Modern Networking for AI vs AI for ModernNetworking

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Digital Dcode, brought to you by Presidio and our partners at Cisco. I'm your host, Alex Rust. I'm actually going to jump right into it because we are actually talking a little bit about our partners over at Cisco today. And the reason we're talking about our partners at Cisco is that at Cisco Live this year twenty twenty five, Cisco announced several new switches, and I'm not going to dive into it because I have my experts on with me from the presidio side to talk about it today.

With me, I'm Andy Richter, technical director at Persidio, Mark Cardwell, director of Professional Services and Britney Bolton Solutions architect. How are you all doing today? I'm doing fantastic, Alex. It's great to see you.

Yeah, it's great to have you all on. Andy and Brittany, you've been on with me before, but this is Mark's first time. So welcome Mark to the podcast. We're really excited to have you.

Thank you so much. Good to be here, of course, great to have you. Andy. You just heard that little intro I gave you, but I definitely want to hand it over to you to just kind of give us, you know, what's the rundown of what happened this year at Cisco Live.

Thanks Alec. It was a big year here for us at Persidio at Cisco Live, and there was a lot of really exciting announcements that came out of network with Cisco and a lot of new platforms on the Cisco announced the ninety three fifties announcements to the nineties six hundred and new data center switches the ninety three hundreds with embedded DPUs. And let me tell you the thing that was just so interesting is that, you know, Cisco has always been a company that's had impressive hardware, and Cisco's hardware this year is impressive like all the other generations have been.

But what's been different this year is just a really wonderful evolution in some case revolution in how we can do networking and with using AI, using these modern functions and really Cisco helping us lead the way in improving network operations. And like, I've just been having so much fun talking to my friends here markam Burtney about what these new platforms can really bring, you know, not just for us here at Persidio as we help our clients, but also you know how our clients use their networks to gain more business value.

So I think it's it was a big year here. I guess alec is the is the answer Nator question and we could be more excited. No, that's great, that's great that you were excited about this. I wish I shared the same excitement.

And after talking to you guys a little bit through our outline sessions and things like that. I definitely am starting to and so I think, thank you so much for the introduction first of all, Andy, but I mean I kind of want to talk about this evolution. So what I think we'll start with, Alec is I want to talk about about. You know, Brittany, you know you've had a lot of experience here as a presiding of architects.

You know, I've known you professionally for a long time now, and what our listeners probably don't know is you've been an architect and engineering a project manager, and you've seen projects and networks. Through all kinds of different generations of this technology. And I know you've seen an old call legacy technology and legacy projects, and you've been up close and personal with me seeing some of these new ones. When you think about that.

Like the old school day to life of how we could troubleshoot things and the old way of doing stuff, and you see some of these new AI agentic operations give me an idea of. The kinds of things you think about having to do in the past. Maybe in the you'll look forward to doing less of. So it's funny to hear you say that, like I don't feel like I'm old enough to be, you know, associated with legacy equipment.

But we're just going to skip right over that, and I'm going to say something that might be slightly unpopular for a minute, and we're just going to get it out of the way. There is a part of me that is nostalgic for the days of old Andy, Like there was something just so cool and exhilarating about being one of the elite who understood the command line interface, right, there was something really exciting about that. However, we also know that it wasn't exactly the most efficient way to go about troubleshooting an issue, right, I mean, even just think about the potential for human error when you had multiple tabs of command line open and you could accidentally type the wrong thing in the wrong window and then the next thing, you know, you have a big problem on your hands.

Right, So, you know, your process was very different. You had to be not only meticulous and very careful with what window you were in, but something simple such as you know, configuring a v land throughout a network was very manual. You had to go to every top of rack switch. Right, these things are changing, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

As much as I have nostalgia, sometimes I think that's all for the best, right think about all of the other things we can spend time on when we have efficiency brought to us via AI. So you know, when you talk about configure errors, you know, I often feel personally seen by that, Brittany, and I can appreciate that because you know, we've spent a lot of time working hard with this and Mark, you know, I look over to you and I think about. What our clients are looking for and why they're looking to us for these kinds of solutions.

And I know you have a you have really a wonderful professional services team who does networking here for us, at for Sidio, And I know that the demands on you and your team are, you know, always increasing. You're always getting more work in, You're always looking. To do bigger and badder networks. All of these kinds of automated and a gentic tools giving you new and bigger opportunities to solve some of those old problems in bigger and faster and better ways.

If you look at it, you know, kind of going where Brittany was in the. Older nostalgic days. You know, we would spend. Time digging through just loads of configurations trying to figure out where things maybe problematic, where we'd be running into issues, trying to design a better network or a better mouse trap.

Really, you know, so as we move into more of agentic style network ops and switches, that actually will start to think and really through dashboards such as Muraki's Cisco's Muraki's dashboard powered by an ingentic AI, it's going to be able to sit there. It's going to be able to look at what's going on in the network and not react but proact, go into and actually see what's going on, look at data, telementary data that's coming in and say I've seen this before. We may be able to do that.

Well, we're going to be looking at that and going wow, I'm still about two hours behind. And you know, whereas the power behind what Cisco's producing within their platforms will allow for that to be sped up and allow better for us to go in and get deeper into the technologies and be able to be with our customers providing them more of a outcome based solutions. So that because what we're not doing is having to sit down. And I got to get into the nitty gritty.

Of trying to troubleshoot into this, and it's going to allow for us really to to focus more on that customer and really provide the solutions that's gonna allow them to go into that next realm of data delivery. You touched on so much that I want to click on, So I'm gonna but I'm gonna pick on us. A couple of highlights here. Mark, at a high level, I want to kind of work on talk about AI's role in modern networking and vice versa, the role of modern networking in AI.

And so, you know, I talk to a lot of our clients about these kinds of outcomes that you were talking about. Predictive analytics, using AI to help with diagnostics, you know, automation. Of routine tasks. These are things that you know are both aspirational for a lot of our clients and achievable for a lot of clients as well.

But you know what, I'll say, you can do these things. They say, well, I don't have a giant. GPU farm to to pull from, and I say, well, you don't need one. Mark, So you know, when you talk to clients about what the difference is between you know, AI and networking and AI can you define kind of those two things?

And then I want to kind of come back. Really talk a little bit more about how you consume and how you use AI for networking, If that's okay. With you, sure, so kind of AI in networking. So part of that has to do with where these models are lying.

So a lot of customers may be thinking that, well, I need to have large scale LMS or large language models on my network in order to take advantage of some of these newer features. And it really isn't that. Sure you can, but utilizing the applications that are aioware thousand Eyes others along those lines really allow for that that AI to come into the network, but not be run into the network. Now, the new access what is it C ninety three fifties, they're actually being designed to allow for if the customer wants to be able to run those GPUs, it's going to allow for that communication.

So it's allowing that AI to be on the network, but it also allows it to be in that network. So allowing for a better asis and larger bandwidth within the switches to allow for the communication between those servers is definitely key. But if you look at really not having to have those and really having that the ability, whether it is through the dashboard or through a cloud based enterprise class software such as thousand Eyes, to be able to run and to utilize the AI applications or the AI models to be able to see those those areas so pretty.

When we look at all the things that Mark just kind of went into their you know, there's so much that I totally agree with and I think is so important. I want to look at this from you know, just one lens to kind of double click on, and that is there's a we look at AI for networking or networking for AI, and I think when we talk a lot about you know, agentic operations and AI power diagnostics and you know AI canvas, a lot of these really amazing features that Mark talks about, well, first of that I hear from a lot of my clients is you know, well I don't have a GPU firm to do all that stuff, and you just don't need all of it like that, Brittany, And so.

I'd like it. It's kind of talked me through, you know, your thought process of how you work with clients. So to talk about what the offerings are, how things work, what the different components are, and how networking and AI kind of work. Together in this kind of symbiotic relationship.

But yeah, so Andy, that's a really good question. And I think it boils down to meeting customers where they are, right, So, we know that the conversation around AI can seem extremely daunting and it can seem a little bit intimidating for you know, customers that are maybe just dipping their. Toe in the water. So I think it's really important to really understand where they are, what their appetite is for growth in that space, and then kind of tailoring our approach accordingly, right, Like, let's crawl before we walk, before we run.

And I realize that's maybe an overstated consulting process, but it's there for a reason. There's value in absolutely guiding them through the first steps, which may or may not be you know, AI for networking versus networking for AI, right, Andy, And I think that distinction is a little bit fuzzy sometimes as well, and in my mind, and keep me honest here, Andy, Bot, you know, most people can utilize AI for the purpose of being more effective network engineers, and you don't have to have a GPU farm for this, right, you can use you know, insert your flavor of preferred AI here and allow it to bring you more efficient use of your time in your role as a network engineer.

So that's a possibility. And then we roll into networking for AI, which is a slightly different conversation, and to Mark's point, this is where it gets a little bit more complicated and we have to look at things like you know, potentially licensing, et cetera. So I want to get it right back into use cases here, guys, because well we talked about, you know, Bernie, you know, networking for AI and AI for networking, and I do want to focus on how we can use AI for networking and how things.

Are fundamentally overall integrated and functional. The thing that I just find. So amazing, particularly about these new Cisco switch platforms that are coming out in the market here that we're now Cisco Live, is that it's pretty straightforward to get AI for networking running and your Cisco environments. And so you know, my understanding we do the manual here and looking at the slides that came out of Cisco Live, Bernie, is is that you can get these new Cisco switches the ninety three fifties, integrate them into her Cisco and Moroccy dashboard and utilize a AI agent out of the box.

Is that true, Brittany? And what do we think about it? That's my understanding as well. And I think it's really going to make you know, AI for networking more approachable.

That's what I think because when I think of, you know, ease of use and approachable networking, I typically do think of the rocky dashboard, right. It brings you that visibility all in one place. It brings you that ease of configuration in one place. So it's only logical to me that this would be a place to start with the ninety three fifties and bring in AI out of the box and racky dashboard and.

Antie and Brittany, can I ask you a quick question? And I'm not sure if this is maybe too early to tell, but have we been seeing a lot of people, you know, making the switch over the switch haha, to these new switches and having these new switches in their networks. We've been seeing a lot of people adopting this or is it kind of slow to roll out? I'm going to route that one to Andy.

So I will say that we have seen a lot of interest. With every new. Cisco switch platform, there is always a supply chain. To get all these switches out the door.

We have seen an incredible demand for switch modernization because we've seen a significant number of our clients who have had legacy switches in their environments and they've been doing things that we talked about like kin of the old way for a long time, like Britain was talking about the old way of doing things, and they're looking for a new way of doing things because their requirements for their network isn't getting any smaller, like Mark was saying a few minutes ago, we're seeing greater increased We're seeing so many increased demand for use cases like edge inferencing, micro segmentation, detailed network analysis, all the way at the edge of the branch, that you can't just do it the old way anymore.

When we look at this and our clients approach you, you know, what are the kinds of problems that you think about solving kind of at scale organizations using these kinds of tools, using the Cisco Morocky dashboard, AI chat thoughts. So a lot of it has to do with with ease basically ease of maintenance. And really, I mean Britney. Kind of hit on it just with just being able to come in and manage those devices.

So you know, you talked about automation of tasks, you know, and in the old days we used to you know, definitely run scripts, and Britney was keying in, you know, well, I mean I'll run a script. Yeah, well that's it helps in time. But what happens if I run that script on the wrong tab or so where where we're looking to help our customers is one and in that automation and task automation and better maintenance of their switches, being able to have clear databases of their configures and being able to let's say, part of the C series, the Access series of the ninety three fifties is really embedded security, so you know, being able to help our customers.

You know, forget day one. You know, day one you're day late, so and day zero, I think you're even late even if you're trying. To hit those day zeros. You know, the new abilities of AI and insecurity is being able to actually it to go in and look and determine and see well before anything actually comes in or as it's coming in detected immediately and shut it down so that you know, zero basically zero access, you know, just not being able to even get in the front door.

The foot just gets slammed immediately. I think those are a lot of what we're seeing just with the attack vectors, the way that they're just broadened so much. And I mean people using AI, well now AI itself, using that as a tool they come in, and so if we're able to use AI to defend against it, I think that's a lot of where I'm going to see and where we see the conversations going with our customers and being able to build that network that is really going to help our customers in shutting down you know, even if it's not an attack, say but in bandwidth spikes where you're getting you know, a talkative port that you know maybe flooding your network.

Well, if I have a huge pipe now and I have something that goes awry, I'm going to flood that pipe. It's even bigger. So now that errant device can actually do a lot more damage. So being able to see that performance wise and using the dashboard to be able to mitigate those and really to come in and see those performance affecting incidences, let alone just this year attacks from threat actors.

You know, Mark, I love listening to you talk about these kinds of tools and strategies because I hear you talk a lot about cybersecurity, you know, threat isolation, reacting to threats, but I also hear you talk about availability and you know, the scalability impact on. Networks and so alec. The fun part of listening to Mark talk is that he's talking about bad actors. They can hurt us in different ways.

They can hurt us by attacking us by knowing the specific exploit the precise mechanism to get into that vulnerable software, or attacking a network by overwhelming it VIA. With too much traffic. And you know, using AI, we can look for both of these types of threats. And it's so amazing that even if we haven't seen this kind of specific attack before, you know, the strategies Marks talking about there are available in these Cisco solutions to help us actually mitigate these threats before they're actually impacting our networks exactly.

Again, we're just going back to that proactivity versus reactivity, and I think that Mark touched on it perfectly you. Know it bring me out. I want to double click onners a couple of things here. You know, there are a couple of use cases that I heard from Mark that I think that I've heard from my clients.

I wanted to just to toss them over there on your your core. One is you know, automated patching of solutions, while not necessarily an AI feature, but a core component of any cloud managed platform. Is there kind of a world where we're going to be looking at using these AI features and functions with non cloud managed infrastructure? Is that really kind of what we're going.

To be using? Is table stakes for networking these days? You kind of got me on that last about whether or not that's going to be table stakes, and you know, I feel like that's a little bit yet to be determined. However, I want to go back to what you had said, and this ties into what Alex said about proactive versus reactive.

Right, we know that in order to you know, maintain a healthy network, we have to patch, and because of the threat vectors today and how things are changing. To Mark's point, if you're doing it day one or even day zero, you're already behind the ball, right, So logically, we should be proactive about things like patching right and being able to isolate that suspicious activity. Whether or not it's actually been proven that it is a bad actor is irrelevant. But the fact that we can you know, view that suspicious activity proactively isolate that portion of network and you know, avoid disruption is a really big deal in my mind, and I think that is the way of the future, right.

And you know, I think the other. Piece that's interesting is it's no longer requirement to be a sort of genius person to hack a network or to hack in general, right, And that's that's both interesting and terrifying at the same time. These people, you know, young teenagers for example, are able to utilize AI to build ransomware, to build effects, So why wouldn't we use AI. To combat that very same thing?

So absolutely, I. Couldn't agree more, you know, Mark, this all adds up to me to say that this is a real inflection point when I look at networking and enterprise networking in particular, that when we've looked at the evolution of networking that in the business that we've been in, in the journey we've taken professionally, is that you know, we've gone from Cata West to iOS. You've seen the evolution of nxos with. All these amazing, wonderful feature Franciscos come out with, and we've seen this new generation of switches and routers and security tools with AI integrated in.

The Demands of business are increasing so rapidly, you know, is it really appropriate to just replace our infrastructure one for one? Is doing it the old way good enough anymore? Or are these new technologies so important that we need to think about a new way of. Doing networking as we modernize our infrastructure.

So if your network requirements are stagnant, sure, I mean there's no reason to But I can tell you right now I know of no customer whose network environment is static. They may feel that it is, but it's not their requirements. Their needs are just as exponentially growing. And I would.

Challenge them to say, look, if you don't feel that you need if same same is you know, okay for you? How about there's things that we were just talking about, the fact that we have attack services out there from the Internet. Your older switches or the same switches that being brought in that don't have these abilities into them for proactive management, for proactive security really zero. Trust out of the box.

Then you're going to be pretty much out of business because you're going to be shut down. You're going to have a ransomware attack, You're going to have some denial of service that's going to come in and really just shut your network down and your employees aren't going to be able to work. But also looking at the sheer fact that you don't want your business to stagnate. You want to grow your business, so that network is going to need to grow with you.

So I may be. Looking at this and saying, Okay, well can I afford or am I able to do this? And the answer is yes, because the flexibility of these new platforms to be able to come in with licensing and be able to have it be one thing now, but just with the ability to add a license to then enable other features on top of that, to me is just a no brainer. I wanted to double click on that because you talk about unlocking additional features, and I have to tell y'all, I am so excited about cybervision.

So I know that wasn't necessarily like the point of today's conversation, but just to add to that, right when we think about like telemetry and network assurance. We obviously think of thousand eyes, we think of these new embedded security features, but can we talk about what cybervision is going to do for the OT landscape? Right? We are now bringing that same level of network visibility and assurance and proactive capability to the OT space which so desperately needs it.

Right, So I just had to you. Know, shameless plug, I had to throw that out. There and that I'm very excited about that, and it is an additional license add on people who are looking at you know, advantage already for thousand eyes. Guess what cybervision is part of that?

So just throw that out there. I'm excited. The hardest thing about my job here Persudio Alec is keeping up with engineers like like Brittany and Mark here because they're both so sharp. I want to start with where Mark was about the.

Strategic advantage that businesses can see when they do this modernization. They can achieve these advantages through more. Efficient connectivity to connect their devices together, but also protect their devices from these threats. As you said, Mark, you know, these threats aren't slowing down.

They keep increasing over time. And while in some ways some places might say some of these technologies might seem like a luxury. Today, Alex. You know because of the pace of innovation that these threat actors are usually you know, as Brittany said it, you know, there's these kids can make ransomware with ai ah, just like.

Crazy and scary kind of true, right, actually really true. But you know, we need to use the same tools at our disposal for our defense. And these tools are integrated into. These Cisco networks and they come out of the box enabled with these licenses.

And the most amazing part about working in places like for CITDEO is that I get to hear Bertie remind me that, well, we're talking again about focusing on enterprise networking here ALEC, which we've been focusing a lot on this campus switching. You know, Brittany's reminding us that. Those same licenses, those same switches, the same technology can be used in operating technology environments like factories in space of the take robotics and other arms and machinery and things like that.

It's the water supply of Andy. There are some of the most risk. Oil and gas power generation, absolutely, and you think about that that, you know, Brittany, you bring up a great point. It's so you think about years ago when we started talking about the converged network, and so we technically are in a convert network.

We have voice, we have video, we have data. But what has stayed unconverged is exactly what you're talking about, the automation within our factory and our manufacturing because they're so afraid of you know, well, if this happens, then that's going to shut down the process, whether it's a water purification, if it you know, you know, whatever the aspect. I work with a few nuclear agencies and so you know, the. Having that get shut down, that's huge, you know.

But being able to now have a surety because of features that are just going to be embedded within these switches can allow for a truly converged network across the board and ensuring that they're a secure, reliable network, because I'll say some of those old OT networks aren't so reliable. They're delicate in a sense, but also crucial, right you know. I mean I have a vested interest in that area. My husband works in oil and gas and his job is inherently dangerous, and so without things like those sensors online and making sure that they are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

When they're supposed to be doing. It, people like him could be at risk. So it's just too important. We have to you know, we have to remember, you know, OT networks and all of this, and now this brings a whole new set of capabilities to the table, and it's just very exciting.

So and I think you know you mentioned earlier zero trust networking. I feel like at one point that was almost a nice to have or a buzzword, but now it's a have to. It is absolutely you know, necessary, and so these new embedded features are going to help clients on their journey to actually achieving that goal. It's no longer just such a far stretch, so including and not limited to our OT and campus networks.

So that's right, because that's that's the other thing. I mean, you're even zero trusts are campus networks, you know, and being able to have somebody come in and plug in device and you know, sure you have you have older knack style, you know, whether it's ice or what whatever, you the flavor being there, there are ways around it. And to have it now be implied in right at the access switch and be embedded within that switch to be able to put an SGT onto that device immediately and.

Lock it down. Oh well nope, you have this already inside your laptop. Sorry, you're not allowed on this network. You must you must get allowed onto it.

And really just not trusting anything is going to be a game changer. And I think, uh and being able to secure and provide quality and reliable on networking. So I couldn't agree more Mark, And when we look at all those things and all those features that you're talking about there, you know, it's really adding up to these more modern pieces of infrastructure to make your life so much easier, bring you up for more innovations. So ALEC, you know, you know, all three of us network enzers that's call have been around here for a while.

And I talked to a lot of our clients and I say, you know, how long you've been in your organization? What was the north like when you got there, and what it was light today? And I frequently get to people who say I've been here for five, ten and fifteen years and I say, okay, well you know how big was it. When you got here?

And they were like, oh, I got twenty fifty you know, one hundred switches, and I said, well, how many you have now? And they'll say four or five times that much. I said, so, and you have a four or five times larger network's department And the answer is never yet. Right, so we're done lower.

Exactly. The truth is, Alec, the problem that we have in networking is we've been so successful as an industry making bigger and faster and better networks that are harder for us to maintain just because of how successful we've been and how large they've grown. So modernized networks are not just faster. They are faster, but they're also easier to use, easier to change, easier to operate in troubleshoots, and easier to help enable our clients' businesses to help them succeed.

And really, and that's one of. The greatest things I've I came out of Cisco Live with because. It's not just that these are new switches. It's really this new opportunity for innovation with our clients.

I think Andy, honestly, I think you said it perfectly. I mean, there are so many reasons behind you know, modernizing your network. I mean, we went into this conversation trying to kind of answer that question why modernize, And I think we answered it because it's not just that you're freeing up the time of your engineers. It's not just that you're doing, you know, doing the whole AI thing.

I mean, AI is top of everyone's mind right now, so everyone's doing it, But it's not just because everyone's doing it. So many benefits there. So I think you wrapped that up. I think Andy you like concluded it perfectly with that last point.

So great job, guys. Thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of The Digital Dcode. Please rate, review, and subscribe to the digite wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to connect with us all on LinkedIn and follow the Presidio and Cisco LinkedIn accounts to stay in the not on.

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