Cisco Introduces New AI Solutions to Accelerate Adoption

Cisco has announced new AI solutions to accelerate AI adoption for enterprises and is expanding its UCS portfolio with a new AI server family for GPU-intensive AI workloads.

The new additions to Cisco’s data center infrastructure portfolio– an AI server family purpose-built for GPU-intensive AI workloads and AI PODS to simplify and de-risk AI infrastructure investment– gives organizations an adaptable and scalable path to AI usage.

This announcement coincides with Cisco’s own AI Readiness Index, which finds that 89 percent of IT professionals plan to deploy AI workloads within the next two years. However, only 14 percent of organizations report that their infrastructure is ready for AI today.

Cisco’s new solutions for AI adoption

These new solutions by Cisco are tailor-made to help overcome the barriers to AI adoption. They provide customers with infrastructure pieces to accelerate AI adoption, extend customers’ existing infrastructure, and enable customers to grow and innovate without adding complexity.

The new solutions are also managed by Cisco Intersight, enabling centralized control and automation to simplify everything from configuration to day-to-day operations.

Among the new solutions include:

• Accelerated Compute for the AI Era: An addition to Cisco’s UCS AI compute portfolio, the new UCS C885A M8 servers are purpose-built for GPU-intensive training tasks. It is a high-density 8-GPU server that can tackle the most demanding AI training tasks, in addition to providing simplified deployment and streamlined management. It is Cisco’s first entry into its dedicated AI server portfolio.
• Plug-and-Play AI Infrastructure: AI PODS are infrastructure stacks tailored for specific AI use cases and industries to provide greater scalability and efficiency. The PODS provide customers with an established starting point and is easily adaptable to specific customer needs. The pre-sized and configured bundles of infrastructure eliminate the guesswork from deploying AI inference solutions, leading to faster time to value, consistent performance, and reduced risk for AI projects.

The new solutions are additions to Cisco’s extensive portfolio of AI and data center infrastructure, including Cisco’s recently introduced 800G Nexus switching platforms that are powered by the Cisco Silicon One G200 chip and the Cisco Hyperfabric AI solution with NVIDIA.

“As Cisco’s customers and partners continue to navigate an ever-changing and progressing AI market, Cisco is committed to working across the industry to drive innovation and growth. By leaning on the full power of Cisco’s networking, security and observability strengths, and honoring customers’ unique journeys to AI, Cisco and its partners can deliver true business value to customers,” Cisco detailed in a statement.

Cisco’s new 360 Partner Program and more

In addition to adding its new solutions to their data center infrastructure portfolio, Cisco also announced new partner program plans to connect partners’ success to how they meet customers’ needs and ambitions as they modernize their infrastructure, power AI workloads, and keep organizations secure, resilient, and high-performing.

The new Cisco 360 Partner Program is designed to accelerate the value partners bring to customers through addressing their rapidly evolving and complex needs. There will be a 15-month transition period that leads up to the program’s February 2026 launch.

“Cisco 360 is the most significant evolution of our Partner program in 25 years, designed from the ground up to help Cisco Partners build their workforce, enable outcomes, and lead the way for our industry,” wrote Francine Katsoudas, Executive Vice President and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer at Cisco in a release. “The ‘school’ we envision at the heart of Cisco 360 is different from schools of the past. It’s AI-centric and AI-driven, with learning that is simple, flexible, and accessible.”

At its annual partner conference, Cisco unveiled the new partner program, along with making other new announcements to best serve partners. Read more about their new commitment to skills training and its two new designations.