Displaying items by tag: Cisco

2024 turned out to be horror year for telecommunications equipment providers throughout the world, with massively declining revenues, according to a prominent market analyst.

GPU and AI semiconductors vendor Nvidia has unveiled partnerships with several ICT industry players, including telecoms provider T-Mobile and networking giant Cisco, among other participants working on R&D for AI-native wireless networks for 6G.

Indian wireless telecoms provider Jio Platforms Limited (JPL), AMD, Cisco, and Nokia, have unveiled plans to build an Open Telecom AI Platform aimed at enhancing network security and efficiency.

GUEST RESEARCH:  Increasing CISO involvement in strategic decisions at the board level and improving legal support for cybersecurity staff among the corporate policy changes 

Communications giant Cisco plans to expand its partnership with NVIDIA to provide AI technology solutions to enterprises.

Barracuda Networks, Inc., a leading cybersecurity company providing complete protection against complex threats, today announced the appointment of Peter Alexander as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Alexander brings more than 25 years of experience driving growth for leading technology companies, including Fastly, Check Point, Harmonic, and Cisco. As CMO, Alexander is responsible for scaling Barracuda’s market growth strategy and execution.

COMPANY NEWS:  New Centre to Drive Innovation in Cyber Security Solutions, Strengthening Global Product Development & Talent Growth

GUEST OPINION:  With AI reshaping industries at unprecedented rates, findings from the 2024 CISCO Live Report suggest Australian companies are trailing, with only four percent ready to leverage the technology, a decline from the previous year.

Across APAC use cases for AI and cloud adoption are countless including enhancing cybersecurity through to transforming network resiliency, but there’s much more to be leveraged here. 

For example as  companies continue facing fast-paced changes to customer experience needs, including new demands for seamless digital experiences, real-time support and hyper-personalisation – sophisticated AI-driven capabilities becomes critical.

Some of Australia’s largest companies are betting big on AI too, including Telstra’s recent $700m AI investment with Accenture. 

Yet many businesses struggle to translate AI investment into tangible business value. AI projects often remain siloed, security concerns slow adoption, and enterprises lack the AI-ready infrastructure needed to scale.

But the remit is clear: get AI ready or risk falling behind. 

This poses questions company executives need to be asking, but first let’s get clear on where the key challenges lie:

Infrastructure Limitations:

Many organisations lack the necessary IT infrastructure to support AI initiatives – this hamstrings innovation efforts from the outset. Only 13% of Aussie companies possess the graphics processing units (GPUs) to handle future AI demands, and a mere 17% have comprehensive security measures to protect data within AI models .

Talent Shortage:

It’s no secret there’s a scarcity of skilled AI professionals in Australia, presenting a huge barrier to AI readiness. This talent gap limits companies' ability to effectively deploy and manage AI solutions.

Unmet Return on Investment (ROI) Expectations: 

Despite substantial investments in recent years, many Aussie companies are finding that AI initiatives are not delivering on anticipated returns. This has led to skepticism and slowed adoption rates.

These challenges aren’t industry specific either, but remain an issue across the board. So how do we bolster the AI adoption and readiness of Aussie companies? There are six questions forward-thinking CEO’s and CTO’s need to be asking themselves about AI:

1. Are we clear on our AI strategy and use cases?

With almost 70% of Australian enterprises investing in AI, and an additional 23% saying AI adoption is in their 12 month road map, it’s clear that Australian companies know AI readiness is a must-do, but a clear strategy is essential to maximise its value.

• What business problems are we solving with AI? And what could we be solving?
• Do we have a clear roadmap for integrating AI into our operations, products, or customer experience?

2. Do we have the right data infrastructure in place?

In Australia, 80% of consumers now expect personalised digital interactions and yet only 35% of enterprises say they’re confident in their AI data readiness to meet this demand.  And customer experience is just one consideration in your AI infrastructure plan.

• Is our data accurate, accessible, protected and well-organised?
• Are we leveraging internal and external data sources to unlock AI’s potential? 
• Do we have AI-Optimised customer experience (CX) infrastructure?
• What support should we invest in to do this better?

3. Do we have the right talent and expertise?

With the demand for AI infrastructure accelerating, the industry-wide skills gap will continue to hamstring AI adoption if not addressed in an innovative way. In-house talent is just one part of the equation.

• Do we have skilled data scientists, AI engineers, and domain experts?
• What channel partners and external experts are required to meet our strategy needs?
• Are our employees being upskilled to work alongside AI systems?

4. Is our organization culturally prepared for AI adoption?

AI readiness isn’t just about technology - embedding the right mindset into company culture is critical for adoption, too. Change is often met with resistance, and needs to be managed accordingly especially when it can be interpreted as a threat to peoples jobs.

• Are we fostering an AI mindset across teams?
• What is our plan to address change management and employee concerns about AI integration?
• How will we communicate these changes effectively to all stakeholders including leadership, employees, clients, investors and customers?

5. Are our governance and ethical frameworks robust?

As Australia moves increasingly towards tightening regulations around AI and AI adoption, enterprises are responsible for ensuring their AI models are fair, transparent, and compliant. And third party vendors and partners need to be held accountable, too.

• Do we have safeguards to ensure AI decisions are transparent, fair, and compliant with regulations?
• How are we mitigating potential biases in our AI models now and into the future?
• Is the technology we utilise from third party vendors and partners transparent? How do we hold them accountable to this?

6. Are we measuring the ROI of AI initiatives effectively?

While AI investment in Australia continues to grow, only 30% of Australian companies have clear, measurable ROI metrics on this ⁵. To drive successful AI adoption getting clarity on ROI is vital.

• Do we have metrics to evaluate the success of AI-driven projects? 
• How are we ensuring AI investments directly align with business goals and drive growth?
• Do we have the right strategic AI partners on board to achieve these objectives?

To understand how AI ready your company is, start by asking questions. Whilst AI remains cloudy and uncharted territory for many, have the courage to dive in and embrace it – the risk of not doing so is increasingly exponential.

COMPANY NEWS:  Joint solution helps customers accelerate private and hybrid cloud deployment, enhances operational consistency and reduces energy consumption

Infoblox Inc., a leader in cloud networking and security services, has announced it is expanding its New Zealand business with two new senior appointments as demand for the company’s services rises with government, financial services, retail and critical infrastructure customers.

Networking hardware giant Cisco has unveiled a solution to protect against security threats during AI transformation within enterprises.

GUEST INTERVIEW:  CJ Moses moves out of the shadows to discuss day-to-day issues at one of the world’s most scrutinised companies

GUEST OPINION: 

As a quick overview, key predictions included are:

• Nation-state cyberattacks, long-term cloud compromises, and data leakage risks will increase, making recovery from breaches harder 
• In the next five years, AI-driven cybersecurity will enhance operational efficiency for defenders, but the human element will remain crucial in interpreting data and making decisions. 
• Cyber risk quantification (CRQ) will be a core organizational practice for most CISOs in the next five years 
• CISOs will double down on risk management in 2025.
• Securing Agentic AI will be yet another key exposure occurrence

The drive for consolidating security capabilities will increase, with a view to leveraging unified security platforms. 

GUEST OPINION :  Illumio reveal cybersecurity trends for 2025

Datadog’s Cloud SIEM leverages modern architectures and machine learning to ensure organizations can meet their security goals without the limitations of outdated systems

COMPANY NEWS:  Dynatrace integrates with Microsoft security technology to enhance cloud security for customers

COMPANY NEWS: Peak Insight, an award-winning provider of Cisco Customer Experience, Hybrid Work, and Secure Networking solutions, has announced that it has been named the Telstra Cisco Partner of the Year for 2024, marking its second consecutive win in two years. The company was also recognised as a finalist for the Peter Carr Telstra Customer Excellence Award. 

COMPANY NEWS:  Sydney-headquartered customer experience and digital transformation company, Customer Science Group, has announced the launch of the AI Accelerator program, a packaged advisory and consulting solution providing company management with the opportunity to rapidly prove the value of AI’s return on investment in their contact centre operations and subsequently ready its adoption securely and in compliance with industry regulation.

Communications hardware vendor Cisco has unveiled new smart Wi-Fi 7 self-configuring AI-native access points and unified subscription licensing which the company says can enable smart spaces out-of-the-box.

Interactive, one of Australia's leading IT service providers, has partnered with FletcherTech, the technology division for Fletcher Building, an end-to-end supply chain provider for Australia's major construction and infrastructure projects, and dual listed on the NZX and ASX. Interactive has delivered leading network support services via its accreditation as a Cisco Gold Integrator and Gold Provider partner, supporting all devices across Fletcher Building's network.