Cisco, the enterprise networking major, has made several announcements at the Cisco Partner Summit 2025.
Cisco Unified Edge
Cisco has unveiled Cisco Unified Edge, a new integrated computing platform designed to power distributed AI workloads across industries such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. Announced at the Cisco Partner Summit 2025, the platform unifies compute, networking, storage, and security at the edge to enable real-time AI inferencing and agentic workloads closer to where data is created.
Cisco said more than half of AI pilots today stall due to infrastructure constraints, and as 75 percent of enterprise data is generated at the edge, traditional data centers can no longer meet the needs of AI’s rapid growth. Unified Edge addresses this challenge by providing a modular, full-stack architecture with CPU and GPU options, zero-touch deployment, centralized management through Cisco Intersight, and built-in zero-trust security.
The platform simplifies AI deployment and operations from edge to core while offering scalability and protection for future AI investments. Cisco collaborated with customers across multiple sectors to design Unified Edge for real-world applications such as factory automation and secure digital banking.
Cisco emphasized that its extensive partner ecosystem – including technology, managed services, ISVs, and resellers – will be central to helping enterprises navigate their AI transformation. Cisco Unified Edge is available for order now and will be generally available by the end of 2025.
Security Cloud Control platform
Cisco announced major enhancements to its Security Cloud Control platform to help Managed Service Providers (MSPs) deliver advanced security services more efficiently and profitably. The update introduces multi-customer management capabilities to Cisco’s unified, AI-powered management console, enabling centralized control of key security solutions including the Hybrid Mesh Firewall with AI Defense and Secure Access, its Security Service Edge (SSE) offering.
Cisco said the new capabilities will help MSPs reduce operational complexity, lower costs, and accelerate growth by consolidating management and improving visibility across customers. The Hybrid Mesh Firewall extends protection across data centers, clouds, and edge sites using AI-driven threat detection, zero-trust segmentation, and identity-based policies. It integrates with Splunk for telemetry and centralized management through Security Cloud Control.
The enhancements also include support for Cisco’s new Secure Firewall 200 and 6100 Series, which deliver improved performance and integrated SD-WAN for distributed sites and AI-ready data centers. Cisco’s latest firewall software, Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.7, recently achieved 99.5 to 100 percent threat detection accuracy in independent testing by NetSecOPEN.
According to Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s President and Chief Product Officer, these innovations are designed to remove operational friction, help partners boost revenue, and deliver stronger security outcomes for customers amid increasingly sophisticated AI-driven threats.
AI-ready secure network architecture
Cisco announced a new wave of innovations to modernize campus, branch, and industrial networks for the AI era, expanding on its AI-ready secure network architecture for enterprises. The solutions are designed to simplify operations, enhance security, and scale to meet the growing bandwidth and latency demands of distributed AI workloads at the enterprise edge.
Cisco said its latest offerings will allow businesses to automate deployment and security across large, distributed networks in minutes, helping IT teams manage the exponential growth of AI-driven traffic. The company emphasized its leadership in “AgenticOps,” a new operational model where AI-powered agents work with IT teams to detect and resolve issues proactively.
New capabilities include unified network visibility through the Global Overview feature in the Meraki Dashboard, offering a single cloud dashboard view across Meraki and Catalyst networks. Cisco is also introducing cloud-managed fabric architecture to simplify large-scale campus management and adaptive segmentation, along with AI-driven workflow automation via AI Assistant that can handle switch migration, Wi-Fi setup, and device onboarding with simple prompts.
In addition, Cisco introduced AI Canvas, an intelligent collaborative workspace where network, security, and application teams can troubleshoot issues in real time using AI-powered insights and natural language commands. Cisco said these innovations aim to make enterprise networks more agile, secure, and AI-ready, reducing complexity for overburdened IT teams.
Rajani Baburajan
