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How a legacy hardware company reinvented itself in the AI age

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ZDNET's key takeaways

Behind-the-scenes providers such as Cisco keep the cloud and internet alive.

The 40-year-old company now positions itself as an AI infrastructure vendor.

The challenge: proactively supporting millions, if not billions of devices worldwide.

It's the nature of the market beast -- think about all the formerly booming tech providers that have disappeared over the years, either by acquisition or collapse: Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang, Compaq, just to name a few.

Yet, there are some that have evolved and adapted quite aggressively through the decades -- Microsoft from its personal computer roots to Azure and Copilot; Google from simple search engine to Google AI; Amazon from online bookseller to Amazon Web Services, Amazon Bedrock, and Amazon SageMaker; and Adobe from PostScript and PDFs to Firefly.

Also: Cisco rolls out AI agents to automate network tasks at 'machine speed' - with IT still in control

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