Many AI conversations as we speak middle on how AI ought to be deployed, secured, and managed in the true world. At Purple Hat Summit 2026, held on the Georgia World Congress Heart, the message is obvious: the way forward for AI is hybrid, it’s distributed, and it’s constructed on a basis of deep, collaborative engineering.
To assist organizations thrive on this actuality, Cisco has developed not solely highly effective {hardware}, but in addition a deep integration between Cisco infrastructure and Purple Hat’s open-source ecosystem that’s designed to resolve a number of the most urgent challenges for contemporary enterprises from the info middle core to the furthest edge.
Learn on to be taught extra about Cisco and Purple Hat’s collaboration, in addition to further insights from Purple Hat Summit.
A partnership constructed for the AI period
The collaboration between Cisco and Purple Hat has developed far past fundamental interoperability. Right now, it’s a complete, deep-stack partnership that spans compute, networking, safety, and observability.
We’re seeing this maturity throughout a number of key areas:
- Compute and AI infrastructure: By our joint work on Cisco AI PODs and Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility with NVIDIA, we’re offering validated architectures that permit organizations to scale AI workloads with confidence.
- Networking and automation: By embedding Ansible into the material of our networking options, we’re enabling groups to deal with community configuration as code, simplifying the administration of advanced, multicloud environments.
- Observability and safety: The synergy between Splunk and Purple Hat, mixed with Isovalent’s eBPF-powered networking and safety capabilities inside OpenShift, gives a degree of visibility and safety that’s key for contemporary, cloud-native purposes.
See the long run in motion: The present flooring
At our Purple Hat Summit sales space, we’re bringing this imaginative and prescient to life by 4 distinct, high-impact demonstrations:
Safe multi-agents from core to edge (Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility with NVIDIA): We’re showcasing a Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility with NVIDIA for agentic fleets. Utilizing Cisco Unified Edge with high-performance GPUs for real-time edge detection and Cisco AI PODs for core LLM insights, we’ll exhibit how Cisco AI Protection gives runtime guardrails to forestall immediate injection and information leakage throughout your complete lifecycle.
The sting expertise (Cisco Unified Edge and AI-powered stay hologram assistant): Attendees can work together with a hologram customer support agent powered by an OpenShift container operating regionally on Cisco Unified Edge. By using a small language mannequin (SLM) from Arcee AI, we’ll present that hyper-personalized, low-latency AI experiences can run reliably on the edge.
Unified management (Cisco Intersight and Splunk Observability Cloud): We’re debuting the brand new Cisco Intersight OpenShift plugin, offering direct visibility into UCS {hardware} well being. Attendees may even see how the Intersight Ansible assortment automates day-2 operations, whereas Splunk Observability Cloud gives deep insights into AI agent efficiency.
Community as code (Cisco Nexus Dashboard): Our crew will exhibit the way to construct and deploy a complete VXLAN EVPN information middle material modeled as code. By leveraging Cisco Nexus Dashboard’s REST API with Ansible, we’re showcasing a real “No-code/Low-code” strategy to infrastructure, full with GitOps and CI/CD pipeline validation.
Get professional insights: Talking periods
Past the sales space, our specialists are taking to the stage to offer a technical deep dive into the structure powering these improvements:
- Breakout session: Inside safe AI: Eugene Minchenko (Cisco) and Stephen Malkinson (Purple Hat) are main a technical session on how Purple Hat AI Enterprise integrates with Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility with NVIDIA and the way the Purple Hat AI Inference Server works with Cisco Unified Edge. They’ll stroll attendees by the Cisco Unified Edge for Purple Hat Edge Design Information, offering a blueprint for deploying and optimizing AI workloads with built-in instruments and confirmed designs.
- Lightning discuss: AI made easy and security-focused: Ramya Korada (Cisco) will discover the way to speed up safe, trusted AI adoption with out operational complexity. She’ll spotlight how Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility with NVIDIA, along with Purple Hat, presents a constant, enterprise-grade basis for production-ready, scalable innovation, permitting groups to deal with enterprise outcomes quite than infrastructure administration.
Why platform pondering issues
The widespread thread throughout all these demos and periods is the shift towards “platform pondering.” Whether or not it’s the mixing of Splunk and Ansible for automated troubleshooting, or the compatibility of Isovalent with OpenShift, our purpose is to offer a basis that’s easy to deploy on day 0, straightforward to function on day 1, and resilient by day N.
From planning to participation
For years, the trade has been in a “planning” part with roadmaps, pilots, and theoretical architectures. Purple Hat Summit 2026 indicators that we’ve got moved firmly into the “participation” part. Organizations are actually deploying AI in methods which might be sensible, safe, and aligned with their current operational realities.
Cisco and Purple Hat are dedicated to serving to be certain that as you’re taking these subsequent steps, your infrastructure is just not a bottleneck, however a catalyst for innovation.
If you happen to’re able to discover these options additional, we’ve developed sources that will help you get began: