At WebexOne, Cisco’s Jeetu Patel argues the agent era will be won on context, cost and control
For as long as Cisco Systems Inc. has held its WebexOne event, the show has aimed to drive thought leadership in the collaboration industry. This year, with artificial intelligence on tap, it had its fair share of unified communications and contact center. But more importantly, it was somewhat of a coming-out party for the “new […] The post At WebexOne, Cisco’s Jeetu Patel argues the agent era…
Cisco Systems Inc. held its WebexOne event, aiming to drive thought leadership in the collaboration industry with a focus on artificial intelligence and unified communications. At the event, President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel unveiled a new "One Cisco" vision, consolidating the company's portfolio into a single AI platform with Webex as the central hub for people and agents.
Patel outlined five key forces shaping the market: agents as the new workforce, inference as the new workload, tokens as the new currency, trust as the new catalyst, and control as the new moat. He emphasized that agents are becoming more autonomous, acting as digital workers rather than just software tools. Patel also revealed how Cisco achieved this transformation, highlighting the development of the Cisco Control Hub, Cisco Cloud Control, and Silicon One platforms.
He stressed that context is crucial for agents to be useful, with 80% of enterprise knowledge buried in meetings. The most significant announcements centered on integrations, such as integrating Claude in Webex with OpenAI's dots personal agent. Cisco's unique advantage lies in its data from Splunk, security, and networking, which provides insights into user behavior and location.
Patel mentioned that agent token consumption surpassed human consumption in February and is currently five times higher, leading to increased network bandwidth usage. By the end of the month, every Cisco manager will know their token budget. The adoption of agents will reshape IT cost models and network capacity planning, areas where Cisco has a clear interest.
Trust is essential for agent adoption, as agents require access to calendars, email, and credit cards. Patel compared agents to teenagers, noting their intelligence and lack of fear of consequences. Ensuring security and observability is vital, as both prompt injection and agent drift appear in telemetry. Cisco AI Defense, with live telemetry and Splunk observability, is running Webex AI Agents natively, an advantage over competitors who would need to partner for such security.
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