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When companies begin taking the first steps toward AI adoption, one of the first pieces of advice they receive is to address the quality of their data. However, another foundational element that is often overlooked, but is just as critical to the success of AI deployment, is network infrastructure.
At Cisco Live, ZDNET spoke with Anurag Dhingra, SVP and GM of the Enterprise Connectivity and Collaboration Group, to learn more about the role network infrastructure plays in the AI revolution. Dhingra stressed the importance of taking action now, as he doesn't see a future in which network infrastructure could be an afterthought.
Also: AI agents will be ambient, but not autonomous - what that means for us
"The reason network infrastructure is a bottleneck for AI is that you can already see the span of AI agents," said Dhingra. "Can you imagine having multiple agents that work like humans, at the speed of machines, and at the scale of machines--generating much more traffic."
AI agents are showing up everywhere
The era of AI agents that can do tasks on your behalf is beginning. An orchestration of AI agents will work together to assist humans by accessing the same resources humans do, including the web, YouTube, and more. That will inevitably test organizations' network infrastructure, as it adds a much larger number of individuals, whether people or agents, vying for the same connectivity.
The result? A similar experience to what you get when you go to a stadium in which too many people are competing for the same service -- latency and degraded performance. Organizations must plan for this shift by ensuring their network infrastructure can support not just more users, but a more complex and constant load profile.
Beyond the pervasiveness of AI agents in the workplace, there is also work being done to make models more specialized, smaller, cheaper, and less computationally demanding. These developments are making it possible for these models to be able to run locally on devices.
"Those two things come together and lead to agents showing up everywhere in the workplace; it won't just be data centers," said Dhingra.
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