Information to get out of any Nexus fabric you have today. Secure Workload can push and enforce rules on ACI today as well as looking at refreshing your fabrics. The Nexus Smart Switches is that we talked about switches and the Secure Workload technology we've already talked about in terms of micro-segmentation.
Isovalent for giving the security in the Kubernetes environment. I'm willing to bet each of you has a Cisco device here that Live Connect will be enabled on in the coming months, and that's a great first way to get experience with the shielding technology I was talking about as well.
So we are legally obligated to plug this session for our bosses. So next, tomorrow there is a keynote deep dive on security with Tom Gillis, leader of infrastructure and security, as well as Peter Bailey, our boss, and John Morgan from the Splunk security side, and two customers, HP Fuller and Workday. And there will be ice cream and Apple Watch giveaways. Definitely encourage you to give that a shot.
Can't pass up free ice cream. I'm here for the ice cream for sure. Right. And then fantastic. Again, booths are all surrounding our agentic SOC out here. Learn what we're doing in this space. Hands-on demos. We're doing more breakout sessions. If you want to chat more directly with us, definitely here and available for that as well. And I think our final piece here is fill out your surveys. Hopefully this was an entertaining, valuable, in-touch session. So we really appreciate the time for everyone here today and look forward to partnering more going forward. Thanks.
And welcome back for the last time today to the Cisco TV broadcast studio. We have just wrapped the final center stage session for this Tuesday on securing every layer of the AI data center. Rick brought in great customers from Northwestern Medicine, from Rush University Medical Center, and talking about all the different ways that Cisco is fusing enforcement into every layer. The hardware root of trust, the Kubernetes protection. Such a great overview story how we put security into literally every single layer of your AI-ready data center. I'm Steve Multer. I'm so glad to have you with us.
As we head toward the end of today's broadcast, Robb is out in the middle of not only the NOC, but the showcase, and the heartbeat of the entire territory, which is the NOC and the SOC. Robb, I wanted you to give us an overview. We'll come back out to you in a moment for a great interview in the NOC area, but this is the first time we've seen the NOC and SOC not only together as one entity, but as the heartbeat of the showcase where it belongs, right?
I love this. Not only did they put... stay with me. You're good. I was thinking about the same thing, right? Not only is it just gorgeous. It's beautiful. But it feels like I don't know if we were hiding it before necessarily, that's probably not the case, but it's much more front and center. Having the NOC and the SOC together, security has always been a part of the network operations center, but it's really kind of indicative of how much more of an important role that it now plays. These guys are sending data to each other back and forth. We have covered this in several different ways. But I love the educational focus here. It's not just about protecting probably one of the most difficult network situations to try and protect, right? You have the smartest network engineers in the world converging on one place. A lot of security experts who are always just seeing what they can push on, you know. And they don't mean anything by it potentially. But this is all stuff they have to deal with. They don't have a baseline to work on. They don't have any control over those endpoints. That's how they have to figure out success. But not only are they running the conference, they're teaching others how to do it and kind of building these modular systems to do it at the Olympics now, back again at RSA and Black Hat and other conferences. I think this is the kind of stuff, the kind of leadership we see extending from Cisco. Your thoughts.
Yeah. You know what, Robb, what I thought was so important on this, Chuck mentioned it this morning in the keynote. I thought it was really impactful. He said when the network works, nobody thinks about it. I think by putting the NOC in the center it shows what we are creating, what we build here at Cisco is what allows all of our customers, our partners, everybody around the world to be able to do because of the network infrastructure. If the network infrastructure is not there, none of the applications matter at all. Robb, hang out for a couple minutes. I know you have an interview coming up with Andy. Right now we'll go back out to center stage where Michelle caught up with Rick and Dan for a little behind-the-scenes talk on their fantastic center stage session. Hey, Michelle.
Steve, thank you so much for sending it to center stage. We had an engaging session with Rick and with Dan. I'm going to hand it over to them. They are product leaders here at Cisco. We have fun things we'll talk about full stack security. Rick, I'll start with you. With AI significantly transforming the network security landscape via models, what are the most effective strategies for stopping high-volume, high-velocity attacks?
I could spend a lot of time, there are a lot of things to approach that one. I think you have to be invested with a partner that's continuing to innovate in their detection engines to keep pace with the attacks as well as some of the unique things Dan will touch on and how to harden the infrastructure. But I think it starts, he can harden the infrastructure. You have to be able to pick up on the threats, the behavioral-based threats, the network detections themselves not just on the endpoint. I think the network becomes increasingly important as well.
Absolutely. Dan, over to you. How can we improve our network security posture through proactive defense, device hardening, and a risk-based approach to patch management?
Sure. So I think one of the really key phrases you used before is high volume, right? AI is driving east-west data volumes at a level we've never seen before. And so that's really where innovations like the Nexus Smart Switch come in because we are able to actually bring stateful segmentation at really high rates into every part of your data center fabric. That allows us to address volumes at data scale. You mentioned protecting the devices themselves. That's where Live Protect comes in. It's a really big theme here at Cisco Live. It helps shield vulnerabilities on the Cisco devices themselves, right, so you're able to eliminate the critical attack surface without requiring you to reboot or restart your network device. That is a really game-changing capability for Cisco customers.
Thank you both. Love to hear it. I have one more question for you. How will Cisco help us overcome the operational complexity of fragmented policy management across hybrid and multi-platform environments?
That is one of the key tricks, the key innovations from Cisco's perspective is you think of micro-segmentation, that can seem complex and difficult. As you think of all of your firewalls, firewall rulings, if you think of mixed environments and hybrid networks, multicloud, that could become six, seven, eight, nine different products in and of themselves. What's built is we can abstract from that and deliver an intent-based policy experience that works across this mesh and then further build out experiences like leveraging the insights, the intelligence, the pervasive visibility to drive a more proactive policy discovery, reduce risk. It really makes that very complex thing much simpler. And that's what we're building in Cloud Control where all of these things meet.
Rick talked about one really important aspect of this which is the single pane of glass for policy in Cisco Cloud Control. The other important part you mentioned was the multicloud aspect, right? If you have to solve this problem a different way for each silo, that doesn't make sense. And so part of what Isovalent shows is Cisco owns the data center network and can provide capabilities there, but also the same policy layer that spans into public clouds. You have that one security fabric, visibility, policy that spans all of it.
Thank you both for breaking this down. This was so helpful. You guys ran off the stage to talk to folks at home. Thank you both so much. Steve, Robb, back to you both.
Thank you, Michelle. Thanks to Rick and Dan as well. We'll go right back out to Robb back in the NOC. This time he has Andy Phillips with him. Robb, back to you, buddy.
Thank you so much. I think Michelle was nearby. She was just over here, right? Yeah. It's funny how we're so far apart, but yet so close together. Andy, Michelle got to interview you earlier and I was like, I hope you'll still talk to me. Okay. I didn't get a chance to hear all the details there. One thing I love talking to you about is the stories that emerge from the reality of trying to pull this off every time. When we first talked earlier in the week, one of the things you brought up was the addressing has changed and that had kind of a using much more IPv6 and a lot more connectivity up through that. I was not sure about why that matters and because it had both pro and con effects for you. Do you mind explaining how you were advancing that?
Basically our counterparts in Cisco Live Europe have also done the technology that uses DHCP, DNS and NAT64 conversion and it allows clients to turn off their IPv4. Some don't have v6 addresses, and one of those is GitHub so you have to do a NAT64 conversion. I won't go through how that works because it would take an hour. We are running at this time and why do you do that? You do it to make sure in your environment is ready to move to 100% IPv6. Why do you do that? You have more address space, a bit more security prevalent in IPv6, a little easier to administer in certain aspects like all the configuration of also configuring clients. It's an interesting thing we're doing and I think there is a lot of IPv6 advocates at Cisco that love to see this. What's v4 versus v6? We've gone up to 60% v6 this time, which it used to be 60% v4. It's a fascinating thing to watch and give a test at a show like this.
Is there, one of the things I always think, you're learning a lot on the fly and at a certain point you bake things in and you have to live with it. Do you see things happening this week that you're like, okay, on the next iteration of this this is what I'm pushing for or do you know that going in? How much is feel? How much is advanced planning? How much is pressure to adopt things from the Cisco side? Because this is a real network with real issues you have to figure out.
It is. It's a mixture of all of those things. We've learned about how to troubleshoot things you haven't troubleshooted before. We'll take all the learnings from this, which is actually grabbing the data from those clients, and understanding, you know, what data we need to know to actually troubleshoot them. In the past we could look at an IPv4 address much easier to read, a little quicker. Now you have to pull data into Splunk and we filter it to see how many IPv6 clients are there. It's really interesting when we talk about migration. When you know that a good proportion of your clients can do IPv6, you're in a position where you can migrate.
I always run out of time and we don't get to cover everything. This is fascinating. These guys have been answering questions and very direct. I talked to a number of different customers who were literally here taking ideas back with them. If you're not doing that, you're wasting a resource. He's got a fantastic team behind him. They have a NOC event at the end of the week. You don't want to miss if you want to ask questions of everybody about what happened here. One of my favorite things in the entire week. With that, Steve, back to you.
Thank you, pal. Thanks to Andy. He does a great job for us. Hopefully we can hear more from him. We are getting ready to wrap an amazing Tuesday broadcast day coming to you from Mandalay Bay here in Las Vegas. But we are going to meet you right back here on the live stream first thing tomorrow morning as we ramp up into our day two, our Wednesday morning keynote. We'll talk about all the way Cisco is delivering the critical infrastructure for the AI era. Before we sign off, I want to get one more moment with three of my four amazing co-hosts for a last word of the day. Lauren is out in the keynote space prepping with Jeetu for tomorrow's keynote. So exciting. She'll be up there running a demo, which is terrific. I have 'Z' first. Let's start with you. Give us your parting thought for the day. We'll go down the line?
The highlight for me was the secure cloud. I was thinking about all the applications that will be able to be integrated and going to be able to see in one view and then another one. Can I take one more? You know, I'm a Starbucks girl. So I tell you, when Brian was talking about, he just, you know, skimmed down. CEO of Starbucks. Exactly, yes. And so he looked at Chuck and he told him, you look like a Venti. Yes. That's my drink. That's Americano, that's my drink.
Okay. All right. I can't top that. That was pretty great. Talking about how Cisco really is the critical infrastructure for the AI era, it comes down to being secure and governed. That data is trusted and that's why we're uniquely positioned to help you in this AI era. Mic drop. This is so much fun. Lauren, I hope you kill it tomorrow. Everyone pay attention to the keynotes tomorrow. Lauren will be killing it with the security demonstrations. Such great stories and information happening here. Steve, I'm glad this is not really goodbye, but goodbye for now. It is goodbye for now. I need one inspiring thought from Robb. Everyone wants to hear from Robb. What is it? Put you on the spot?
The network we built for Zoom is not the same as the network we built for agentic AI.
I couldn't love it anymore. 450% more demand than if a human did the same task that would require a new network. It's always a pleasure to be with you. I look forward to tomorrow. Let's do a final sign-off to all of you in here on the streaming broadcast. My name is Steve Multer. But I'm part of a very large crew. On behalf of my beautiful co-host and this entire TV broadcast production team of producers, and technicians and engineers and designers, we love being a part of this event and a big part of it is all of you. The fact that you tune into this broadcast, you are the reason that we do this is to bring the entire event to you. That means you're our favorite part of the event altogether and we're grateful to broadcast to each of you. Have a great night. We will meet you right back here for a fantastic Cisco Live all day Wednesday. Let's run a few highlights from today. Have a great night, everybody. Bye-bye, all.
And just the keynote space. Chuck Robbins, Jeetu Patel today, how to lead in the agentic era. Top minds in the industry to build, to secure, to run an enterprise where people and AI agents work side by side, work in partnership and cooperation with one another. Cisco is the critical infrastructure for the AI era. What does that mean for you? AI-ready data centers that help you to modernize your AI infrastructure, power your workloads everywhere. It means future-proofed workplaces that are helping you to reimagine the way that business happens everywhere that it happens and then digital resilience that's keeping your organization up and running in the face of escalating disruptions. So excited for that day-one broadcast and again we are coming to you live throughout the week. We're going to take you right up to the keynote, all the way through the keynote and then all the way across the entire Cisco Live conference. All week long we want to hear from you on social media using hashtag CiscoLive, whatever social platform you prefer, reach out to us, talk about where you're watching, where you're tuning in from, what you're excited about, go ahead and comment on social media what you hear from the keynote and all the fantastic sessions and center stage presentations. We want to hear from all of you throughout the day. As promised I want to introduce you to the other four hosts on the broadcast, to my left the amazing Zi Williams. Hi friend.
Hi Steve, I am super excited to be back in Las Vegas for Cisco Live 2026. I tell you I am ready for all that is going to be going on throughout the studio, throughout the world of solutions. I'm just ready, so, so ready.
You always come with the energy, always pumped up and excited for what's going to happen next for all the great interviews and you have some phenomenal interviews lined up. I won't break the secret right now, we'll talk about it later. Hopefully we will talk throughout the week.
All right so we're going to go out to the keynote like I said, 25,000 people flooding in the door. There are the very happy Robb Boyd and incredible Lauren White who by the way is going to be on stage in the keynote tomorrow. I want to give that away right now, this is so exciting. Out to the two of you, Robb out to you and then pass it on to Lauren.
Steve you remind me when I'm flying in the airline and this airline attendant comes on like, let me be the first to welcome you here. Yes Lauren is going to be on stage, we're so proud of her, she keeps working her way up. My name is Robb Boyd, this is Lauren White. So happy to be together with you guys, with everyone here, here with the executives arriving. Lauren back in the green room, normally I'm forced to only be backstage and I can't thank you enough, having an in has been fantastic. Lauren as a security engineer, how do you look at this, in terms of this moment in time and what you expect to learn and accomplish ahead of this conference?
I am so excited especially because as we see, we are in the age of AI and we are also in the age of AI attacks and I'm super excited to see how we are celebrating our customers, how we protect them, how are we going to learn more to make sure we're giving them the tools they need to succeed. Here with so much to say, so much to do, so much to see, I cannot wait for you all to hear.
I am so excited, all coming together. We arrived here with a lot of problems and stuff we have to work on but also arrived with a lot of answers and that's what we're bringing together today. We're going to get to some people here, get the flavor of the conference. If you don't mind, check back in with us. Back to you.
Thanks so much Lauren and Robb, you're the eyes and ears in the keynote space in the arena just down the concourse. It's going to get loud out there. So the next time we head out to the two of them they won't be able to hear a thing. But Lauren just hit it right on the head there, right, the age of agentic, as the AI era rolls up on us so do the security challenges that roll up with the AI era. So excited to hear what people will say, but Robb also named it when he said this is where we come together as a community to fix those problems. Get answers. I see my fabulous friend and our fifth host, I'm going to call her our first host, we went through the other four, saving the best for last. Michelle is out in the world of solutions. Hi my friend.
Hey, Steve, it is so great to be here with my third Cisco Live and my second with hosting with you all. Steve, Robb, Lauren, Zi, you guys are a pleasure to work with. Everybody, folks get excited for today. Like Steve said, my name is Michelle, I'm a Splunk product marketing. How the Cisco portfolio comes together, get excited more about this on the keynote and walk through some really cool stuff. Back to you.
You're our Splunk insider, so when it comes to that I'm coming to you every time we possibly can. One of the things people really don't quite understand is what it takes to put a conference like this together. We'll talk more about it in a minute but right now I want everybody to watch what it takes to build this particular event out. Check this.
Seriously, all of that effort to build out this amazing space to play in, right. Right, yeah, and I heard you had a conversation with Laura and Heather and we're going to take a look at what they had to say. All right, so you are joining me in one of my favorite things that we get to do here at the conference. Normally we have to wait until the end of the conference. If you can see what's going on behind me, we are still in construction. We do not open until tomorrow morning but I have the people who are responsible for putting all of this behind me here with me. Heather Henderson, Laura, oh, my friends, thank you, thank you for being here and thank you for making time at the beginning before everything goes into chaos. How excited are you? Are you feeling amazed by all of this?
I mean, amazed, energized and excited. It's hard to comprehend sometimes until you get on site the depth and breadth and scope of what we are doing this week and the build that it takes, how long it takes to build but it's fun to see this entire year of work for the entire team coming together and coming to fruition and ready for action.
I so agree. So, Laura, the number of people, exactly what Heather just said, nobody realizes they walk in the door and it's just all done. It's just that easy. And for the two of you and your team as well.
Exactly, we work so hard all year round with our customers, our partners, Cisco, everybody is dedicated to Cisco Live making the best experience possible for the attendees on-site and online. That's what we think about all year round.
It does start early and we talk about this every year. It kicks off while going on. Last year in San Diego, an amazing event, incredible phenomenal attendance. Now back in Las Vegas and Mandalay Bay, what has changed? What's adapted?
Well, it's different. Every year is different. Every venue is different. I think this year we are all under one roof here at Mandalay Bay. We've reorganized how we lay out the World of Solutions. We've added more activations and more fun, kind of things beyond the classroom. We've done a lot more of that. Because there's so much education it can be overwhelming but we tried to really think about the whole person and what they need. So there's lots of cafes, plenty of coffee, especially for me, but fun activations, a Lego station and a puzzle area, so much happening.
You led me exactly where I wanted to go and we were talking about this earlier. Laura, keeping the human side of the conversation, that's why we're here. Education can happen in a lot of different places and cherry pickers, you can hear that in the background. Education can happen in so many different places but when it comes down to the individual, the human being and the way we're able to interact in the room, why is this so special?
I think what makes Cisco Live so special is the fact that they're coming together to see each other. They're coming to see the speakers who write the products, who build everything for them. They're thinking about how to move their careers forward whether through a certification class or they're going to talk to an SME but also making sure they're thinking about their personal journey. What can they do and learn from the Purpose Pavilion and our mentorship and networking activities. So we want to really think about who's coming and all the amount of time they're spending here. We recognize it's a commitment and we want to celebrate them.
And there's so much that happens in those moments in between. That's the magic of being together in person is the networking, the connection, the human connection in this world of AI and technology.
Yeah. The connections that people make here, a lot of times that's why they come back because these are those moments for them to get and solve problems at work but also, you know, whiteboard things but also work with people walking in their same shoes so that they can learn and grow together as we're all embracing the new AI era.
You couldn't have put this better. This is so important right now. As we move deeper and deeper into AI, we overcome the confusion, we surmount where do our investments go, what sort of buildouts do we do, what can we actually invest in that's going to create the benefit. At the core of that is the human being. Jeetu talks about this again and again and again, right? This really comes to fruition and that's what the two of you are building.
Exactly, that's what we think about. How can we help customers be prepared? How can we anticipate changes? It's moving so quickly. So nobody knows what the future holds but we want to make sure they're prepared for any change that's coming at them, whether it's security, whether it's networking, the new infrastructure, you're going to learn all about that here at Cisco Live.
Phenomenal. I'm going to date all three of us and I apologize. We have been together for so long and doing this so long. This is really fun. I go all the way back with Heather to I believe your very first event running this. We were together on that and Laura you came in just a couple years later, but literally we are talking 20 years of evolution of this spectacular event. This has got to be so exciting. This isn't just a one-off, this is building and building and building and creating something new and different, maintaining excitement, growing the Cisco community. What does that mean to you on a personal level?
Well I'm overwhelmed and humbled. I've been on this project 20 years but it's really about the people we get to work with across Cisco and our customers and partners and how much joy they find in coming here. But I think what I think is really interesting is Cisco Live was born after Networkers was built and then it became Cisco Live and we've had this 20-year legacy. Now it's really this next opportunity for us because we're now a global team. We're now not only Cisco Live Americas but we have EMEA and APJC to bring Cisco Live across the globe. So I'm super excited about the next chapter and the role I'm in and doing it with my partner Laura. We are thrilled for the next chapter of Cisco Live and to see what we can bring to life. It's time.
And you're the cutest peas in the pod as well. Laura, your perspective.
The human element. I can't wait to come live. We are here all remote and then we see the speakers and the customers and this whole circle that we're here to learn and to talk to one another and think about the future. Everyone's really excited about the future, where are we going. It's scary but we're going to give you the foundation and make sure we're doing it together. We're on a journey together and that's the best part.
So good storytelling and it does make me go back to that fabulous arena we were in together in Orlando when we were inviting first-timers, people who had never been to the event. That's what we would do, put up slides, what is available to you here at the event, what should you look forward to. If this is the first time attending Networkers going into Live at that particular point, what can you expect to be different, what should you take advantage of. The world has changed so much now but also the number of things to take advantage of, it's like a different planet.
It's night and day from when I started on the project in 2006 and what we have today. We envisioned back then and now we have it and we're just excited to set the vision for what the next 20 years are going to be.
So set the vision for us. Tomorrow morning the show kicks off, the event opens up, people flood in through the doors, excitement is incredibly high, old home week, everybody hugging on each other and grateful to be back in the room together. What can we look forward to, set us up for day one.
We start off strong talking about how we're making a difference in the world so that sets the tone thinking about what we're doing with Cisco and our customers and drivers to set things forward. And for me I think about the education, the hands-on training, Capture the Flags, Lock-in Labs, all the sessions. People are here hungry to learn and then they come down and see the showcase. What are the products that are going to make a difference for them in the future. So it's a lot to see. You have to pace yourself, it's only Monday tomorrow.
Good shoes, good shoes. My tennis shoes are finally acceptable attire. I'm with Laura, when the World of Solutions opens tomorrow that to me is the moment because there is so much activity on this show floor, so many experiences people can have. This is where the magic happens. If you aren't in a session or in keynote, you need to be in the World of Solutions because this is where the questions happen and networking is happening, you meet with our partners, find solutions, find new products, you discover things. It is a world of opportunity and this is where they need to be. And also the ecosystem of everything taking place around us, IT leadership taking place going in the door, the NOC and SOC, this door of the heartbeat center of the spectacular showcase and never really had that kind of experience. The NOC has always been there but the NOC is always sort of set to the side and you tour through it. Now walk in there, it is right in front of you, watch it in action. It is so hands-on, it is so personal and I think it becomes very individual for the guest who joins us here at the show.
Exactly, you're going to talk to the engineers who literally...
They've been here for two weeks running this network. It is like 130 terabytes of data we're going to pass through the infrastructure. Rock solid. So if you have questions, find the person who literally built the network for you, and that's a unique experience for you here.
Always about adding something new. I need the two of you to make me a promise: come back and do this more throughout the week and continue setting things up. Let's find these opportunities because I think everybody tuning into the broadcast wants to hear them. This and the two of you are at the center of making all this stuff happen. So on behalf of everybody, as I do every year, thank you for giving us a home to play in this week. Thank you on behalf of everybody who's tuning into the broadcast that you've given them a platform to pay attention to. Congratulations, and we'll do more of this, shall we?
Laura, Heather, thank you both.
So there you go. Heather Henderson, Laura Simmons, two of the driving forces, maybe two of the biggest behind the scenes, incredible program and amazing event we're excited to share. We are less than 15 minutes from our day one keynote. I want to head back straight out to the keynote space because Lauren White has somehow managed to track down the incredible Kerri, Senior VP, Chief Marketing Officer. Take it away.
I am here with Kerri, Chief Marketing Officer here at Cisco. Kerri, every year I'm here, it feels like this event is taken to the next level. What are you most excited for this year?
Oh my gosh, so many things. Dropped, obviously, keynotes and innovations that will be announced this week, which are incredible. I want to take a moment and talk about what my team has done because we put on this show and the whole concept of customer experience, right? And from the moment you step foot in, there was in the airport, at the terminal, you're going to see brand new around AI. We've been feeding the market with this positioning of we are the critical infrastructure for the AI era, but you're going to see what that means today. We're going to have our new ad campaign up on stage, which we're super excited about. By the way, almost exclusively created through AI, which is a first for us, which it's stunningly beautiful. I'm really excited about it, but it really starts to play through what it means to be the critical infrastructure. What are we doing out in the world? And it starts to build emotional connections. You know, we are a tech company, sometimes hard to have emotional connections, but this ad campaign is starting to build emotional connections with consumers around the world as to what we actually enable for their lives.
I feel the emotion in the room, and I also had—I felt that when I got to the airport. I was like, oh my gosh, Cisco is everywhere. And if you didn't know, now you know. And after ten years being here, I didn't think we could keep taking it to the next level, but we do. I'm so excited to be part of such an amazing team.
Listen, this momentum right now in the world for us, and I think it is a beatable time, and Cisco's earned this. 41 years of delivering and having integrity and trust with our customers, and it's crescendoing right now. A beautiful moment.
I couldn't agree more. I'm so proud and honored to be here in this moment.
And we're going to pass it over to Robb. Bye-bye, guys.
We will throw it to Robb in a moment. Emma, he going to take it first because I'm greedy and I like to have a moment to talk with everybody. So great we get Kerri. This is so important. People go, 'Why should I need to go? I can get the entire conference by tuning into the broadcast.' You can get a great deal with it. Kerri walking around the room, Chuck walking around, Jeetu walking around the space all the time. Where can you get into the room and be together with these driving forces and incredible thought leaders?
All those that you just named are people. Those are people, and you can't do any of this without people. Coming from my space, I'm a program manager with the Sustainability Impact, Social Impact and Sustainable Office under 3-P. That's our people. We do any of this without 3-P. And Kerri said something so integral that resonates with me. She talked about integrity and trust. Those are characteristics that are intrinsic to humans. Humans.
You have to have AI with humans partnering together, and that's what we're going to be talking about all this week.
I love that. We're going to go back out to the keynote space because Robb is hanging out. Do me a favor, briefly set up what is our Cisco Champions program.
What I'm going to do is actually have this gentleman here, Simon, who I met before. He reminded me, you've been part of the Cisco Champions program. Give me your full name and what you do, and I am curious to get your perspective on the Cisco Champions program.
My name is Simon Robert. I'm a champion three years. Very excited to be here today because we're having such a good community with the champions. We learned a lot and we help each other out. And I'm very excited today for the first keynote because I think at Cisco things go fast right now and there's a lot of new technology that's being released, especially for AI. But we're seeing a unifying of the technology, so that's pretty impressive. No competitors are doing that. Only Cisco is doing that, and honestly, clients love it.
Yeah. I'm curious on the Champions program specifically. I'm a Cisco Champion as well now that I'm external to Cisco, but you guys are specialists, a lot of you running your own companies. But the idea is you have a feedback loop within Cisco to have a set a deeper level than anybody on the street, and this allows you to integrate with your customers in a better manner with Cisco's latest. Am I correct?
Yes. Every remote we have new technologies that will be released, so we know before everybody else the new products that will be available for the customer. So of course, to be part of the Cisco Champions to serve our clients better.
And this is one reason I encourage anyone that is saying, 'Wait a minute, I think I can be a Cisco Champion,' check into it because you probably can. And there's added value even lurking on all the conversations you guys have. I learn a lot because you guys bring a ground-level truth to things that I find inspiring and interesting. And you guys are really good about supporting each other and sharing each other's ability to post more often, be more engaged in the community. So I really love that. What's the one thing you're really looking for, maybe for your team or your customers, to come out of this week?
I'll say to learn more about Cisco Club Cultural. I think that's the key component that we will be looking at today at this keynote. So to unify everything and make sure that the network is secure. So with AI, it's fun but adventurous. We need customers like Cisco dropping things at our data center and customer resource.
I think Cisco is in a unique position and competitive with the ability to pull this data from the cloud and draw a consistent picture that can allow us to make better decisions and turn up the dial. We'll talk more about that later. Thank you so much for reaching out to me and always appreciate talking to you and your peers. With that, Steve, back to you in the studio.
Thank you so much to Simon as well, bringing up the detail in that story. Cisco Champions, so important because not only incredible experts on our technologies and capabilities, they are the direct link to the customer, the way we can listen to customer, respond, react, and give them what we need. I want to go out to World Solutions one more time with Michelle, right in the heart of everything. You're right between Digital Resilience, Future-Proof Spaces. We haven't opened up yet, which is why you're beautifully framed by yourself. As soon as the keynote is done, you're going to be in a crowd.
Steve, thanks so much. I am here in the World of Solutions. One thing Kerri just said from the very beginning of landing in the Vegas airport through the keynote through the World of Solutions, you're going to get innovation and brand and excitement every step of the way. I think I mentioned this is my third Cisco Live. I've been hearing Steve, Robb, Lauren every year, they up it. They really do. I'm going to walk you through a little bit of what you can get excited about. So let's get a sense for the scale of this. We have everything from demos, lounges, activations, and let's start right here, Future-Proofed Workplaces. We have some fun things for you. Take a look at this Cisco Cafe. You can call, text in a cappuccino, latte at any time of the day, and that Webex AI agent is there for you. So seeing real-world examples along with demos bringing it to you. We're also going to talk about when you hear really exciting announcements, innovations at the keynote, those are incredibly exciting, but where you'll see it come to life is on this World of Solutions show floor. So we've got demos, we have exciting activations. Like I said, we've got people to connect with, to show you how you can bring this to your organization at scale. So follow me into Digital Resilience. This is one of the three key areas of how we like to talk about the Cisco portfolio. And one thing that I really love, of course, being a product marketing manager at Splunk, is unifying your machine data. So we talk about it in three phases: you unify and you fuel and contextualize it and activate it for AI. Let's end right here. We end with the Cisco Platform Advantage. How does that portfolio come together? In the keynote, keep in mind Cisco Cloud Control. I think you're going to find some incredibly exciting announcements. This is some great stuff. So when you're done with the keynote, come on down here to the show floor, get your hands on some demos, talk with some of our experts, learn how you can thrive in the enterprise AI era. Steve, back to you.
Thanks so much for walking us through that. We are less than four minutes away from the keynote. I want to hop back into the keynote space one more time. I think Robb—a collection of champions. I won't waste time, go for it, Robb.
Absolutely. We have a bunch of people here, some more colorful than others, as you can see. One by one, introduce yourself.
So you guys are Cisco Champions. Some guys sporting more, that's a commitment. We'll start with you. Why the case, by the way?
It's Cisco Challenge participating, taking pictures, and just participating in the Cisco Live challenge. I personally work.
Look at you now here on camera as well. Ibrahim, tell us what you do.
Working in Denmark, helping customers. We help people with getting water to their houses.
I'm part of the Cisco Champions, so I'm sharing a lot of what I learned through the years to the public so that they can get something back.
I love that. So you're an educator as well on the whole thing.
Sorry, nobody can hear me. That's fine. Thank you, by the way. Jeremy, we met several times and always have a good time together. What have you been up to lately and what are you looking forward to this week?
Looking for a lot of the roadmap sessions and just being part of the Cisco Insiders group. It's an awesome community where we share our knowledge and we have a great time.
What's the key to getting your boss to approve you to be able to come out here consistently each time? Are you bringing back and just raising the value of the entire team? What's your secret?
We are pretty much a full Cisco shop, so Cisco Live is pretty much my one conference a year that I get to go to. And bringing all the knowledge back to the company to get everything out of the Cisco products is definitely a benefit.
I'm going to ask another question. If we get a countdown, I have to throw back to the studio. But what are your expectations when you come to things like this? Are you training people that couldn't afford to come out? Meeting with customers?
Being with the customers and bringing value back. So that I think is the main idea, connecting with other people to bring the connections back so I have connections to reach out to and can get knowledge from.
This is awesome. Obviously, we've got a lot of stuff happening this week. We're going to learn a lot of things. Steve, I can't wait for the keynote. And with that, I let you take over control and give it back to you.
Thank you so much, my friend. It's loaded back there, so excited to kick off. Thank you for being the faces and voices in the front. We'll see some of those Insiders back in the theater space here in the Showcase and the World of Solutions. Speaking of which, I want to take one more visit out to my buddy Michelle. Where are you now, pal?
You found me in Digital Resilience. There are some really, really cool activations, demos, hands-on lab right here for you guys to check out after the keynote. One thing I want to show you is the Security Operations Center. This is incredible stuff. When we say demos and real-world examples, the purpose of these solutions is to show value. How will they save you time, resources, energy, onboarding, off-loading, making sure you're moving from the reactive to proactive organizations at scale. This stuff is going to be fun. Come on down. Although the show floor is completely empty right now, everybody is packed waiting to hear the keynote. This will be a really fun way to get together, network with people, meet people. You'll see some people out here for sure. I'm not the only one. Steve, thank you.
Thanks so much, Michelle. We'll keep coming out to you. It is time, my friend. How are you feeling right now?
I am excited. The energy in this place, you should be here. If you are not here, you need to be here. Steve, what are you looking forward to hearing?
This is where we bring together the new announcements. We heard about Cloud Control, Mythos on the agentic front, all sorts of different pieces of the puzzle that start to fit together as we go from agentic era conceptual to actual practical application. I think that's really what 2026 is all about. I was talking with Oliver yesterday. He said this is where everything kind of comes together. It is the first time we have found ourselves at a collision point between the technology capabilities, the network platforms, the data centers we've been creating, and the demand within the organizational space. Okay, I guess we're going back out to Lauren again. I wasn't planning to go back to keynote, but I guess that's what we're going to do.
I am here and ready. Interesting in the keynote, and you're walking past, you hear the chatter. Even though it's loud, you can hear people excited, and I'm excited. I would say—I'm with you. If you're not here, you're missing out for sure. If you ever had a case of FOMO, this is the time to have it. Fear of missing out, that is. I'm throwing it back to you at the studios.
Thank you guys, looking fabulous. All right, so Chuck Robbins, Chief Executive Officer. Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Executive Officer. Amazing guests coming up, joining the critical infrastructure of the AI conversation, right? Senior VP and Chief Information Officer at AMD. Leadership in this fast development agentic era. This is not just about ambition. Ambition is not enough. Our organizations are only going to win if we can put AI to work alongside our people. That is what it means to deliver that critical infrastructure that makes the agentic era possible, right? How can we fuse security into the fabric of the networks? How do we enable more visual and operations, do it at machine speed? How do we transform our data into AI-ready intelligence? And how do we empower our teams to securely harness agentic AI and then do it at scale? These are big demands that we have for our time. We're so excited to hear from the leadership not only of Cisco but these phenomenal partners bringing us the entire story. Remember, hit those comments, tell us what you love, use hashtag CiscoLive on those socials. We are headed out. Here we go.
Please welcome Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Chuck Robbins.
Thank you. Thinking about Cisco Live, and I was thinking every year I come on stage and I say, you know, this is the most important Cisco Live we've ever had. This year, I think it's true. Not that it hasn't been true in the past, it's been true in the past. But if you think about everything that's going on right now, this is a really, really, really important time. And I want to thank all of you in this room, all of you in the overflow areas, and those online who last year watched some portion of it, like 15 million different streams last year. And so we appreciate you joining, we appreciate you spending time with us, and I hope that when you leave Las Vegas this week, you truly feel like this is a great, great use of your time. Before we get going, though, I want to just, I want to reflect. I want to be a little nostalgic. Not for the sake of being nostalgic, but sometimes when we look back, it helps us think about the future. And 40-plus years ago, Cisco built the first router. Who remembers what it was called? Okay. You guys are too young. The lovely AGS. It was a simple idea. The two founders, professors at Stanford with computer types, wanted to communicate, and they built the first router. And they thought that connectivity could truly unleash amazing possibilities. And they taught us the key lesson of the internet revolution: that the network is truly more powerful than the node. And as we think about what's going on in our businesses, and as you think about what you're trying to accomplish inside your organization, you understand that to be true. Every technology revolution we've seen has been dependent upon the network. The internet, right? I remember my first computer. Not going to tell you what it was. But you all know how old I am anyway. It was powerful and it was fun and it was amazing. But then when it got connected, it was incredible. And the experience celebrated. Think about the mobile revolution. I remember hosting young students at Cisco, and they would come in and they'd—if you really pressed them, they didn't really know what we did. They didn't know what we built. And I would always tell them to pull out their phones and I just said, here, I'm going to make it very simple for you. If we didn't do what we do, that wouldn't work. And then they go, oh, my god, I don't know what you do, but please, please keep doing it. And then cloud and now AI. The buzz we hear about GPUs is incredibly important. The models are incredibly important. Inference is incredibly important. The apps, all that. Mythos, which we'll talk about later, they're all nodes though. Super powerful independently, but massively more powerful with networks. And none of it works without you and the things you do to make it all come to life for your organization. And the good news for us is, this thing's moving really slowly so we can take our time. [Laughter] Become educated, understand it, design a multi-year security architect. Okay. It's moving faster than anything we've ever seen in our lives. And not only is the technology moving fast, we get to layer on a lot of other things going on in the world. The geopolitical landscape is complicated. We have inflation due to, primarily due to the war in the Middle East. We've got political division, polarization. The world's dynamic at a time where we have a sense of urgency. There's a lot of uncertainty and it's a bit chaotic. Aren't you glad you came? But you think about it. We're in a full-out sprint. Many of you walked in the room maybe half an hour ago. But you realize like the world we live in today, in the last half hour new models could have been launched and we'd all be scrambling. An attacker might have taken down some major system. Some political statement could have caused a seismic shift in the geopolitical landscape. This is what we're dealing with. Which is why it's really important for all of us to do the things that we're doing to help our customers, or to help your organizations, whether you're a customer, government, enterprise, partner, actually deliver the right technology with the appropriate security with the right workforce. That's never been more important. And despite all the uncertainty and despite all the fears, I fundamentally together believe we'll meet the moment because of all the people in this room and all the people watching today online. Because as we look at what has to be accomplished, many of us have been here before. There was similar uncertainty with the rise of the internet. I remember when some folks in a company I worked for back—a long time ago—said we're never going to run IBM mainframe traffic across that little junior network you're building. Or there will never be an internet connection into this organization, that's just crazy. Do you realize the risk we would have if that occurred? People were fearful. People were distrustful. They didn't understand it. And all of you, or your predecessors led the way, and look at where we are now. Everybody talked about whether we're in a bubble. And I go, I don't know. And they talk about whether dot com was a bubble. I go, okay, does it matter? The winners emerged, the people in this room embraced the technology, and we continue to benefit from everything that happened during that time. And you were the architects of that, and you're going to be the architects of how AI reshapes industries, organizations, whether you're designing factory systems, you're making classrooms more personalized and productive, you're helping science analyze data and advance disease, cures, transforming customer experience. That's what you're doing. You're building a security infrastructure that will power incredible outcomes. And we all know that when the network works, nobody thinks about it, right? When it doesn't work, you might get a phone call. Because of exactly what I've been describing. The power of the network brings all of it together, makes it happen, and together we have this incredible responsibility and opportunity to build the infrastructure in a way that makes AI useful, secure, trusted, real, and that's exciting. And collectively, I believe, we are truly going to deliver the critical infrastructure for the AI era. Between Cisco and you, we're at the center of this. Based on what we know today, we believe that the network traffic associated with AI will triple in the next three years. Remember when video was like revolutionary and we kept upgrading networks and everything? Here we are again. And, by the way, we think they're going to triple based on what we know today. We have robotics, we have manufacturing, we have physical AI. All those things are going to put traffic on the networks at an incredible pace. Over 90% of you have said, I have to be modernized in my technology infrastructure today. I've got to make my network more resilient. I've got to be ready for this transition. We're working on it. You're working on it. And Cisco wants to partner with you because we believe we have a unique capability because we have this full stack, and Jeetu will talk a lot about that, I'm sure. From silicon to the platform with security, observability, to help you implement the infrastructure that you need to for your organizations to take advantage of this wave. Today, I'm really proud. I stood on stage a few years ago and talked about how we were going to increase the pace of innovation, and the teams have done just that, maybe to a point where it's hard to absorb sometimes. You're going to hear about it today. Agentic Ops with Cisco Cloud Control, resilient infrastructure, trust for agentic workforce. You'll hear more of that from Jeetu and his team. Also, Cisco IQ from Liz. She'll talk about that. In just a few weeks, we have 1,700-plus customers who are using that technology, and 90% of them have self-onboarded because of the importance of deploying that technology to understand what it is you have in your infrastructure and what you need to be thinking about to prepare not only for the AI buildout but also to the security implications of a lot of what we've been talking about. And just like last year, we'll continue to work with you in three big areas. Number one, helping you build AI-ready data centers. You'll hear a lot about that this week. Helping future-proof your workplaces, and doing all of that with a foundation of security and digital resilience. And you're going to hear a lot from Jeetu, Liz, the team all week in the breakouts on exactly that. And while we're delivering all the innovation, we're talking about this today and this week, we have to be ready for what's ahead. And we're working on that as well. I met with many of you this year at some point along the way. I know our teams have met with many of you. We talked to governments around the world, heads of state, U.S. governments, and the questions they're asking have changed. Just think, if we had hosted Cisco Live say 90 days ago, we wouldn't talk about Mythos. Think about that. 90 days ago, we were all talking about memory. That was the thing everybody wanted to talk about. But as soon as Mythos was released, we stopped talking about memory, maybe not completely, but we shifted. And this is a CEO-level discussion. There is an understanding of a criticality of what's going on here and the questions that are being asked. I'm the chair of the Business Roundtable in the United States, which is the top 240 companies in America, and we're hosting calls with CEOs who want to learn about Mythos, who want to understand what should be doing in their organizations. How do we secure and govern AI? How do we protect our data? Trust autonomous systems? How do we move fast while balancing risk? These are all things you're walking through because they're all walking in your office probably daily. What progress have we made since yesterday? What are we thinking? How's it going to impact us? And for many of you, you're dealing with a lot of the—a lot of this in an uncertain way because you haven't gotten your hands on some of this new technology. There's three key areas, and one obviously is cyber defense. AI changes the speed of defense. The bad corollary to that is it's empowering our adversaries at a pace we've never seen in our careers. It's become very real with model white Mythos, and my team and others in the industry have said this, so this is not an original statement from me, but just, we all have to remember, these models are as bad today as they're ever going to be. Right? And so we were part last week. Our goal was to understand how we could safeguard our customers, how we could come together as a broader ecosystem to work on AI-powered defense and to stop AI-powered threats. And the most striking thing is, it's not necessarily the technology, it's the implications, the business implications, the societal implications, the governmental implications. Those are the discussions we're having. GPT 5.5 Cyber, and we open-sourced Foundry Security Spec, which is a harness or a blueprint for agentic security evaluation of systems. So that you can actually take a look at how this will play out once you start working with these models, and I would encourage all of you to take a look at that. We really need to work together, think about how we defend against these emerging threats, and how we make sure that we build that architecture in a way that allows us to spend more time talking about the benefits of AI, the positives of AI. Every technology we've ever—every technology transition we've ever been through has brought the great benefits of the technology and unintended negative. And I want us to work together to deal with some of these complexities so that we can all focus on delivering the positive benefits for our organizations. But how we build these architectures and how we defend are going to fundamentally change. You're going to hear more from that from Jeetu today. Now, we originally were supposed to have the White House National Cyber Director, Sean, was going to be here with us today, and something arose yesterday, as things do in Washington, and he's unable to be here. But a lot of what he would have shared with you, and he really wanted to talk to this group, would be about how do you ensure that your infrastructure's prepared, how do we make sure we don't have tech debt. And our team put out a document called Shields Up. And you can see the—on the screen where you can download it today and take a look at the things you need to do. Because we realize every customer hasn't had access to some of these models, but there are a lot of things you can do today that will help you feel better about how you're heading into the future. We put out a blog this morning from Matty Greco that shares within the last eight weeks we scanned 1.8 billion lines of code in 25 different programming languages. Before these models, that probably would have taken us eight years. Think about that. 1.8 billion. And again, remember, these models are as bad today as they're ever going to be. It's just going to keep getting better. And this is one of the positive benefits. We're finding things. We're going to put out packages. The blog explains how we do that for our customers as we move forward, and I encourage you to take a look at that as well. We spent a lot of time talking to governments. We talk to governments in the U.S., we talk to governments around the world. And what we're hearing from governments around the world, this really started in Europe, was this desire for sovereign infrastructure. Where you want us to meet your evolving needs around sovereignty of data, sovereignty of AI, sovereignty of cloud services, and this means that we have to change how we operate to actually be able to deliver for you. And it's not one size fits all. I wish it was, it would be a lot easier. But there are countries all around the world that have variations of requirements that they're asking us to deliver so that they can feel good about sovereignty in however they define sovereignty, and it's not consistent, I can assure you. But we're working hard. We launched Sovereign Critical Infrastructure Portfolio, primarily targeting Europe early on, but we're hearing this in Asia and other parts of the world. The need for AI-ready infrastructure with trust-based licensing, and we're going to help you build that architecture with more control, more visibility, more security, and more confidence during the
Uncertain times that we're navigating. And then there's this new technology on the horizon called quantum, and it is going to be a major disruption, much like AI. A fundamental shift in computing. It will be great because it will have the power to solve complex challenges fast. If you think about combining quantum with AI and you think about attacking chronic diseases, what's possible will be mind-boggling as we go to the future. It will also bring some risks that we all have to work on together. Some of you are thinking about this, some of you are not. We've been investing and innovating in this space over the last six or seven years so that we'll be ready when you're ready. We've made incredible progress on the R&D front with a full stack of hardware, software, and we recently launched the Universal Quantum Switch working research prototype. And I do believe this will bring incredible opportunities for us so that when it becomes an imperative for your organization, we want to be there for you.
I want to highlight, we talked about the network is more powerful than the node, and that applies to the organization and the people in this room, watching remotely, watching virtually. There are massive challenges that we're all looking to solve together, and it comes back to one idea, and that's trust. And you're trying to define where trust, security, government judgment live in an AI-powered world. And we want to continue to partner with you, continue to have the relationship that we've had for 30 or 40 years with many of you. We want to go on this journey together with you, and I think the power of this network, of all the people in this room, with Cisco and our partners, is going to be more important than ever. Because the criticality of us working very closely together to do two major things: number one, prepare our technology infrastructure for the challenges that are going to be coming at us, but secondly, and what I hope is more important, is to deliver the benefits that the technology will provide for the organizations in which all of us operate.
You're going to hear a lot about this over the next day or two. But talk about how one of our major enterprise customers is actually leveraging technology for the customer experience and how these AI waves, how they're thinking about that. Please join me in welcoming to the stage Brian Niccol, the CEO of Starbucks.
Thank you, Brian. Yeah. Hang on one second. I need the card, you're not up here. This is Ashley. Say thank you, Ashley. She's a Tar Heel for those who care. Hey, thanks for coming.
Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, after hearing all that, it makes me feel good we sell coffee.
Hey, by the way, I had two cups this morning, so I hope I helped.
How many people drank Starbucks this morning? There you go. Perfect. We are going to do a commercial for a few million people to be better customers for you.
So Brian and I have known each other a reasonably long time. We met when you were at Chipotle, and when you decided to make this change, we talked about how your challenges were going to be different, maybe we'll get into that. Chipotle was rocketing, it was incredible, and you've led multiple companies through transitions and how things change. And I'd say you're probably doing something similar right now at Starbucks. How do you—I wonder like when you go into a company that you haven't been a part of, how do you orient yourself to this completely new organism that's big? I know if somebody came in and took my job here, number one, they would do it a lot better, but it would be really complicated, it would be really complicated to learn all this complex stuff. So how do you do that?
Yeah, well, look, in the case of Starbucks and some of the other businesses, obviously they're customer-first businesses, consumer businesses that you first have to understand how do you do a great job for your customer. And then in the case of Starbucks, obviously because it's a retail business, we also have to understand what do we do with our partners when serving our customers are also centered for success. So you start there and obviously as you get into the organization, there's a lot of learning and you've got to be open to the idea of doing a lot of listening and a lot of learning before necessarily you start sharing what you want everybody to go do. And I've taken the approach of, you've got to come in with a strong point of view, what you believe the company needs to do for the customer and our coffeehouse leaders or our partners, and then you have to take the time to make sure you listen and learn how the organization actually gets work done, how decisions are made and, you know, figure out what's the most efficient way to get to the right outcomes for our customers.
That's great. You're two years, yeah.
Coming up on two years, yeah.
