Enterprises recognize that AI is essential to growth but remain early in their adoption as they navigate the unique technical complexity and security demands of operating AI-ready data centers. The expanded partnership aims to give organizations flexibility and choice as they look to meet the demand of AI workloads for high-performance, low-latency, highly power-efficient connectivity within – and between – data centers, clouds, and users.

“A robust and scalable AI ecosystem is key to driving the transformative power of AI,” said Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon. “This expanded partnership between Cisco and NVIDIA, just like our Verizon AI Connect strategy and solutions, builds towards accelerating and enabling resource-intensive AI workloads at the Edge of the network.”

The NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform based on Cisco and NVIDIA silicon will form the foundation for many enterprise AI workloads. By enabling interoperability between both companies’ networking architectures, the two companies are prioritizing customers’ needs for simplified, full-stack solutions. The goal of the expanded partnership is to allow customers to optimize their AI infrastructure investments with a common architecture, using their existing management tools and processes, spanning front and back-end networks.

“Enterprises are under immense pressure to deploy AI quickly and effectively, and many leaders struggle to justify the investment while balancing the risks,” said Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO, Cisco. “Together, Cisco and NVIDIA are partnering to remove barriers for customers and ensure they can optimize their infrastructure investments to unlock the power of AI.”

“Advancing at lightspeed, AI will revolutionize every industry,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “NVIDIA Spectrum-X is Ethernet enhanced and supercharged for AI. Together with Cisco’s enterprise platforms and global reach, we can help companies worldwide build state-of-the-art NVIDIA infrastructure as they race to transform with AI.”

By making it easier to integrate and standardize on both Cisco and NVIDIA technology, customers will benefit from current and future technology advancements in the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform such as adaptive routing, telemetry, congestion control and low latency, as well as Cisco's broader networking, security, and digital resilience portfolio, including the Splunk data platform. As businesses develop AI capabilities and train models on their own data, having a comprehensive security strategy becomes crucial.

“World Wide Technology’s long-standing partnerships with Cisco and NVIDIA has already resulted in cutting-edge AI solutions that drive innovation and business transformation,” said Jim Kavanaugh, Co-Founder and CEO, World Wide Technology. “By leveraging the strengths of Cisco’s deep expertise in the data center and NVIDIA’s advanced AI technologies, we are poised to deliver unparalleled value to our customers and help them navigate the complexities of AI adoption with confidence.”

Cisco and NVIDIA: Accelerating AI workload adoption in the enterprise

Together, the two companies are committed to bringing new levels of innovation to accelerate the adoption of AI within enterprises.

Focusing on simplifying deployment and operations, while improving workload performance and visibility, the objective of this deeper partnership is to deliver the highest performance Ethernet solutions available for AI workloads and extend NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X architecture to include Cisco Silicon One, making Cisco the only partner silicon supported in Spectrum-X Ethernet solutions. In addition, the expanded partnership will help move enterprise data center Ethernet AI projects from prototype to full deployment, which would otherwise be limited to public cloud or SaaS services.

Cisco and NVIDIA are also planning to develop joint solutions for customers.

·        Cisco will develop data center switches with the NVIDIA Spectrum Ethernet platform. The open ecosystem approach will provide customers with more choices and flexibility. Organizations can standardize on the NVIDIA Spectrum-X networking platform with both Cisco and NVIDIA switch silicon-based architectures, bringing the industry-leading technologies from both companies under a single management fabric.

·        Cisco will collaborate with NVIDIA to create and validate NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) and Enterprise Reference Architectures based on NVIDIA Spectrum-X with Cisco Silicon One, Hyperfabric, Nexus, UCS Compute, Optics, and other Cisco technologies.

·        Cisco and NVIDIA are committed to collaboration and joint development, aiming to deliver the highest-performing Ethernet solutions for customers. The companies plan for continued collaboration to address significant challenges like congestion management and load balancing so that customers can scale and secure AI deployments.

On his blog, Cisco EVP and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel’s noted that this anticipated Cisco-NVIDIA expanded relationship couldn’t come at a better time. He points out that while there are new, game changing innovations in AI coming to market every week, and while that is truly exciting, for enterprises it’s also stressful.

He further cited a recent Cisco survey, which found that while 97% of CEOs are advocating for AI projects, only 1.7% feel fully prepared. In that same survey, leaders pointed to three big concerns holding them back: a daunting need to modernize infrastructure, AI security and safety issues, and doubts about whether their people have the skills needed to implement and get the most out of AI.

''In the future, there are going to be two types of companies in the world: those who innovate and win with AI, and those who are left fighting for relevance. We believe that advanced, secure networking is the key to fueling AI innovation and adoption. That’s our core at Cisco. It’s deep in our DNA, and we are committed to helping all of our customers get off the sidelines and into the game,'' concluded Patel.