Accelerating Modernization and Execution Strategies for AI

Accelerating Modernization and Execution Strategies for AI

1. Accelerating Modernization and
Execution Strategies for AI
Eric Knipp
Senior Vice President, Cisco Customer
Experience, Americas
Carlos Pereira
Cisco Fellow and Chief Architect
CENCX-2205

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In my conversations with customers,
there are a few key themes
Board and business
pressuring CEOs to deliver
LoBusing un-authorized
AI tools
Security concerns
Deployment option
overload
ROI vs. Investments Workforce readiness
CENCX-2205 3

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Feel increased urgency over the
past year
Of organizations have executive
leadership driving urgency for AI
98%
50%
85%
Say they have <18 months to
deploy an AI strategy before they
see negative business effects
50%
Have dedicated 10-30% of budget
to AI initiatives
CENCX-2205
To access the full index of findings
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of observed AI proof of
concepts (POCs) don’t
make the cut to widescale
deployment
Source: Lenovo/IDC research “CIO Playbook 2025: It’s Time for AI-nomics (February 2025)
CENCX-2205 5CENCX-2205

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AI demands investment shifts
CENCX-2205 6
Bandwidth and
availability are critical for
AI success
To tackle unique threats
of non-deterministic AI
To ensure performance
and reliability of AI stack
Networking Security Visibility

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AI/GenAI use cases across industries
CENCX-2205 7
Specialized research
Drug research | Genomics
Data sovereignty
Residency | Compliance
Government services
Smart public services |
Environmental monitoring
Infrastructure optimization
Planning
Detection & prediction
Forecasts |
Anomalies | Insights
Capital market research
Financial Services

8. How can Cisco CX help

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© 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CENCX-2205CENCX-2205 9
How Cisco CX can help
Your use case 1
Your use case 2
Your use case “n”
AI Security
AI Ready Infrastructure

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AI use-case
identification
The Ideal AI adoption framework by Cisco
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AI governance
AI solution
design
AI solution
validation
AI solution
proof of
concept
(MVP)
AI solution
build and
deploy
AI solution
adopt and
scale
AI solution
maintain
CENCX-2205

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The ideal AI adoption framework by Cisco: Detailed
CENCX-2205 11
AI business
education
Strategy
development
AI use case
prioritization
ROI and business
case
Solution roadmap &
recommendations
Requirements
definition
Technical
qualification
Investigate and
ideation
Design & proposal
Feasibility
Solution blueprint
Solution
development
Data preparation
AI infrastructure
Model training &
fine tuning
Model evaluation
Integrations
Data pipeline
Architecture and
security
Launch
Adoption
User training
Support
User feedback
Change
management
Optimization
Expansion
Orchestration
Support
Monitor
ML/LLM Ops
AI observability
AI security
Feedback
Enhance
KPIs
Analytics
Model & data
experimentation
Solution design
refinement
ROI & business
case refinement
Solution testing
Data preparation
AI POC
infrastructure
Model training &
fine tuning
AI use-case
Identification
AI solution design
AI solution
build & deploy
AI solution
adopt & scale
AI solution
maintain
AI solution validation
AI solution proof of
concept (MVP)
Risk level Risk mitigation Responsible/ethical
Data and model
lifecycle
Program
management
Organizational (people,
process, tools)
AI Governance
Join Carlos and Jacks at POSCX-1019, Tuesday at 1PM

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© 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 12CENCX-2205
Key learnings and takeaways
Define the AI use-case
and success metrics first
RAG, prompts, few-shots,
SFT and chains come after
Experimentation & rapid
prototyping is key
Have dedicated teams, including
for evaluations too.
Avoid Hype, AI demos are easy
Production AI, at scale, is not.
Inter-agent context and
collaboration is critical
Highaccuracy with Enterprise
datasets (typically SQL) is hard
De-normalize data first by
mapping your relevant datasets

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AI Ready Infrastructure
AI Security
Your use case 1Your use case 1
Your use case 2
Your use case “n”
How Cisco CX can help
CENCX-2205 13

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On-going
Design
Implement
Optimize
Operate
Migrate
Plan
Across the lifecycle
On-demand
14CENCX-2205

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The lifecycle
15
Time
Desired state
(intent-based)
Current state
(reality)
Expected state
(predicted)
T0
(plan)
Plan
T1
(implementation kickoff)
T2
(change)
Design
Implement
Initial plan based on the original intent and understanding
of requirements and technology capabilities
Validation and solution design
•Automated High-Level Design (HLD) Diagrams and Document
•Automated Solution Design Document (SDD)
Deployment of designed solution.
New expectedstate (predicted) due to needs evolution
and automated tracking of features adoption (or lack of
thereof), usage, new use-cases, environment evolution
(ex.: scale), etc.
Drift from the expected state due to misconfiguration,
hardware or software issues, operations policy changes,
missing upgrades (to address vulnerabilities, field
notices, defects), missing functionalities (not adopted or
not working as planned), etc.
v
On-going
On-demand
Plan Design Implement
Migrate Operate OptimizeOn-going
On-demand
CENCX-2205

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Time
Desired state
(intent-based)
T0
(plan)
T1
(implementation kickoff)
T2
(change)
Plan
Design
v
On-going
Expected state
(predicted)
Adoption best practices (predictive)
With:
•Adoption agent
•Optimized adoption journey
Current state
(reality)
Drift detection and remediation (proactive)
With :
•Services-as-code automation (to address drift)
•Migrate, test management and validation
Plan Design Implement
Migrate Operate OptimizeOn-going
On-demand
CENCX-2205 16
The lifecycle

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Time
Desired state
(intent-based)
New current state
(reality)
New expected state
(predicted)
T0
(plan)
Plan
T1
(implementation kickoff)
T2
(change)
T4
(future)
Design
New desired state
(updated intent)
Implement
Re-design
CENCX-2205 17
T3
(vulnerability
discovered)
New predicted state
(after incident)
Disruption
potential
•Comprehensive
visibility & insights
•In-product support
•Troubleshooting
•Security assessment
On-going
Plan Design Implement
Migrate Operate OptimizeOn-going
On-demand
The lifecycle

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Manual provisioning delays time to value and creates risk
CHANGE
(hardware / software)
Configure
each device
Local
testing
Regression
testing
Security and
compliance audit
Change
complete
Manually
update/create
documentation
24-48 hours or more
Failed change. Rollback and schedule another change
Failed
Failed
Failed
Begin change
in production
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Commit code to trigger
automated workflow
Automated
documentation
update
Automated deployment
and testing
Change
complete
Automated config validation,
regression and security testing
Checkout and
update code
Begin change
in production
Making hyper-automated provisioning a reality
Minutes
98%+ Change success |More agility |Higher productivity |Lower risk
CHANGE
(hardware / software)
CENCX-2205 20

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AI makes it even better
Certainly!
Here you go.
I need to configure a
subnet for each bridge
domain in my ACI
fabric.
Can you generate a
configuration for me?
speed, productivity and
streamlined experience
Commit code
to trigger
automated
workflow
Change
Triggered
Automated
deployment,
and testing in
production
Change
complete
Automated config
validation, regression
and security testing
Checkout and
update code
AI generated
code
AI generated
test cases
CHANGE
(hardware / software)
CENCX-2205
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For a deeper dive, watch PSOCX-1020 OnDemand,
available starting June 27.

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Cisco AI Assistant with Services as Code helps you
understand network state
CENCX-2205 23
The AI assistant
understands your
network configuration
It can also analyze and
respond to network
engineers’ questions,
even if you don’t
understand the
configuration syntax

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Cisco AI Assistant with Services as Codehelps you
configure the network
CENCX-2205 24
The AI assistant can
also generate the
configuration based
on the intent for your
desired change
It will also generate
the merge request for
human change review
and approval

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Cisco AI Assistant with Services as Codehelps you
troubleshoot the network
CENCX-2205 25
If there is an issue
during deployment,
the AI Assistant will
even assess the
errorand provide
recommendations and
possible remediations to
correct the issue

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How Cisco CX can help
CENCX-2205 26
AI Ready Infrastructure
AI Security
Your use case 1Your use case 1
Your use case 2
Your use case “n”

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What’s the risk with AI?
AI applications can be non-deterministic
CENCX-2205 27
User
Application
Model
Data
Infrastructure
AI application New risk vector
Business and reputational harm
Data security and privacy
Supply chain vulnerabilities
Cyber attacks and threats
Compliance

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User
How are enterprises using AI applications?
Response query
OSS
model
Public
data
App
data
Production-
ready model
Application
Vector
DB
Trained
model
Context
CENCX-2205
Production
Development
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User
How are enterprises using AI applications?
Response query
OSS
model
Public
data
App
data
Production-
ready model
Application
Vector
DB
Trained
Model
Context
CENCX-2205
Production
Development
Model
backdoor
Data
poisoning
Exfiltration
Denial of service
Privacy attacks
Cost harvesting
Toxicity
Prompt injection
Data extraction
Misalignment
Hallucinations
Indirect
injection
Security risks
Safety risks
Indirect injection
Factual inconsistency
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The AI Defense solution
Cisco
Security Cloud
Enforcement Points
Firewall
Hypershield
MulticloudDefense
Secure Access
End user
Employee
Model
providers
Custom
AI apps
Connected
data sources
AI
Application
Security
AI cloud visibility
AI model & application validation
AI runtime protection
Third-party
apps
Shadow
AI
AI access
CENCX-2205
Cisco AI Threat Research Labs
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Cisco CX with AI: value maximization
CENCX-2205 31
Artificial
Intelligence
(AI)
Human
Intelligence
(HI)
Customer
Experience
(CX)
+ + =ROI

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Go beyond in the AI era with
Cisco Customer Experience
Check out our AI-driven services demos at the
Customer Experience stand and AI hub.
Talk with our experts to learn how we can help you
accelerate your transformation and execute your AI
strategy.
Engage with the CX teams here to help with your AI
use-cases and journey.
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Next Steps
Cisco Services Call to Action
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Explore our demos in the
Cisco Showcase of the
World of Solutions.
Attend our Center Stage
and PSO sessions. Scan this
code to view all our sessions.
Meet with our CX Subject Matter Experts. Inquire about availability
at the welcome desk in the CX Connections Lounge
in the World of Solutions.
Play the CX Big Wave Sweepstakes
while you’re at Cisco Live for a chance
to win a gaming & surfing prize package.
For more information on Cisco
Customer Experience and how we can
help you, visit cisco.com/go/services.

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Earn 100 points per
survey completed
and compete on the
Cisco Live Challenge
leaderboard.
Level up and earn
exclusive prizes!
Complete your surveys
in the Cisco Live
mobile app.
Completea minimum of
4 session surveys and
the Overall Event
Survey to be entered in
a drawing to win 1 of 5
full conference passes
to Cisco Live 2026.
Complete your session evaluations
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CENCX-2205