Cisco wished to make ggeneratedive AI obtainable to each single worker in a safe, cost-optimized means. To do that, Cisco IT developed an inside AI-powered assistant — purpose-built with safety — designed to raise how staff worokay. Extra than simply one other device, Cisco’s inside AI assistant drives vital effectivity and frictionless experiences for workers – with 73% of customers reporting elevated productiveness and a median time financial savings of 5 hours per week.
As AI instruments like ChatGPT emerged within the market, we noticed each alternative and threat. Whereas Cisco acknowledged the transformative energy of AI and the outcomes these instruments may allow for our group, the rising utilization of public AI options additionally raised essential security and safety considerations for enterprises.
Seven in ten executives consider generative AI within the enterprise introduces new safety dangers for firm information and are involved about staff inputting personally identifiable info (PII), consumer information, or propriety info into engines like ChatGPT and Google Gemini (Salesforce, 2023). Counting on exterior AI providers may expose delicate Cisco information to public coaching units — a threat we weren’t keen to take.
We would have liked an answer that made generative AI obtainable to each single worker, irrespective of the place they work from, whereas conserving Cisco information safe and inside.
First steps to a safe resolution
From day one, our precedence was conserving Cisco’s information safe and in-house, not in another person’s coaching set. The unique structure Cisco’s Improvement Group launched in April 2023 was designed to offer a safe atmosphere for workers to soundly experiment with AI instruments. It was an enterprise-wide resolution powered by Azure OpenAI fashions that maintained a dialog immediate retailer, audited prompts in actual time, and robotically redacted personally identifiable info (PII) previous to processing.
Eight months after launch, the Cisco IT design crew stepped in to reinforce consumer expertise and drive broader adoption. Initially, solely 30% of the workforce — primarily technical staff — had been utilizing the device. The purpose was to make sure all staff, no matter their technical background, may gain advantage from it.
The crew took a user-centric and data-driven strategy, conducting foundational and generative analysis to totally perceive what staff wanted from this device. By leveraging all of the obtainable information about consumer ache factors, figuring out what staff had been looking for, and evaluating it with the highest areas of friction, the design crew constructed out key use circumstances for the assistant. These included options to assist staff brainstorm, code, translate, generate content material, find out about Cisco merchandise, and extra — in the end lifting the load of on a regular basis work.
This analysis revealed that the primary factor staff had been on the lookout for was IT assist — that means the true potential of Cisco’s inside AI assistant might be unlocked via ingesting Cisco information. This grew to become the very best precedence.
Shifting ahead to assist staff
We began by ingesting Cisco Folks and Communities and Assist Zone information (articles, web sites, and stories) into the device. We had Retrieval Augmented Era (RAG) options constructed for Cisco.com and SalesConnect (inside content material portal for all gross sales assets) functions earlier. The identical capabilities had been added to the interior AI assistant as properly to gauge the wants of gross sales customers — a target market our crew wished to handle.
With this high-quality Cisco information ingested within the device, staff can use AI for assist case troubleshooting, artistic writing, information evaluation, questions, and even technical duties like community monitoring and configuration. It will probably additionally streamline the onboarding course of for brand new hires by supporting laptop computer or cell phone setup and answering questions on expense stories.
Establishing an ongoing working mannequin
Cisco’s inside AI assistant was constructed for speedy integration, strong safety, and actionable insights, all at a world scale. That is supported by an ongoing working mannequin the place our crew repeatedly displays consumer suggestions and delivers options with agility, creating an iterative, full-circle course of.
To design an inside assistant finest suited to Cisco’s international workforce, we developed a layered structure round these elements:
- AI agent, MCP, and enterprise search platform: The AI Agent and Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP) platform hosts all of the AI brokers and MCP servers developed utilizing open-source AI frameworks. Its modular, plug-and-play structure offers the Enterprise AI/ML engineering crew the flexibility to onboard new AI brokers and search functions with out operational overhead. The platform additionally gives LLM-as-a-service and RAG-as-a-service providing to over 4300+ groups throughout Cisco.
- Enterprise AI agent registry and MCP registry: This registry permits staff to register and join all distant AI brokers and distant MCP servers developed by groups throughout the enterprise with standardized agent and MCP safety, agentic protocols and entitlements in order that staff can securely entry this linked agentic mesh from the interior assistant.
- Hybrid multi-cloud mannequin and AI agent orchestration: Utilizing a federated strategy, our inside AI assistant connects to a number of Cisco AI brokers and main AI fashions comparable to Azure OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini and Cisco’s inside giant language mannequin — Deep Community Mannequin. The platform robotically routes every request to the most effective obtainable AI mannequin for deployments based mostly on workload, latency, reliability, and use-case. This ensures customers at all times get quick, correct outcomes.
- Constructed-in safety, information governance, and observability: Safety is woven into each layer of the device, guaranteeing our office stays resilient towards evolving threats whereas enabling innovation. Cisco’s AI Protection guardrails are used to scan consumer prompts and MCP server instruments for malicious code and hidden or missed threats.
- Superior information operations and AI-driven enterprise affect: Area particular AI brokers have been developed to allow clever automation of enterprise processes by leveraging AI prepared enterprise information.
This platform, alongside our ongoing working mannequin, allows us to deploy new options and effectively and persistently refine our roadmap — guaranteeing we keep on the forefront of AI innovation.
“Designed with a security-first mindset, our inside AI assistant has highly effective guardrails that robotically detect and redact delicate information earlier than it’s despatched to a public AI mannequin — giving our staff an clever companion they will belief.” – Sujith Joseph, Principal Engineer, Cisco
Driving higher effectivity throughout our workforce
Since its launch, Cisco’s inside AI assistant has dealt with greater than 21 million interactions, serving 100,000+ customers throughout our international workforce.
Cisco’s inside AI assistant is greater than only a chatbot. It has rapidly grow to be probably the most extensively used AI device at Cisco, facilitating a median of 156,000 day by day interactions and driving higher effectivity as 73% of customers reported elevated productiveness and a median time saved of 5 hours per week.
That is made doable by options and developments presently obtainable within the device, together with:
- Entry to the newest AI fashions
- AI brokers and LLM orchestration
- Knowledge and picture evaluation
- PowerPoint era
- Private RAG (RAG on consumer’s private information in OneDrive, and so on.)
- Limitless Deep Analysis (Analysis stories utilizing Cisco inside information and internet information)
- Knowledge evaluation AI agent
- Enterprise AI Agent and Connector Registry (Integration of distant AI brokers and MCP servers)
Classes discovered alongside the way in which
AI instruments are solely ever as dependable as the info they’re skilled on. One problem we confronted early on was guaranteeing that we had been solely ingesting clear, high quality, and structured information into the device. Something much less may actually lower the standard of the responses and the usefulness of the answer. The Dev Group carried out continuous and rigorous testing to assist be certain that the assistant doesn’t hallucinate and persistently gives updated and correct responses.
Moreover, driving adoption throughout our international workforce introduced challenges, particularly amongst AI-cautious or non-technical staff. Regardless of the answer’s approval for extremely confidential Cisco information, there was a stage of apprehension surrounding its use and potential misuse. This spurred an effort to upskill our staff by creating efficient demos, enablement assets, and rising normal AI consciousness.
Our user-driven, design-led strategy was essential for navigating these challenges and allowed us to construct a device that caters to the wants of our various workforce. We proceed to finish generative analysis to grasp how our staff use the AI assistant and the way it will resonate with them of their day-to-day work.
From product to platform
AI is remodeling industries at an unprecedented fee. Whereas most organizations acknowledge the pressing must undertake AI applied sciences and instrumentsmany are usually not totally ready to successfully leverage AI. At Cisco, we all know that AI is now not a futuristic idea. We’re repeatedly innovating internally — creating AI-powered instruments, securing them, and in the end empowering our staff to do their finest work daily.
Constructing on its sturdy basis, Cisco is concentrated on evolving the AI assistant from a product right into a dynamic platform, empowering staff to have a hand in shaping their AI expertise. The Agent Registry and upcoming Agent Builder options will allow customers to tailor the device to finest match their wants at work. Not solely will this enhance the general usefulness and worth of the AI assistant, however it would additionally assist upskill our workforce, constructing a extra technically proficient and AI-fluent worker inhabitants.
As a dedication to Cisco’s funding in AI, the Cisco Automation and AI Middle was lately created to concentrate on increasing the adoption of AI. Trying forward, the imaginative and prescient for the interior AI assistant is to grow to be a dependable, always-on companion that may seamlessly combine into each workflow, anticipate wants, and allow groups to concentrate on what issues most.
The interior AI assistant isn’t simply altering how we work at Cisco; it’s a cornerstone of constructing a future-proofed office that’s safe, adaptable, and prepared for what’s subsequent.
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