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Takeaways from Cisco's AI Summit Tech leaders from Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Intel examine the many ways AI will change the industry.

Some 15 tech luminaries from companies including Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft and Intel took to the stage at Cisco’s second annual AI Summit and talked about how AI technology will change the industry moving forward. www.networkworld.com/article/4127...

Azure outage disrupts VMs and identity services for over 10 hours A misconfiguration in Microsoft-managed storage accounts triggered cascading failures across virtual machine operations, managed identities, and developer workflows.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform suffered a broad multi-hour outage beginning on Monday evening, disrupting two critical layers of enterprise cloud operations.
www.networkworld.com/article/4127...

Top 11 network outages and application failures of 2025 ThousandEyes released its list of the 11 most notable Internet outages and application issues of 2025, along with recommendations to help network teams improve resilience.

System outages plagued organizations of all sizes in 2025, with major incidents exposing vulnerabilities across network infrastructure and the IT dependencies that define today’s distributed environments.

www.networkworld.com/article/4124...

Network engineers take on NetDevOps roles to advance stalled automation efforts As network automation matures, a new breed of hybrid professionals with network engineering and software development skills is emerging. But for enterprises, landing these IT pros isn’t about finding ...

As network automation evolves beyond scripts to a more sophisticated approach to network operations, a new skill set and role are emerging across enterprise environments: NetDevOps.

www.networkworld.com/article/4123...

Cisco adds intelligent policy enforcement to mesh firewall family Cisco's Mesh Policy Engine supports its own firewalls as well as third-party firewalls from vendors including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Juniper.

Cisco next month will deliver a core piece of its security management framework that is aimed at helping customers more effectively create and manage protection policies.

www.networkworld.com/article/4124...

China clears Nvidia H200 sales to tech giants, reshaping AI data center plans The limited approvals can ease immediate pressure on local hyperscalers but leave longer-term constraints in place, with implications for global enterprise AI infrastructure.

The limited approvals can ease immediate pressure on local hyperscalers but leave longer-term constraints in place, with implications for global enterprise AI infrastructure.
www.networkworld.com/article/4124...

Meta-Corning fiber deal signals a new bottleneck in AI infrastructure AI infrastructure limits are shifting from compute to networking, as fiber capacity becomes critical to data center scale.

Meta has announced a $6 billion, multi-year fiber supply agreement with Corning, highlighting how AI infrastructure constraints are shifting beyond compute and into the physical network. www.networkworld.com/article/4123...

DCN becoming the new WAN for AI-era applications The distributed cloud networking market is forecast to hit $21 billion by 2029 as enterprises abandon fragmented WAN architectures.

The tried and true enterprise WAN market is undergoing a shift and consolidating around a new architecture class. www.networkworld.com/article/4120...

F5 tackles AI security with new platform extensions F5's Guardrails blocks prompts that attempt jailbreaks or injection attacks, for example, while its AI Red Team automates vulnerability discovery in AI systems.

It has been ...awhile...since I last wrote on NGINX(The pervasive open source web application server has continue to grow under F5 and (like every other tech) is embracing the AI future
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www.networkworld.com/article/4118...

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If AI were a bubble, Big Tech wouldn’t be expanding compute at this scale. Yash Mehta reveals what these investments mean for bandwidth, latency and inference driven network demand.


#FoundryExpert #NetworkInfrastructure #AIReadiness

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Your RADIUS is fine. Your certificates are not. Swaitlana Agnihotri shows how one forgotten root CA was enough to break trust and stop network access cold.

#FoundryExpert #NetworkEngineering #SecureAccess

Dell bolsters PowerStore array with capacity, security features

Dell Technology has updated its PowerStore unified file and block storage array with increased capacity, stronger digital resilience, and simpler file management and promises to reduce total cost of ownership by 15%.
www.networkworld.com/article/4117...

Google warns grid connection delays are now the biggest threat to data center expansion With utilities quoting four‑to‑ten‑year wait times — and one offering a 12‑year study period — Google says grid constraints are becoming the defining limit on AI‑era data center growth.

Google says transmission grid connection delays of up to 12 years have become the biggest obstacle to powering its data centers, highlighting an infrastructure crisis that threatens to constrain cloud capacity expansion as AI workloads surge. www.networkworld.com/article/4117....

OpenAI turns to Cerebras in a mega deal to scale AI inference infrastructure The multibillion-dollar deal shows how the growing importance of inference is changing the way AI data centers are designed and operated.

OpenAI has signed a multibillion-dollar agreement to buy computing capacity from AI chip startup Cerebras Systems, as the ChatGPT maker looks to secure enough infrastructure to keep pace with surging user demand. www.networkworld.com/article/4117...

IBM pushes sovereign computing with a software stack that works across cloud platforms By decoupling sovereignty from dedicated data center regions, IBM's Sovereign Core aims to help CIOs meet rising regulatory scrutiny, automate continuous compliance, and deploy sensitive AI workloads ...

IBM has launched Sovereign Core, a software stack that aims to offer enterprises and governments full operational control over sovereign cloud deployments without relying on hyperscaler-managed regions. www.cio.com/article/4117...

Nvidia H200 chips in China: US says yes, China says no Just as the US approves exports to the country, Chinese customs officers have reportedly been told not to allow the chips into the country. What now?

A day after the US government cleared the way for Nvidia to sell its H200 processors to Chinese companies on a case-by-case basis, a published report has revealed Chinese custom officers have been told not to let them into the country. www.networkworld.com/article/4117...

US cybersecurity weakened by congressional delays despite Plankey renomination Sean Plankey’s renomination as CISA director offers some relief, but stalled legislation on cyber threat information sharing and state and local grants continues to strain the nation’s ability to coun...

Check out my latest CSO piece, which looks at the setbacks created by Plankey's confirmation delay and the other key priorities left dangling in Congress. Many thanks to Jim Lewis of CSIS, Ari Schwartz of Venable, Megan Stifel of the IST, and others. 1/4

www.csoonline.com/article/4116...

Cisco’s 2026 agenda prioritizes AI-ready infrastructure, connectivity The enterprise remains a key target for Cisco, which is keen to deliver the technologies to enable AI transformation, digital resilience, and workforce transformation.

The demand for AI infrastructure has already begun to impact Cisco’s earnings, and the vendor expects continued growth.

www.networkworld.com/article/4113...

Can retired naval power plants solve the data center power crunch?

In its application to the Department of Energy, a Texas power developer proposes to redirect two retired reactors to a data center project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

www.networkworld.com/article/4116...

Meta establishes Meta Compute to lead AI infrastructure buildout A new top-level effort unifies data center and network oversight as the company targets multi-gigawatt AI scale.

Meta has elevated AI infrastructure to a top-level strategic priority with the launch of Meta Compute, a new initiative that brings responsibility for building and operating data centers and networks under a single leadership structure. www.networkworld.com/article/4115...

The State of Enterprise Linux for networking Discover the state of Enterprise Linux for networking in 2026. Compare RHEL 10, SLES 16, and Ubuntu alongside NOS leaders like SONiC and Nvidia Cumulus.

As the networking stack shifts toward automation and the edge, we examine the key players and features driving enterprise Linux in 2026. www.networkworld.com/article/4114...

Lenovo unveils purpose-built AI inferencing servers

Lenovo Group Ltd. has introduced a range of new enterprise-level servers designed specifically for AI inference tasks. The servers are part of Lenovo’s Hybrid AI Advantage lineup, a family of inferencing devices. www.networkworld.com/article/4113...

Holes in Veeam Backup suite allow remote code execution, creation of malicious backup config files The vendor has issued a patch to close four holes in its flagship Backup & Replication suite; version 13 users are advised to audit their backup config files and closely monitor backup jobs.

Veeam says that four vulnerabilities could allow a person with certain oversight roles for its flagship Backup & Replication suite to do serious damage to – but not destroy – a backup database.

www.networkworld.com/article/4114...

Ethernet groups keep 2026 focus on higher bandwidth, AI demands As AI networking requirements grow, the Ethernet Alliance will take up a 400G/lane project while the Ultra Ethernet Consortium will prioritize flexible congestion management and small-message performa...

www.networkworld.com/article/4113...

Lenovo-Nvidia partnership targets faster AI infrastructure rollouts Lenovo’s “AI Cloud Gigafactory” model promises speed and scalability for enterprises, but experts caution that utility, cooling, and fiber bottlenecks could slow adoption.

Lenovo is pitching a faster path to enterprise AI infrastructure, pairing its liquid-cooled systems and networking with Nvidia platforms to deliver what it calls “AI cloud gigafactories” designed to reduce deployment timelines from months to weeks. www.networkworld.com/article/4113...

Arista rides AI wave, but battle for campus networks looms Arista has outmaneuvered competitors while focused on high-performance data center and cloud networks. But as it eyes a greater role in enterprise campus and branch infrastructure, it needs to strengt...

Arista is looking for additional growth in two network specific markets that hold tremendous promise but also some risks as it steers toward a head-on collision with Cisco.

www.networkworld.com/article/4111...

Everything you needed to know about FLOPs

The Top 500 list of supercomputers has come and gone again, and vendors have engaged in their usual round of self-congratulations and performance posting. All the talk of FLOPs can get a little confusing, so we’re going to try and cut through the marketing speak. www.networkworld.com/article/4112...

Wi-Fi 8 in 2026: Next-gen wireless standard prioritizes reliability over speed gains While Wi-Fi 7 adoption is accelerating among enterprises, retail Wi-Fi 8 products could arrive as early as summer 2026. Wi-Fi 8 is aimed at boosting reliability and lowering latency in dense, interfer...

www.networkworld.com/article/4112...

Google agrees to acquire infrastructure builder Intersect to accelerate capacity development Google will work with Intersect to explore emerging technologies and increase and diversify energy supply, the tech giant says.

Google parent Alphabet is taking steps to enable speedier addition of capacity to feed AI’s increasing demands with its announcement of plans to buy data center and energy company Intersect. www.networkworld.com/article/4110...

Top 5 enterprise tech priorities for 2026 IT professionals share their views on the most pressing enterprise technology projects for 2026.

www.networkworld.com/article/4108...