Cisco Live: Aruna Ravichandran on Trust, AI Agents, and the Next Era of Networking

What happens when the newest users on your network aren't people at all? At Cisco Live, I sat down with Aruna Ravichandran, SVP and CMO for AI, Networking, and Collaboration at Cisco, to discuss a shift that could change how organizations think about networks, operations, and AI over the coming years. For decades, enterprise networks have been built around human behavior. People work predictable hours, take holidays, and generally follow familiar patterns. AI agents are different. They work continuously, analyze information around the clock, and increasingly act as digital teammates that can help organizations monitor, troubleshoot, and improve operations at a scale that would be impossible for humans alone. During our conversation, Aruna explained why AI is no longer just an application discussion. As organizations deploy more digital teammates, networks must support a new type of user that never sleeps, never stops learning, and can help identify issues before employees even arrive at work. We explore Cisco's vision for AgenticOps, the role of Cisco Cloud Control as a unified command center, and how AI-driven operations are helping reduce complexity for teams already overwhelmed by alerts, dashboards, and operational overhead. Aruna also shared her perspective on one of the biggest challenges facing the industry today: trust. While the technology is advancing rapidly, organizations need confidence that their digital teammates can make reliable recommendations and support critical operations without removing human oversight. That balance between automation and accountability sits at the heart of Cisco's approach. We also discuss why domain expertise still matters in the age of AI, how Cisco is drawing on decades of networking experience to build purpose-built models, and why the next few years may see every IT professional supported by an expanding team of digital coworkers. If you've been wondering how AI will move beyond chat interfaces and become part of everyday operations, this conversation offers an interesting look at where networking, automation, and AI are heading next. How many digital teammates do you think you'll be working alongside in the next few years, and what tasks would you trust them to handle first?     Useful LInks Anurag Dhingra's blog DJ Sampath's blog Aruna's LinkedIn post re. The AgenticOps stats she mentioned Press Release