Techaisle Blog

RSA Conference continues to be the epicenter for cybersecurity innovation, and this year, Cisco made significant waves with a series of announcements that underscore its commitment to delivering an integrated security platform. Moving beyond disparate point solutions, Cisco’s vision focuses on empowering customers with better security outcomes, reduced operational complexities, and optimized costs. This blog post dives into the key announcements from Cisco at RSAC, highlighting their advantages and what sets Cisco apart in an increasingly crowded security landscape.

The Core Vision: An Integrated Security Platform

At the heart of Cisco's announcements lies a fundamental belief that the cybersecurity industry is undergoing rapid transformation, particularly with the rise of AI-based workloads. Recognizing the novel security challenges these advancements introduce, Cisco has been strategically focusing on converging individual security solutions and infrastructure domains into a cohesive platform. As Tom Gillis, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Infrastructure & Security, eloquently stated, the goal is to enable customers to achieve superior security with lower operating and capital expenses. This platform approach is not just about bundling products; it's about deep integration that allows for enhanced visibility, coordinated enforcement, and streamlined management.

Securing the AI Revolution: AI Defense and Beyond

One of the most pertinent announcements revolves around security for AI. Cisco has now made its capabilities for securing both the development and usage of AI applications generally available. This isn't merely about monitoring AI; it involves fine-grained controls for validating AI models and securing the use of 3^rd party SaaS applications like ChatGPT and DeepSeek. For organizations developing their own AI-powered applications, Cisco offers the ability to enforce crucial guardrails.

The significant advantage is that this robust AI security is enforced on existing Cisco infrastructure, eliminating the need to deploy new, standalone solutions. The telemetry gathered from AI security measures seamlessly feeds into Splunk and provides enhanced visibility within Cisco XDR. This integration ensures a holistic view of the security posture, encompassing traditional threats and emerging AI-related risks.

Furthermore, Cisco acknowledges that securing AI requires an ecosystem approach. This is evidenced by its brand-new product and go-to-market partnership with ServiceNow. This collaboration aims to hydrate ServiceNow's AI risk and governance portfolio with Cisco's security intelligence, providing joint customers with comprehensive value as they increasingly adopt AI. This partnership spans visibility into application usage and model vulnerabilities to real-time protection and incident triage. By working closely with leaders in adjacent domains, Cisco is differentiating itself by offering a more comprehensive and integrated solution for managing AI risks.

The Distributed Future of Security: Hybrid Mesh Firewall

Cisco is betting big on a future where security enforcement is distributed, moving beyond the limitations of traditional perimeter-based firewalls. Its hybrid mesh firewall initiative embodies this vision, fusing security into the very fabric of network connectivity. This approach extends across physical and virtual firewalls and modern workload environments like VMs and containers, leveraging technologies such as Secure Workload, Isovalent Enterprise Platform for Cilium (with eBPF), and Hypershield. The key advantage here is the fungibility of enforcement – customers can apply consistent security policies across diverse environments without the need for a disruptive "rip and replace". Licensing is designed to be flexible, with customers using a pool of tokens that can be applied to different enforcement points as their needs evolve.

A groundbreaking component of this strategy is the introduction of new smart switches where every switch port functions as a layer 4 stateful line-rate firewall. This radical integration simplifies network architecture, reduces operational overhead, and addresses challenges like space and cooling. This is a unique offering in the market, showcasing Cisco's ability to deeply embed security within its core networking infrastructure.

Recognizing that customers often have heterogeneous environments, Cisco's hybrid mesh firewall will also support the security policy management of third-party firewalls. While initially focusing on layer three and layer four policy groups for segmentation, this capability allows for centralized policy management through Security Cloud Control. Support includes major vendors like Fortinet, Palo Alto, Juniper, and Checkpoint. This demonstrates Cisco’s commitment to providing value even in multi-vendor environments, moving towards a unified security posture management.

The cybersecurity landscape is a relentless storm. For Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) and Midmarket enterprises, navigating this storm is becoming increasingly complex. Limited resources, widening attack surfaces due to digital transformation, and a sheer volume of sophisticated threats create a challenging environment. Historically, many businesses adopted a "best-of-breed" approach, selecting individual point solutions for specific security tasks – a firewall here, an endpoint protection tool there, perhaps a separate email security gateway. While logical on the surface, this strategy is showing its age and limitations.

New Techaisle survey data (Techaisle SMB & Midmarket Security Adoption Trends) reveal a significant and growing trend: a clear shift in preference towards end-to-end security platforms, particularly as businesses scale. While the smallest companies still lean towards point solutions, the momentum across the broader SMB and Midmarket segments is undeniably moving towards integrated platforms. This shift isn't arbitrary; it's a strategic response to the operational realities and escalating security demands these businesses face.

This post delves into the Techaisle data, explores the compelling reasons driving this platform preference, and highlights how leading vendors, such as Palo Alto Networks and Cisco, are addressing this need with their evolving platform strategies.

Decoding the Data: A Clear Trend Emerges

The Techaisle SMB & Midmarket survey data paints a nuanced picture, directly correlating company size with security solution preference:

• The Smallest Businesses (1-9 employees): These micro-businesses exhibit the strongest preference for task-specific, best-of-breed solutions, with 56% favoring this approach, compared to 44% who prefer end-to-end platforms. This often reflects simpler IT environments, potentially tighter budgets favoring incremental purchases, and perhaps a perceived ease of managing distinct, single-function tools when the overall infrastructure is limited.
• The Growth Transition (10-99 employees): As companies enter the core small business segment, the preference for point solutions remains dominant, peaking at 74% for the 50-99 employee bracket. However, the foothold for platforms is strengthening, indicating that even at this size, the complexities prompting platform consideration are beginning to surface for over a quarter of businesses.
• The Midmarket Shift (100-999 employees): This segment marks a significant inflection point. While core midmarket (100-999 employees overall) still shows a majority (62%) leaning towards point solutions, the preference for end-to-end platforms rises substantially to 38%. Within this, the preference for platforms increases steadily with size, ranging from 32% for 100-249 to 40% for 250-499 and 42% for 500-999. The demands of managing a more complex infrastructure are clearly pushing businesses towards integration.
• Upper Midmarket & Beyond (1000+ employees): Here, the preference decisively tips towards platforms. In the 1000-2499 employee range, 46% prefer platforms, rising to 52% (a majority) for the 2500-4999 bracket. Aggregated, the Upper Midmarket (1000-4999) sees 49% favoring platforms. For these larger organizations, the benefits of integration, visibility, and centralized management become paramount.
• Overall View: While the overall SMB segment (1-999 employees) technically shows a 65% preference for point solutions due to the weight of the smaller company brackets, the Midmarket segment (100-4999 employees) demonstrates a much stronger inclination towards platforms, nearing parity and showing a clear preference in the upper tiers.

The overarching narrative is clear: as organizations grow in size and complexity, the perceived value and practical necessity of an integrated security platform increase significantly.

Why the Pivot to Platforms? Drivers of the Shift

Rodney Clark, SVP of Partnerships and Small & Medium Business, Cisco, and Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, SVP of Cisco Partner Program, Cisco are on a mission. At the recently concluded Cisco Partner Summit 2024, Cisco unveiled its new partner program, the Cisco 360 Partner Program, which aims to redefine how partner value is recognized and rewarded. This program fosters shared success, enhances partner profitability, and simplifies the partner experience. Cisco is streamlining its partner structure by transitioning from four roles (Integrator, Provider, Advisor, and Developer) to two main tiers: Cisco Partner and Cisco Preferred Partner. This change is not due to a lack of recognition of partners' diverse roles or a disregard for the ecosystem. On the contrary, Cisco is enhancing its focus on the ecosystem, acknowledging that partners can fulfill multiple roles. This simplified structure allows partners to achieve the Preferred Partner status through a value index that recognizes metrics spanning various business models.

Cisco currently boasts a best-in-industry partner program, recognized for its strong market presence, trust, and reliability. However, the program's complexity and operational challenges are hindering its effectiveness. The multifaceted benefits, while encouraging partner adoption, can take time to manage and track. As Cisco looks to evolve its partner program, it focuses on simplifying the process and shifting towards outcome-based metrics. By focusing on profitability and operational efficiency, Cisco aims to ease the transition for partners and ensure a smooth evolution of the program.

Each year, WebexOne consistently delivers not through flashy presentations but by showcasing customer-focused innovation. This year's event highlighted enhancements in employee experience, customer experience, and product innovations, emphasizing AI-ready data centers and future-proof workplaces. Cisco's comprehensive suite of products, integrated with AI, enterprise networking, and security, positions it uniquely in the market. Cisco's strategy focuses on upgrading existing products, expanding offerings, and differentiating through AI. Furthermore, Cisco continues to invest in sustainability, interoperability, and enhancement of IT operations.

Full disclosure: Techaisle leverages both Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex, but our hearts truly lie with Webex. I personally use several Cisco devices—Cisco Desk Mini, Cisco Desk Pro, Bang & Olufsen Cisco 950 earbuds, and Webex on Apple Vision Pro—and I love them all. I was also fortunate to visit the Cisco Webex Innovation Center in Oslo, Norway, where I was astounded by five floors of cutting-edge engineering labs and a culture that nurtures groundbreaking ideas.

Let us dive into the key highlights and announcements from WebexOne.

Cisco's AI-Powered Approach to Future-Proof Workspaces

Cisco's commitment to innovation was evident in its emphasis on AI-ready data centers and future-proof workplaces. These advancements ensure seamless, secure, and efficient collaboration experiences. Introducing AI into Cisco's products aims to enhance security and workplace experiences, making them more resilient to outages. Cisco's unique market position and competitive edge stems from its ability to integrate meeting, calling, contact center, app, and device front ends on a unified AI fabric alongside enterprise networking, security, and observability.

Cisco aims to reimagine workplaces, allowing people to work from anywhere, including campuses, branches, factories, and cars. Cisco's strategy for future-proofing workspaces includes upgrading existing products, expanding offerings, and differentiating through AI. This approach ensures its solutions remain relevant and effective in an ever-evolving technological landscape. The focus is on creating products that are invisible and just work when needed, with AI capabilities enhancing user experiences.

Cisco's AI-Powered Approach to Personalized Customer Interactions

Cisco made significant strides in AI-powered customer service by introducing an autonomous Webex AI agent. Designed to elevate self-service capabilities and reduce the burden on human agents, this AI agent can assist with summaries, suggest responses, and streamline customer interactions.

The new autonomous Webex AI agent can handle natural language-based customer service interactions and integrate seamlessly with back-office systems. The Webex AI agent studio empowers users to build and deploy custom AI agents. This involves selecting pre-built agents, defining their primary functions, and integrating them with business systems. The AI agent can handle both voice and chat interactions, take proactive actions, and deliver personalized service.

The AI agent prioritizes delivering a seamless, human-like customer experience without any wait times. To achieve this, it focuses on three key objectives: instant issue resolution, increased containment rates, and reduced average handle times. This omnichannel and multimodal AI agent can interact with customers through their preferred channels and modes, including photo sharing. It is seamlessly integrated with contact center products, starting with Webex Contact Center and expanding to enterprise Webex products and direct device customers soon.

Beyond initial interactions, the AI agent is designed to execute actions and deliver desired outcomes throughout the entire customer journey. Leveraging generative AI, these agents can autonomously handle complex queries and tasks. Scripted models are also available for organizations preferring a more controlled approach. To cater to a global audience, the AI agent supports eight languages.

Cisco also announced enhancements to the Webex AI assistant, including the ability to identify individuals in conference rooms and generate meeting summaries in multiple languages. The AI assistant's accessibility on various devices and its integration with audience engagement tools like Vidcast and Slide have been improved. The AI assistant's capacity to take action, integrate with enterprise systems, and provide content summaries in other productivity tools is highlighted. The AI assistant will be available as an add-on in early 2025 as part of the Webex customer experience solution.

Cisco's Devices: Delivering Immersive Collaboration Experiences

Cisco is driving innovation in collaboration technology by introducing cutting-edge devices, including spatial meetings for Apple Vision Pro and a new ceiling microphone. These devices are designed to elevate audio and visual experiences, making remote meetings feel as natural as in-person interactions. Cisco's commitment to interoperability is evident in its partnership with Microsoft Teams, where it has emerged as the fastest-growing partner.

Central to Cisco's vision is the concept of "Distance Zero," which aims to bridge the gap between remote and in-person meetings. By leveraging AI and spatial audio, Cisco creates immersive and lifelike collaboration experiences. Spatial audio delivers a more realistic audio experience, making remote participants feel like they are in the same room. AI-powered video enhances video quality, automatically adjusting for lighting and background noise.

Cisco's partnership with Apple is a significant step toward realizing the Distance Zero vision. By combining Cisco's powerful collaboration tools with the capabilities of Apple Vision Pro, Cisco aims to revolutionize remote work. Spatial meetings in Webex for Apple Vision Pro promise to create immersive, lifelike virtual conference rooms. This groundbreaking technology, powered by spatial computing, enhances remote interactions and fosters a more collaborative work environment.

Through this partnership, Cisco is shaping the future of work and communication. Users can participate in lifelike meetings with virtual presence and realistic audio, collaborate on shared documents and projects in virtual environments, and seamlessly access and share information, such as presentations and whiteboards, in a virtual setting. Cisco's commitment to innovation, coupled with the power of AI, spatial audio, and virtual reality, drives the future of immersive collaboration.

Spatial meetings' potential applications extend beyond the traditional office setting. Industries such as education, healthcare, and retail can benefit immensely from this technology. For instance, students can engage in immersive learning experiences, healthcare professionals can collaborate seamlessly on complex cases, and retailers can provide innovative virtual shopping experiences.

To further optimize collaboration spaces, Cisco has introduced Workspace Designer, a powerful tool that enables organizations to design and visualize optimal equipment placement and microphone coverage. Users can generate detailed blueprints by inputting room dimensions, making it a valuable asset for IT teams.

Cisco's commitment to simplifying workplace management is evident in the introduction of Smart Diagnostics in Control Hub. This AI-powered feature proactively identifies and resolves device issues, reducing downtime and improving overall device performance.

Interoperability is a crucial factor in today’s diverse technological landscape. Cisco recognizes the importance of seamlessly integrating its devices with collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams. By prioritizing interoperability, Cisco empowers organizations to create flexible and adaptable workspaces. Furthermore, Cisco’s integration of devices with Cisco Spaces enables smarter workplace management. This powerful combination allows organizations to optimize physical spaces and enhance employee experience.

The Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro is a cutting-edge audio solution designed to elevate the sound quality of video conferences in medium to large conference rooms. Its AI-powered beamforming technology intelligently focuses on active speakers, minimizing background noise and capturing crystal-clear audio. The Ceiling Microphone Pro offers a unified and user-friendly experience by seamlessly integrating with Cisco's video conferencing systems. Its scalable and flexible design allows for easy deployment in diverse room configurations, making it suitable for various applications. This AI-powered microphone leverages adaptive technology to adjust to room acoustics, ensuring crystal-clear audio capture automatically. The user-friendly setup process further simplifies installation and minimizes disruption.

Final Techaisle Take

WebexOne 2024 was a testament to Cisco's dedication to pushing the boundaries of collaboration technology. With a focus on AI integration, innovative devices, and a commitment to sustainability, Cisco is well-positioned to lead the future of work. As we look ahead, it's clear that the innovations unveiled at WebexOne will play a crucial role in shaping how we collaborate and communicate.

Cisco's device-led and platform strategy is a crucial driver of its competitive edge in collaboration. By offering a comprehensive suite of hardware and software solutions, Cisco empowers organizations to create seamless and efficient workspaces. This integrated approach ensures that devices work seamlessly together, delivering a superior user experience.

A device-led and platform strategy is a winning formula for several reasons. First, it allows for greater control over the user experience, ensuring that hardware and software are optimized to work together. Second, it enables faster innovation and quicker time to market for new features and capabilities. Finally, it fosters a more robust ecosystem of partners and developers, leading to increased customization and flexibility.

Webex offers a compelling solution for businesses of all sizes. By leveraging Cisco's innovative technology and robust platform, organizations can enhance productivity, improve collaboration, and drive business growth. Whether remote work, hybrid work, or in-person collaboration, Webex provides the tools and features needed to succeed in today's dynamic business environment.