Cisco Unveils AI, Security, and Observability Innovations at 28th Annual Partner Summit

• The annual Partner Summit gathers thousands from Cisco’s global partner community to hear from Cisco leaders about partner program updates, new technology solutions and opportunities to be greater together.

• Cisco introduces Cisco Validated Designs for AI — simplifying IT for organizations by helping them quickly integrate AI workloads into mainstream production environments.

• New Cisco Security Suites — User, Cloud, and Breach Protection Suites — offer a simplified, integrated, and economical way to buy and consume Cisco’s security solutions.

• Cisco launches observability ecosystem — enabling organizations to create new modules on the Cisco Observability Platform.

Cisco Partner Summit 2023 begins, bringing together thousands of Cisco partners from around the world to network, learn and celebrate their shared successes with Cisco. Around 90 percent of Cisco’s revenue flows through Cisco’s partners, represented by tens of thousands of organizations from more than 150 countries.

Massive technological shifts are happening across AI, 5G, cloud, security, and applications, which are re-shaping almost every industry across the world. Now more than ever before, businesses are leveraging technology to transform their business and drive outcomes and experiences for their customers. Through the power of its platforms, Cisco is enabling greater simplicity, flexibility and choice for our customers and partners to accelerate their digital transformation.

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Together with our partners, we are committed to leading in AI, security, observability and sustainability, key drivers of our innovation and joint profitability, all underpinned by our commitment to securely connect everything to make anything possible.

“We are thrilled to host Partner Summit 2023, where our global partner ecosystem will come together to discuss how Cisco and its partners can collectively help customers achieve their business goals,” said Jeff Sharritts, EVP and Chief Customer and Partner Officer, Cisco. “This event serves as a platform to foster collaboration, share insights, and strengthen the bonds between Cisco and our valued partners. Through our collective expertise and resources, we can drive innovations that shape the future of digital transformation and create even greater value for organizations across industries and geographies.”

Cisco Validated Designs for AI
Effective utilization of AI has emerged as a top priority for organizations around the world. At the same time, unfamiliar application stacks and infrastructure patterns create challenges for IT teams being asked to support these initiatives. To offer partners the simplest and most scalable solutions to help customers get their infrastructure AI-ready, Cisco has collaborated with leading ecosystem partners — including NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, NetApp, Nutanix, Pure Storage and Red Hat — on Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) for AI use cases. These solutions build on the success of proven capabilities and existing IT processes, helping to accelerate customers’ journey to AI without adding unnecessary risk or new silos of operations.

New Observability Ecosystem for Partners 
Cisco development partners are seeing significant business value in the Cisco Observability Platform and are actively building modules around five critical themes: Business Insights, SAP, Networking, MLOps and Sustainability. This new vendor-agnostic observability ecosystem helps customers fulfill their specific observability needs, facilitating an environment where they can get value from observable telemetry.

New Cisco Security Suites
Cybersecurity threats are not only becoming more prevalent, but they are also becoming increasingly complex. Partners and customers alike need simpler, outcome-driven solutions that help them strengthen their security posture against accelerating threats. To address this, Cisco is introducing new Security Suites to provide a more integrated, predictable, and economical way to buy and consume Cisco’s robust portfolio of security products. Centered around three critical use cases — User, Cloud, and Breach Protection — the suites will improve security efficacy, enhance the user experience and boost return on investment. They are designed to work across multiple clouds, private infrastructure and built to be interoperable with other tools and systems.

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Partner Innovation Challenge
The Partner Innovation Challenge has awarded partners from 96 countries collectively over $3.3 million, since its debut in 2018. With a 68-percent surge in new partner submissions compared to last year, the program’s tremendous growth has generated innovative solutions that solve real customer challenges — all on Cisco platforms.

The sixth annual Challenge saw the introduction of a Partnering for Purpose award category, offering partners an additional avenue to garner recognition and funding for innovations that support social causes and environmental issues. From digital inclusion, employee experience and economic empowerment, to climate change and environmental stewardship, to crisis response and critical human need, partners were challenged to deliver purpose-focused submissions that can support communities, social causes, and the environment.

Winners of the 2023 Partner Innovation Challenge 

• Grand P**** 1st place ($200,000): Ormit Solutions / SplashAccess’ IPSK (Individual Pre-Shared Key), a Wi-Fi solution for universities and multiple dwelling units that delivers a home network experience, enabling network security and user access control, while simplifying the administrative burden.
• 2nd place ($100,000 USD): Long View Systems’ Sustainable and Intelligent Building Analytics, a commercial building management system that reduces high-energy costs, using occupant-centric control from Cisco Spaces Wi-Fi activity data and Webex cameras.
• 3rd place ($50,000 USD): CAE Labs’ Innovation Network Intelligence, a platform that delivers actionable insights, providing customers with complete visibility of their Cisco investments on a simple-to-use dashboard.

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