Cisco Podcast Network

Host and guest Evan Mintzer (Director of Production Infrastructure, Customers Bank) discuss how banks build digital resilience through network design, redundancy, data visibility and governance. The episode covers practical challenges around third-party services, AI-assisted monitoring, and making sure critical systems keep money flowing. Key topics include the balance between automation and human oversight, the importance of shared ownership of data across teams, regulatory pressures (FFIEC, DORA), and the need for accurate documentation and tools like machine data lakes to gain context and control. The main takeaway: protect customer trust by combining the right technologies, operating-model integration and people — focusing on vi...

In the pluggable optics industry every next generation is led by countless presentations and proposals at standards bodies meetings along with lots of lab development and testing behind the scenes. Right now the industry has its sights set on 3.2 terabit transceivers with 400 Gb per electrical lane. All those meetings and all that testing are happening as we speak. Today I am joined by John Calvin, Strategic Planner and Datacom Technology Lead at Keysight. John has been bridging the measurement science gaps of emerging telecom and datacom development efforts for 20 years. He has chaired multiple physical layer interoperability working groups and...

Ian's got two bone-to-pick this week: a guy lifting in slides, and a CVS receipt that could legitimately double as a scarf. Kat's here to talk him down from both grievances, and once she does, they pivot to something actually important: why all the shiny AI everyone's losing their minds over still needs boring old networking underneath it. Here's the thing: you can't train a world-changing model without connecting thousands of GPUs, and you can't connect them without infrastructure. Ian and Kat break down exactly what Cisco's doing behind the scenes—the plumbing that lets hyperscalers actually scale their AI. Ka...

Ian is flying solo BUT is joined by LinkedIn expert Darren McKee this week—founder of 531 Social and Darren McKee Co. Darren's been posting on LinkedIn almost every single day since March 2020, and yeah, he's got the receipts. He walks us through his journey from mail carrier and pizza guy to building a sales career that actually stuck, and spoiler: the daily posting thing actually worked. But here's where it gets weird: sometimes carefully researched posts tank while a random rant about a key fob blows up. We're talking hundreds of thousands of impressions. Why? And more importantly—why do comm...

This episode explores how AI agents, network sensors, and cloud-managed Meraki solutions are transforming workplaces across industries—from stadiums and events to critical infrastructure. Leaders share real-world use cases on security, hybrid work, real-time visibility, and practical deployments that balance automation with human oversight.

In the pluggable optics industry every next generation is led by countless presentations and proposals at standards bodies meetings along with lots of lab development and testing behind the scenes. Right now the industry has its sights set on 3.2 terabit transceivers with 400 Gb per electrical lane. All those meetings and all that testing are happening as we speak. Today I am joined by John Calvin, Strategic Planner and Datacom Technology Lead at Keysight. John has been bridging the measurement science gaps of emerging telecom and datacom development efforts for 20 years. He has chaired multiple physical layer interoperability working groups and is c...

This week, Kat is speaking Spanish, Ian is preparing to run an ungodly number of miles, and they’re both making fun of men with guitars—so naturally, it’s time to talk about onboarding. With Ian’s new hire starting this week, he shares his plan for helping her learn the role, navigate Cisco, and survive the truly unreasonable number of acronyms that Cisco has. They get into what actually makes someone feel supported in a new job: shadowing everything, meeting the right people, documenting processes, and knowing when to step in versus letting someone figure it out. Kat shares w...

Our best friend (and career coach) Sammy Brenner is back with a new role, a new language to learn, and approximately six months before she’s ready to teach any of it to us (her words). Sammy and Kat share what it’s really like to start over in a new part of the business: drinking from the fire hose, rebuilding trust, and reminding yourself that you were hired for a reason, even when doubts creep in. They also get into how to know when it’s time for a change, why networking should start long before you need a new jo...

In this episode Robin Olds interviews Tom Footitt, Cisco Senior Director of Product Management for Crosswork Assurance, about how AI — especially agentic systems and faster LLMs — is changing network traffic patterns and why observability and assurance are critical. They discuss new KPIs like time-to-first-token and inter-token latency, passive behavioral analysis of encrypted traffic, predictive AIOps, and the importance of security, sovereignty, and performance for service providers offering AI services.

Across Cisco's partner ecosystem, AI adoption isn't new — it's already happening at scale. So how do partners turn that momentum into trusted, real-world outcomes for their customers?  In this episode of Scaling AI in the Enterprise, we bring together an all-star partner panel featuring Trace3, Worldwide Technology (WWT), and Presidio to tackle the real challenges of scaling AI: the shift from dashboards to semantic layers, the discipline of clean data and governance, the balance between automation and human judgment, and why adoption is as much about culture and trust as it is about technology.   Host: Emma Carpenter, SVP Recurring Revenue Acceleration, Cisc...

This episode explores how AI agents, network sensors, and cloud-managed Meraki solutions are transforming workplaces across industries—from stadiums and events to critical infrastructure. Leaders share real-world use cases on security, hybrid work, real-time visibility, and practical deployments that balance automation with human oversight.

Deal registration isn’t paperwork. It’s partnership—and a powerful lever for growth. In this episode of Shift Happens, Jeff Edwards is joined by Tim Coogan, Gary DePreta, and Raminder Mann, CEO of ANM, Cisco’s 2025 Security Partner of the Year, for a candid look at what happens when Cisco and partners stop competing with each other and start competing together. From a $10M+ opportunity closed in under two weeks to $25M in competitive takeouts, hear how registering early creates the trust, investment and shared focus needed to win—and unlock what comes next: adoption, expansion and renewal. Why listen? 🎯...

This week is a true charcuterie board of an episode: a little career news, a little AI, and a surprisingly serious debate about crackers. Kat recaps her trip to San Francisco, shares some news about her new role, and explains why a tea leaf salad earned “best bite of the weekend.” Meanwhile, Ian reveals that he has very specific charcuterie standards and is now using Haiku almost exclusively because, apparently, he’s saving the world one AI prompt at a time. They also catch up on what they learned from Annie Hardy, get excited about Cisco’s new AI agents, and try...

In this month episode we interview Andrew Yourtchenko, old timer from TAC Firewall, who also was a Technical Marketing Engineer for IPv6, who was also a release manager for the VPP dataplane and who now is working with standards body around AI and IPv6.

In this episode of The Cisco AI Insights Podcast, hosts Rafael Herrera and Sónia Marques are joined by Cisco’s Technical Leader in Machine Learning Engineering, Dr. Catarina Carvalho, to explore her pioneering concept of "AI Ergonomics," which frames human engagement as a fundamental design principle for AI development rather than a post-development chore. The conversation examines the complexities of human-in-the-loop validation, highlighting how moving beyond simple binary feedback like "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" is essential for mitigating bias and ensuring AI systems align with practical human needs and well-being. Dr. Carvalho explains how incorporating cognitive interviews and soc...

In the pluggable optics industry every next generation is led by countless presentations and proposals at standards bodies meetings along with lots of lab development and testing behind the scenes. Right now the industry has its sights set on 3.2 terabit transceivers with 400 Gb per electrical lane. All those meetings and all that testing are happening as we speak. Today I am joined by John Calvin, Strategic Planner and Datacom Technology Lead at Keysight. John has been bridging the measurement science gaps of emerging telecom and datacom development efforts for 20 years. He has chaired multiple physical layer interoperability working groups and is c...

In this episode, industry leaders discuss how to redefine “good” technology today — weighing speed, agility and AI against security, ethics and human impact. Panelists share real examples, from digital avatars for pediatric care to network and industrial use cases, and explore how AI can enhance outcomes without replacing human judgment. The conversation highlights practical steps for bringing organizations along: training, transparency, governance and pragmatic pilots. The episode closes on a hopeful note about creative possibilities in healthcare and research while emphasizing the need for responsible, human-centered adoption.

Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) manages 1.4 million SRs annually, and today, 97% are touched by AI. As we shift from task-based automation to Agentic AI, some of these interactions are becoming "no-touch"—driving higher customer satisfaction and faster resolution. How did Cisco transform its Support at scale, and where is the IT services industry heading? In this episode of Scaling AI in the Enterprise, we focus on IT services delivery. Our panel shares advice on how to escape "pilot purgatory" and move into production, the critical necessity of a unified data strategy, and how to maintain deterministic outcomes in a probabilistic wo...

Back for part two of our split episode with the founder of Split Futures, Annie Hardy and jump right in where we left off...getting practical about choosing the right AI model—because apparently not every task requires the AI equivalent of a Nobel Prize winner. Annie breaks down when to use smaller models, why bigger isn’t always better, and how those choices connect to energy, water use, and building a more sustainable future. The conversation then turns to the humans behind all this technology. Annie challenges leaders to look beyond layoffs and efficiency gains and ask a much bett...

Your company bought all the AI tools and now nobody knows what to do with them. Sound familiar? Kat and Ian sit down with Annie Hardy, founder and Chief AI Architect at Split Futures, to unpack why leaders aren't listening, why measuring employees by "lines of code" is quietly torching everything, and why Gen Z is somewhere between anxious, angry, and low-key sabotaging the robots. You'll learn how to actually pick the right AI model (spoiler: sometimes you need an intern, not a Nobel laureate), why every search might be gulping a water bottle, and Annie's genuinely useful Code of...

Episode 37 kicks off Cisco Tech Stories' fourth season with a highlights reel of the best episodes from the past three years. Hosts Nico and Tristan revisit standout interviews and mini‑series, sharing short snippets that cover troubleshooting adventures, accessibility and disability in networking, eBPF, quantum computing, CCIE stories, cruise‑ship deployments and more. Listeners get a concise tour of the podcast’s top picks, practical lessons from Cisco engineers, and an invitation to suggest future guests or topics.

Jeff Schultz joins Jeetu Patel to delve into the evolution of the Cisco Portfolio and how this focus on critical business outcomes for the AI era is delivering real results for the ecosystem.

Jeetu and Anurag Dhingra explore the transformation of physical infrastructure and intelligent software as the foundation for the workplace. As the nature of work continues to evolve, the demand for environments that are both seamless and secure has never been higher.

95% of enterprise IT leaders plan to launch agentic AI projects — but 69% aren't ready. So, what's standing in the way?  In this episode of Scaling AI in the Enterprise, we bring together an expert panel to tackle the real engineering and organizational challenges of AI deployments: the probabilistic nature of AI agents, the limits of traditional testing, and why "making your prompt stronger" is not a strategy.  Host: Eric Knipp, SVP and GM, Cisco Customer Experience (CX) Americas  Guests:   Bhaskar Jayakrishnan, SVP of Engineering, Cisco Customer Experience (CX)  Dr. Lydia Chilton, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University  Sam Charrington, Host of the TWIML AI Podcast  Srini N...

As enterprise environments become increasingly distributed and complex, the volume of telemetry data has outpaced human capacity to analyze it. This has been future compounded by the challenges of tokenomics. Jeetu Patel sits down with the founders of Galileo to discuss how we are moving beyond passive dashboards toward a future of autonomous, intelligent agents that can reason through system issues in real time.

Jeetu Patel and Guru Shenoy discuss the evolution of how Cisco is working with some of its largest and most innovative customers as they transform to address the challenges and opportunities of AI.

Jeetu Patel, Matt Caufield and DJ Sampath tackle the shift toward a landscape where AI agents are no longer just assisting humans but are actively executing critical security tasks. As these agents take on more autonomy, the traditional pillars of cybersecurity, particularly identity, must undergo a radical evolution to ensure that our automated defenses remain both powerful and trustworthy.

Jeetu Patel, Nick, and Mohammad delve into our custom silicon strategy. While many see networking as a software-driven game, we discuss why many of the most significant breakthroughs are happening at the physical layer. We explore how Cisco’s unique approach to co-designing silicon alongside our software and systems portfolio is creating a level of performance and efficiency that simply cannot be achieved with off-the-shelf components.

Jeetu Patel and Kamal Hathi dive into how the addition of Splunk to the Cisco family is about more than just portfolio expansion; it’s about providing our customers with the most comprehensive platform for security and observability in the industry. By breaking down the barriers between the network and the data that runs on it, our customers can operate with unprecedented speed, confidence, and clarity.

Reimagining Cisco Security with Jeetu Patel and Peter Bailey by Cisco

Jeetu, Tom Gillis, Kevin Wollenweber, and Will Eatherton discuss why the "AI revolution" is fundamentally a networking challenge and how Cisco has evolved its portfolio to serve as backbone for the next generation of enterprise intelligence. By aligning our networking, compute, and security innovations, we are providing our customers with the foundation they need to move from experimentation to production at scale.

3. Cisco AI and Cisco Cloud Control with Jeetu Patel and DJ Sampath by Cisco

Jeetu and Anurag Dhingra explore the transformation of physical infrastructure and intelligent software as the foundation for the workplace. As the nature of work continues to evolve, the demand for environments that are both seamless and secure has never been higher.

Jeff Schultz joins Jeetu Patel to delve into the evolution of the Cisco Portfolio and how this focus on critical business outcomes for the AI era is delivering real results for the ecosystem.

This month on The Cisco AI Insights Podcast, hosts Rafael Herrera and Sónia Marques are joined by Cisco software engineer João Costa to explore Andrej Karpathy’s GitHub Gist on the LLM wiki pattern concept. It imagines how Large Language Models can move beyond one-off chat sessions and help build a persistent, interconnected knowledge base that grows and improves over time. The conversation examines how an LLM wiki turns raw sources such as meeting transcripts, research papers, websites, and project notes into structured markdown pages with cross-links between related concepts, creating something closer to a living digital brain than...

Welcome to another episode of 404 Script Not Found, where we start with sports betting, pivot to the emotional rollercoaster of a new fidget toy, and somehow land on the serious business of hiring. Ian and Kat dive into the wild world of corporate recruiting, where Ian admits he doesn’t read cover letters...Does anyone? We tackle the big questions: - Is it okay to use AI to write your resume? (Maybe, but don't be weird about it). - How do you handle an interview candidate who spends half the time talking about animal cruelty? (Hint: Don't be that guy). It...

This episode of Tech Unscripted explores how agentic AI, advanced networks like Wi‑Fi 7, and automation are transforming workplaces in higher education and live sports production. Leaders from Georgetown University and NBCUniversal discuss using AI to reduce administrative load, enable real‑time operational insights, ensure resilient low‑latency networks, and augment teams to deliver seamless global experiences for students, fans, and broadcast audiences.

AB sits down with Carrie Palin, Cisco’s Chief Marketing Officer, for a spirited conversation on a variety of topics, from her journey as a marketing leader across several tech giants, to the skills she looks for when building an incredible organization, to how AI is positively reshaping the marketing landscape and customer outcomes.

I'm sure the algorithm will love this one! This week on 404 Script Not Found, Ian and Kat tackle the wild world of LinkedIn-but only after settling the truly pressing issues first (like whether Messi is undeniably the GOAT). Once they finally stop getting distracted, they break down what makes a profile genuinely click-worthy and why the old "set it and forget it" strategy is doing you no favors. Pulling from Ian's recent presentations and the real-world questions Kat fields during her office hours, they cover all the essentials: profile makeovers, creating content that doesn't put people to sleep, and the...

AB joins Chef José Andrés and Brian Tippens for a powerful talk on food, disaster relief, and how technology helps World Central Kitchen deliver hope globally