Cisco and Nvidia announced new data center integrations aimed at simplifying the challenges of building and maintaining artificial intelligence (AI) compute environments.

The two vendors are now offering simplified cloud-based and on-premises AI infrastructure, networking and software – including infrastructure management, security tools and end-to-end AI observability. Nvidia’s AI Enterprise software, which supports advanced AI and generative AI (genAI) workloads with pre-trained models and development tools, is also now available on Cisco’s global price list.

In addition, Nvidia’s latest Tensor Core GPUs are now available to work with Cisco’s M7 generation of UCS rack and blade services, including Cisco UCS X-Series and UCS X-Series Direct. This integration will support increased performance for a wide range of AI and data-heavy workloads in the data center or at the edge.

Cisco and Nvidia also partnered to develop Ethernet networking-based services that will be sold through Cisco channel partners. These services will provide professional services and support from channel partners similarly dedicated to helping enterprises deploy graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters on Ethernet infrastructure.

AI can transform modern businesses, but only with an in-depth understanding of the way AI workloads change the requirements of data center infrastructure. This partnership between Cisco and Nvidia joins complementary technologies that push enterprises “to realize the full potential of AI with a wide range of performance-optimized Ethernet-based infrastructure,” IDC VP Vijay Bhagavath said.

ClusterPower, WWT reap Cisco-Nvidia integration benefits

European cloud services provider ClusterPower has become a key customer of these new integrations, according to the vendors. ClusterPower claims to have driven forward its data center operations with Cisco and Nvidia’s AI and machine learning (ML) services.

“Building AI compute-based environments can be daunting task for organizations and underscores the need for simple, adaptable data center infrastructure that delivers optimized performance,” ClusterPower CTO Vladimir Ester said. “Cisco and Nvidia are bringing together the innovations to help enterprises support demand for more computing power in the data center and navigate the transitions for AI with secure and observable infrastructure.”

Cloud and infrastructure solutions provider World Wide Technology (WWT) has also claims success with the technological results of Cisco and Nvidia’s latest partnership. “Ethernet has the broadest scale in our client base, and this partnership and resulting offers will accelerate our ability to deliver AI solutions to our clients,” VP Neil Anderson said.

In addition, the partnership extends Nvidia support to the Cisco Networking Cloud platform, ThousandEyes digital experience monitoring for automatic remediation of network issues, and the Cisco Observability Platform.

These offerings will be available in the second quarter of this year through Cisco channel partners.