Cisco made a broad push into agent AI this week at its annual live conference in Las Vegas, launching a unified infrastructure management platform along with networking, security and observability announcements aimed at enterprises grappling with how to run IT environments increasingly populated by autonomous AI agents.
At the center of it all is Cisco Cloud Control. It integrates networking, security, compute, observability and collaboration products from companies including Meraki, Nexus, Intersight, Splunk and Collaboration into a single interface, allowing operators and AI agents to work on shared data and shared context.
“It’s no longer about humans clicking through dashboards and following what agents are doing,” DJ Sampath, senior vice president and GM of AI Software and Platforms at Cisco, said in a press briefing at the event.
“A truly collaborative operating model begins when agents do the heavy lifting and humans remain in control of what matters.”
At the heart of Cloud Control is the AI Canvas, a collaborative workspace where operators and agents work together to investigate and resolve incidents using live infrastructure data.
The work queue displays recommendations, root cause analysis, and confidence scores for human review before changes are made.
Cisco says things persist across shifts and escalations, so there’s no need to reframe the picture every time a new team member discovers an issue.
The design environment, called Cloud Control Studio, is targeted for late 2026 and will provide customers and partners with the ability to build custom agents and applications directly within the platform.
Agent Builder connects to over 50 third-party platforms via native connectors or Model Context Protocol, while App Builder is built with OpenAI’s Codex for natural language-based workflow creation.
Cloud Control Marketplace launches with integrations spanning IT service management tools including ServiceNow and Atlassian, identity providers including Okta, Microsoft Entra Identity and Ping Identity, and AI platforms including Anthropic, OpenAI and NVIDIA.
Cisco does not charge separately for Cloud Control. The platform is included in the existing tier of the Cisco 360 Partner Program, and partners expect to generate revenue through services rather than licenses.
“The commercial opportunity is to use Cisco Cloud Control to extend and deepen the customer relationships our partners already have,” said Alex Pujols, vice president of global partner engineering.
Networking becomes autonomous
On the networking side, Cisco announced Agentic Actions for campus and branch networks, entering beta with Meraki in June. This function follows a closed loop of detection, diagnosis, resolution, verification, and deployment. The Digital Twin feature, launching in alpha in July, uses real software images rather than mathematical models to run an emulated replica of the production network, allowing agents to test changes before they are implemented.
Cisco also announced Multicloud Fabric, a cloud-delivered service that connects branch offices, data centers, and cloud workloads across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and neocloud providers without any customer-side hardware. It includes zero trust routing, cloud firewall service chaining, and built-in ThousandEyes and Splunk observability. “Cisco Cloud Control is seamlessly configured and ready to use with the push of a button, and all connections are connected within minutes,” said Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Connectivity and Collaboration.
Agent security and identity
Cisco is expanding Live Protect, its runtime vulnerability protection, to campus and branch smart switches, and will also launch secure routers later this year. This feature applies compensatory control to running devices without reboots or maintenance windows.
On the identity side, Cisco is introducing Agentic IAM, a temporary access model offered through Cisco Secure Access that scopes permissions for specific tasks rather than assigning permanent roles.
Splunk and Agentic SOC
Cisco’s Data Fabric, powered by Splunk, has received a significant update. Unified search capabilities now query data across multiple environments without having to move or copy data to Splunk. AI Toolkit Agent Builder adds domain-specific models for working with machine data, and Turnkey Machine Data Lake uses AI to automate schema management.
Building on top of that, Agentic SOC deploys special-purpose security agents responsible for detection and response.
Cisco also confirmed new hardware at the event, including the C9550 Core switch, 8100 to 8600 series security routers, outdoor Wi-Fi 7 access points, IR1000 industrial router, and Cisco Board Pro G3.
Global availability of Cloud Control is not confirmed. The platform will remain in controlled availability in the U.S. while Cisco works through its initial cohort of customers and partners.