How Cisco teams with Nutanix to build IT infrastructure for Enterprise AI

As agentic AI rewires enterprise IT, Cisco and Nutanix are turning a three-year strategic partnership into a full-stack answer for infrastructure under pressure. Get tech leader insights (https://www.nutanix.com/theforecastby...) to move faster and smarter. Get more stories by subscribing to The Forecast (http://www.nutanix.com/theforecastbyn...) . Video podcast transcript: Jason Lopez: AI demand, security, and legacy infrastructure are a few of the challenges in enterprise computing. Instead of rebuilding from scratch, IT looks to networking to make systems work. Jonathan Gorlin: It's a complex time to be in IT and technology, and I'll say there are probably three trends that we're looking at right now, plus I'll give you a bonus trend. So first of all, what we're seeing is, of course, with the proliferation of new types of applications, cloud native, AI, of course, is top of mind. So how do we get IT to grapple with all of these newer applications that are coming while still having to maintain all of the older, more traditional applications, right? It's not an either or, it's an and, always with IT. It's this and this and this. How do we manage all of that? So that's one big trend. The second trend that I'll say is just how do we simplify? And our customers are telling us they no longer want the pieces and parts to build an architecture. They really want a full-stack, validated turnkey solution that they can deploy at scale. And so really simplifying everything in terms of how you manage this environment is really top of mind for customers. And then third is really what we see about with edge and this proliferation of data at the edge. How do we capture that? How do we turn that into value? So we have some exciting announcements between the two companies related to that as well. And then my bonus one is something that I think we're all dealing with right now, which is just supply chain. And how do we get a hold of hardware? And how do we deal with just this incredible churn in the system of how do we get equipment? How do we continue to grow our environments? And so we're really trying to address all of these problems with our joint partnership. Ken Kaplan: Do you see the supply chain issue as just another challenge on top of many other challenges? Or is it something you've seen happen in the past? Put your perspective. Jonathan Gorlin: Yeah, I would say this is not an unfamiliar territory. IT always has to deal with unknowns and challenges. And that's what makes it such an exciting space to be in. But this is certainly maybe to a greater extent than what we've seen before. And of course, it's changing day by day. I get asked constantly, you know, Jonathan, what do you think? When is it going to end? And I wish I had the magic crystal ball. But we will get through it on the other side. And I think what's important also is we're helping customers maximize the existing infrastructure that they have. And we can get into that a little bit later to really help hold us over while we get through this period of just a little bit of instability, I would say, in hardware availability. [Related: Hybrid Multicloud IT Teams Benefit from Cisco and Nutanix Partnership (https://www.nutanix.com/theforecastby...) ] Ken Kaplan: Customers want a full solution, which could include a variety of different technologies. And you're helping them find that right connection. What are they looking for now to get through this period? Are there some things that they're asking you specifically? Jonathan Gorlin: Yeah, absolutely. I would say really it comes down to how can I continue to run my environments and do our job and answer to all of our stakeholders in the event where it would take me longer to procure new hardware. And so we're doing some specific things within the partnership. Actually, the timing is perfect. We're here at .NEXT. Nutanix and Cisco have been leaning in heavily into external storage partnerships as well. So the timing couldn't be more perfect. And what that means is even in a time where it's harder to get memory and NAND flash, we can actually leverage those existing investments from some of our storage partners. We can bring that in and extend the life of existing compute environments. And we've gone so far as to even go back and qualify some of the UCS B200 blades that we used to have. And we have a huge install base of those. So we wanted to unlock for customers and say, how can we use what's on your floor now? How can we bring it into the easy operational model that Nutanix offers for lifecycle management? And so we've actually delivered on that. And at the show, there are going to be some new announcements about more storage partnerships. So we're just continuing to lean and qualify more hardware, being able to reuse as much as you possibly can. Ken Kaplan: So we're thinking storage, we're thinking compute. What...