Abdelilah Nejjari, Managing Director Cisco Gulf and Levant, spoke to CNME Editor Mark Forker, in which he highlighted their three-pillar strategy for success in enabling AI-ready datacentres, future workspaces, and delivering digital resilience for their customers, whilst he also reinforced Cisco’s commitment to making AI work for their customers.
MAKE AI WORK FOR YOU:
Nejjari kickstarted the conversation by reinforcing the importance of GITEX and highlighted what their theme was at this year’s event.
He reemphasised that you can’t have AI without the fundamental building blocks of infrastructure, networking and security.
“GITEX is always a great opportunity for us to meet with the industry and connect with our customers and partners. Our theme at this year’s GITEX is make ‘AI work for you’. And when we say that we don’t mean it necessarily from a consumer perspective but a business one. If you look at businesses all over the region, you’ll find that some are very advanced, whilst others are still determining what their AI strategy should be. In a recent survey we conducted, 64% of our customers said they had a strong strategy around AI, and they are starting out on the execution. Ultimately, businesses are trying to find ways in which AI can make their business more competitive. From a Cisco perspective, you can’t have AI without infrastructure, and there is no AI without networking and security. It is the fundamental block that enables AI and allows customers to develop and deploy their AI use-cases,” said Nejjari.
PILLARS OF SUCCESS:
Nejjari then explained that Cisco was also demonstrating their 3-pillar strategy at this year’s GITEX.
“Our first pillar is AI-ready datacentres, and within that specific pillar we are showcasing how networking, security and datacentre technology all work together in tandem to enable AI for our customers. The second pillar is around future workplaces. We are trying to determine how we can use the digital infrastructure to work from any place, anywhere at any time to connect the remote workforce securely and enable the business outcomes. The third pillar is all about digital resilience. Digital resilience for us at Cisco is mainly based on the Splunk offering. That acquisition, which was made a few years ago has worked incredibly well and we have completely integrated with those solutions that ensures the observability on the infrastructure and that enables our customers to get the most out of their infrastructure,” said Nejjari.
