I wasn’t on the ground at Cisco Live in Las Vegas this year, but I stayed closely plugged in, comparing notes in real time with Joseph Blankenship, Carlos Rivera, and James Plouffe, who were navigating the show floor, breakout sessions, and keynotes (their blog on Cisco Live 2026 is coming soon!). My own take is bigger than the event and more around Cisco’s platform journey.

Cisco Live 2026 didn’t roll out a wave of shiny new boxes; instead, it doubled down on where the networking industry is already heading: platforms. While most vendors focus on policy consistency across the data center, campus, and remote sites, Cisco is pushing harder into AI-ready infrastructure and tighter security integration. Translation: less about speeds and feeds, more about stitching together network domains into something that looks like a businesswide fabric. At the center of this is Cloud Control, a cross-domain control layer meant to unify networking, security, compute, and observability into a single plane where both humans and AI operate from the same data and policy model.

From a Forrester perspective, this is the direction we’ve been calling out for a while: Dashboards aren’t platforms. Cloud Control is Cisco’s attempt to make that leap: Normalize the data, align policy, and theoretically enable workflows across domains. But let’s be honest, the real question (because there’s always one) is whether this actually drives cross-domain action or just gives you a really polished console. It aligns with the broader shift toward businesswide networking fabrics, but Cisco is still deep in the integration work to make that vision real, even as others are now marketing it as something new.

For networking professionals, this is where a little skepticism is healthy. Vendors are starting to converge on the same business outcomes, but that doesn’t mean the underlying solutions are the same or even close. What looks like a “platform” on a slide is often a collection of separate products with different architectures, operational models, and cost structures hiding underneath. Don’t assume consistency just because the messaging is consistent; dig into how it’s built, what it takes to run, and whether it actually aligns with your long-term strategy, or you’ll end up paying for integration work that the marketing conveniently glossed over.

Again, stay tuned for the team’s overview of the event. If you’re a client and would like to connect via inquiry, email inquiry@forrester.com.