think that there's just an incredible amount of goodness ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah. Brian, I think to the point of deliver, right? Like let's let's deliver on all of that visionary, that conversation strategy in the past. I think the excitement, you know, we've been through in the last several years, a few iterations of Cisco delivering on telemetry and insights, delivering or attempting to deliver more meaningfully on some of that kind of customer insight generation. And now this year we're seeing with the tooling really to Brian's point, demoed live on stage. We're seeing that that's real. And is it perfect? No, but it is definitely forward thinking in terms of let's put it in your hands, let's iterate, let's work together on what even more meaningfully needs to be done in the next stage of development. It's it's a it's a really exciting time because you're actually seeing it come to life. Again, maybe it's not perfect and doesn't roll out great in the live demo, but that's more true to customer experience every day, every week. So I like that realism that we're seeing.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

I think it's impressive to see G2's mindset. He's very much a fail fast.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

Let's go. You know, done is better than perfect. Let's keep iterating.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

We're gonna learn along the way. I think, you know, Laura, I don't know if just on the on the topic of you know, seeing

You Can't Secure What You Can't See

SPEAKER_03 28:06

things in action. Yeah. Liz and Tony did a great job this morning with IQ. I thought the fact that she had live client testimonials on stage with her, it's not just the demo. They're actually using it. I I know you've been close to that uh the last couple of years. And any observations just with what IQ is bringing into the market and how clients are going to gain a lot out of that.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, I, you know, I think again, there's been a it's been a long time coming from a roadmap perspective to be able to bring though that level of insight and proactivity to the customer estate. And so, you know, I think to see the customer's testimonial is real to what customers are finally experiencing, where it's we've been asking for this. We need this to better manage and spend our time on more strategic projects and have all of the support and other elements, you know, more handled, not automated, but certainly in a more, again, proactive way. And so overall, I would say that the demand for that proactivity is being met by the delivery of IQ and other tools. And you heard that from customers in those testimonials, which again is like that gives me confidence because in the past, we've always led with our ability to intervene or be involved in your data and visibility is valuable for worldwide as a partner to our customers and a partner to Cisco. I think in this new world, it's hey, Cisco has shown up strong in that capacity in a really different way, which forces us also to find our ways to differentiate around that, which is a really exciting point to be too.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

It is. And I there's an element there that I think I'm sure people are connecting the dots, but if they're not, it's worth stating that one of the most fundamental things with with mythos and and other frontier cyber models is you have to know what you have.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

What in what what is my inventory look like? And that's typically been a difficult thing to pin down, even for Cisco tools on their own products. It was difficult to get an accurate picture of the current state, disposition, and health of that asset. And so just with IQ to see the ability to see my entire inventory, the state, the health, the disposition in one place. And then better yet, if there are issues or there's a risk coming because there's a new exploit, to be able to act against it with things like life protect, I like that is that's game-changing for clients to have those tools available to them, not only to be more efficient just during troubleshooting and ongoing, you know, day-to-day support of the operation, but to be able to be more proactive and better prepared for these new attack surfaces that are coming. And so that's again where these they're not operating in silos. These are, you know, they're intentional decisions Cisco's making around different portfolio elements that now come together and deliver an outcome in a different way that I I don't see anybody else doing in the market.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah, I think the other thing that that you could take the position as a partner that this is a little scary, right? There's so much now that Cisco's bringing to bear and owning from a data and insights lens that, you know, previously we could stand firm on we know your data and your estate better, customer, right? Like we could stand firm on that. So I think you could take the innovation and tooling as a challenge to us as partners to be even further more innovative ourselves and how we differentiate and wrap around that tooling. So I think when you step back and say, okay, how do we embrace this as a partner and find our lane to be valuable, which we've proven to be successful over years doing, again, just exciting time because this is pushing us out of our comfort zone a little bit, which is the place everyone's feeling with the emergence of AI, all of this kind of automation and innovation? Everyone's got to get uncomfortable, which I think is great.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah, I mean, the vision is there. Yeah. I mean, even clear for that matter, and the tooling is is robust. So there's a there's a clear roadmap to it becoming a platform play here. But you know, you're talking about organizations dealing with, you know, legacy tech or fragmented data silos, whatever it might be. What do organizations our customers need to do to kind of meet Cisco halfway so that they're actually able to utilize these tools to their full

Curiosity Becomes a Competitive Advantage

SPEAKER_01 31:57

potential?

SPEAKER_03 31:57

To me, it's you have to learn, right? There's a lot that has come out, both in the industry or just in the world in terms of the forces that our clients are facing. But as they think about how they're gonna solve for those and be better prepared, there's new solutions coming in. And the the thing that is gonna be required is you have to be yeah, just a passion for learning. I I think that's the most fundamental thing is to be curious and inquisitive, ask a lot of questions, get your hands on this stuff as quickly as you can so you start getting the experience and understanding how you apply it. But those those those tenants, I think, are gonna be absolute necessities in order for clients to really make the progress they want. Otherwise, it's just it's a vision for them, right? It's a product or it's a solution that exists out there, but I haven't figured out how to apply it to my business or my operation yet. So, you know, hearing and seeing all these things this week, I think is a starting point, but now it's a now it's about action.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

And you know, that's that's a lot to ask because everybody's busy. But I think if I as I look around the show floor here, I think Cisco worldwide have done a great job bringing ideas and capabilities forward so clients can take that first step, get their hands on, get into a you know, a training session, do some self-paced learning, whatever it may be. And that way they're not sitting on the sideline waiting for something else to happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

I I think that's when we think about where worldwide's positioned in this speed of innovation period that we're in. There, you know, I think we can fairly say there's not another player that has as robust of an environment to play and learn as WWT offers through the ATC and all of our assets from that capacity. So again, for uh for us, it's a really, really exciting time, but we have to grab hold of it and jump in with our customers, jump in with Cisco. And I think we're doing that.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

But yeah, I think we're fortunate too, and that just in regards to the advanced technology center. We have nearly everything that's been announced this week already deployed.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

And so we've been working behind the scenes with Cisco to get our hands on it. And then we're building labs and learning paths, we're building, you know, cyber range capabilities for our clients, for our own engineers to go get skilled up because we have to learn as well, so that we're prepared to better serve our clients. And that's what I think one of the most foundational benefits of the ATC provides for us and for our clients and for Cisco is that ability to get hands-on and see it live. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Well, and I I think the stats still holds true. And Brian, you might know this better than I do, but from an ATC consumption perspective, for a long time, Cisco engineering Cisco team members were some of the highest concentrates. The number one usage. Yeah. Yep. Which I think is really a cool thing because what that's telling us is we're rounding out the education and innovation and access to that knowledge and self-paced learning. And again, that speaks to the depth of partnership and investment together.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

But well, last question, because I know that uh the two of you have slammed schedules, like we mentioned.

Twelve Months From Now

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Um, if we're sitting on this stage again, a year from now, again at Cisco Live, what are we what are we what should we be thinking we're gonna be talking about? Is it that we kind of conquered some of those uh you know fragmentation or aligned uh resources, or where do you see the market going in terms of what we should be talking about and prioritizing as we move into 2027, even?

SPEAKER_03 34:59

I I think the there's gonna be a lot of the same. I think we're gonna be facing a lot of the same opportunities. I think we will have solved for a lot of them. I think we're ideally gonna find ourselves in a position where instead of reacting to market trends and new new new things coming at us and new ways to solve for those business opportunities and challenges. I I am optimistic that we're actually gonna be pivoting more towards how do we capitalize on these things to go drive business transformation, change the fundamental fabric of how a company operates with AI and cyber and infrastructure modernization and all these tooling capabilities that we're delivering so that now the business can actually benefit. So it's not just about IT changing the way they operate, but the business starts looking at you know, optimizing the way they they think about the way they build new products or deliver services to their clients or whatever the case may be, and driving revenue growth, new customer acquisition, operational efficiency. So I I see that as 12 months from now, instead of reacting to all these these changes, we will have hopefully overcome them. We're thinking about them differently and putting our putting ourselves in a position to deliver uh standing business impact. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

I I would agree with that sentiment, Brian. I also think the thing that we'll start to see is the volume and velocity of insights that will be captured, generated. I think that becomes our next opportunity or challenge, depending on how you look at it. Like there will be so much more information through the tooling, through the telemetry insights and other factors. How do we harness that best to make meaningful business growth? Right. Like I think that's that's gonna be the transformation of now the technology and insights are flowing. Now we're getting all of that ability to activate and be proactive. How do we do that sensibly as a business model and as a source of kind of truth and advisory for our customers in a meaningful way? We don't want to lose that edge of being that advisory seat to our customers, but we're gonna have to figure out how to take all of this vast landscape of data and insights that's just multiplying at a rate we've never seen before. So I think that'll be maybe some of the the shift or pivot we'll start to see messaged next year, then. But I mean, future's bright. There's a lot of things to look forward to next year.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah, exciting times, lots of work to do, including uh more meetings that you guys got to get to. So we'll let you go. Appreciate both of you uh jumping on on uh short notice. Now thrilled to be here. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

Yeah, have a good one.