Cisco hopes to play a key role as organizations look to consolidate security services

“Managed security will no doubt be the best area for organizations to focus on consolidation,” comments Kartika Prihadi, Vice President of Partner Sales and Routes to Market in Asia Pacific, Japan, and Greater China at Cisco.

AI in cybersecurity is quickly becoming a game changer in the industry. More organizations feel that the combination of Generative AI capabilities in cybersecurity is helping them not only have better management over their cybersecurity but also addresses some of the skills shortages they are facing.

Cybersecurity vendors are also embedding more GenAI capabilities in their offerings as they look to cater to customer demand. Interestingly, organizations are also looking to consolidate their cybersecurity vendors as they upgrade their security capabilities.

According to reports, the average organization can have up to a dozen different security consoles to manage. Skills shortage in the field of cybersecurity is making it harder to manage multiple consoles, which is why organizations are opting for AI in cybersecurity.

As businesses look to embark on consolidating their cybersecurity portfolio in 2025, Cisco believes it has the capability to provide organizations with the right capabilities in their network and cybersecurity. The networking company acquisition of Splunk has created a buzz in the industry, especially in its observability capabilities in network security.

Cisco is also in the midst of revamping its partner ecosystem. While Cisco 360, the new partner program only kicks off in 2026, the company is already helping partners improve their capabilities in network and cybersecurity as they look to offer customers the best service in the industry.

“We are embedding AI into all our portfolio. We are developing a common framework about how we do that as well. I think that's a great way for partners to be able to use and also show the value of AI. The focus has to be on how we can use AI in the day-to-day operations, either teaching the customer how to use it or them using it themselves to improve their efficiency and also efficacy,” said Kartika Prihadi, Vice President of Partner Sales and Routes to Market in Asia Pacific, Japan, and Greater China at Cisco.

For Prihadi, he believes AI will help Cisco in its portfolio, especially in areas like networking and security where collaboration will be more effective. Cisco is already using AI to make it more effective solutions and Prihadi believes that’s the value that partners can showcase to customers.

“We emphasize secure networking, which is the marriage between security and networking. We want to leverage our strengths in networking, and we believe that security and networking cannot be pulled apart, they have to be sold together. I think that is still one of the largest opportunities we have today because the security span is not going down,” added Prihadi.

On the trend of organizations moving towards vendor consolidation, Prihadi hopes Cisco can be a winer in this given the fact that their security portfolio has significantly grown, combined with the acquisition of Splunk.

“We get feedback from our partners, and they are feeling very good about it now, despite the missteps in the past. If you look at this year, we’re already looking into AI-ready data centers. Even though the use cases are still in development, we see an opportunity to build up. There's no AI without data and data depends on networking. So, it’s all linked. You need high-speed networking efficiency for data for AI, and you need to be secure,” explained Prihadi.

Managed security services

Another area on consolidation which Prihadi believes Cisco has an edge will be on managed security. For Prihadi, managed security will no doubt be the best area for organizations to focus on consolidation. This is why he feels Cisco needs to be logically guiding businesses in.

“Growing the managed service business is imperative. We're rolling out managed XDR, managed firewall, and managed secure networking. Our managed service business is growing double digits. The demand from partners is significant. And because it's growing, partners need to be capable of also offering. We see now managed services as something every partner should think about in all the go-to-markets for them, be it a traditional system integration, or managed service, or other things,” said Prihadi.

He emphasized that for Cisco, partners need to develop technology practices around Cisco. For this, Cisco’s role will be to help them develop this practice and then go-to-market in whichever form the customer needs, be it a managed or as a project.

With that said, Prihadi believes the new Cisco 360 program will be beneficial for partners in understanding their value better and also knowing their strengths and areas that they can best focus on to be successful.