Cisco and NVIDIA partnership expedites enterprise AI adoption

Cisco’s extended partnership with NVIDIA, to provide artificial intelligence (AI) technology solutions to enterprises, presents substantial opportunities for Cisco partners, in Australia and globally, in the AI and networking sectors.

Both Cisco and NVIDIA announced that they would expand their partnership to include AI technology solutions to enterprises in late February.

The partnership will allow NVIDIA to couple Cisco’s Silicon One network processors with its SuperNIC network accelerators to become part of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform. Cisco would be the only partner silicon included in NVIDIA Spectrum-X.

As a result, Cisco will be able to build systems combining NVIDIA Spectrum silicon with Cisco operating system software, allowing customers to simultaneously standardise Cisco networking and NVIDIA technology in data centres.

According to Cisco, enterprises recognise that AI is essential to growth but in the early stages of adoption as they navigate technical complexities and security demands of operating AI-ready data centers.

“The expanded partnership aims to give organisations flexibility and choice as they look to meet the demand of AI workloads for high-performance, low-latency, highly power-efficient connectivity within, and between, data centers, clouds and users,” said the vendor.

Cisco Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) managing director of partner and routes to market sales Rodney Hamill told ARN this collaboration aims to expedite AI adoption in enterprises by establishing a unified architecture for AI-compatible data centre networks.

“Initially, our focus will be on developing and supporting reference architectures for Cisco and NVIDIA Ethernet connectivity,” he said. “Our objective is to provide the best possible AI experience for enterprises, which will involve going beyond connectivity, encompassing security and observability.

“This partnership positions Cisco partners to play a pivotal role in assisting enterprises navigate the intricacies of AI adoption and optimise their infrastructure investments for the AI-driven future.”

Hamill noted that Australian partners have consistently led the way when it comes to data centre networking, particularly with the adoption and deployment of technology such as Cisco ACI.

“We believe that Australian enterprises are poised to embrace AI adoption and our partners will be well-prepared to support them,” he said. “Partners will be able to offer more comprehensive AI-ready networking solutions to their customers.

This partnership merges Cisco’s networking expertise with NVIDIA’s AI technologies, enabling partners to provide ethernet solutions optimised for AI workloads; simplified, full-stack solutions that seamlessly integrate both Cisco and NVIDIA technologies, as well as AI-ready data centre networks with enhanced performance and visibility.

“This collaboration opens new market opportunities for partners by unifying the architectural model between front-end and back-end networks, simplifying network management across various enterprise and cloud provider networks,” said Hamill.

“Ultimately, it will empower partners to assist customers in standardising on Ethernet for AI deployments, which is particularly significant considering Ethernet’s widespread prevalence in business environments.”