Shlomo Kramer said many network security vendors are struggling with the transition from appliance form factor to the cloud-centric approach of SASE.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said Splunk’s security, observability and artificial intelligence capabilities “complement” Cisco’s existing portfolio.

CTO Fidelma Russo will lead the Hybrid Cloud business unit, while HPE GreenLake and Services leaders Vishal Lall and Pradeep Kumar will leave the company.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the integration gives the vendor “one of the most complete cloud security offerings on the planet.”

CEO Shlomo Kramer said this record-breaking funding round showed investors’ confidence in Cato’s leadership in the single-vendor SASE market.

The company is now valued at $43 billion and its new investors include Nvidia and Capital One, both of whom are supporters of rival Snowflake.

The launch comes as analyst firms continue to predict robust enterprise traction for private networks, but also note integration challenges.

“This is just a re-affirmation of the fact that we build our stuff in the United States," Infinera's Rob Shore said.

The newly-dubbed Sustainable and Scalable Infrastructure Alliance will "open new doors to collaborate and solve big challenges," Zac Smith said.

Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry defends his company's multivendor SASE and SSE approach, noting its lead over Microsoft's late SSE market entry.

Cisco’s acquisition of Working Group Two tops money moves in August.

Google Cloud switched up its telecom leadership; T-Mobile US cut 7% of its workforce; and LightRiver appointed a new CEO.

“Cisco has a go-to-market machine that’s much bigger than ours,” which can help Nutanix reach more customers, Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami said.

The deployment is part of Vodafone's plan to deploy 2,500 open radio access network sites by 2027.

"They have seen the Cylance [by] BlackBerry movie before, and they're concerned," CEO George Kurtz said. "We've already seen deals come our way."

CTO John Saw also poked fun at a recent robotaxi meltdown that resulted from an overloaded cellular network.

As the vendor continues "to build and ship our products," the pressure is on to reduce customers' network energy use, Ciena's Beth Hunter said.

This week was all about VMware Explore, as the event was spent trying to show everyone that the company was still the same as it has always been.

“What it takes to attract and retain customers is materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago,” CEO Mike Sievert told employees.

"The core DNA of VMware is to work with a plethora of partners, and many of them compete with each other, regardless of our ownership," said Raghuram.

If VMware had opted to create "yet another vendor solution," that would be "insufficient," SVP Purnima Padmanabhan said.

Versa Networks' CEO noted the new capabilities announced this week augment existing AI capabilities from previous iterations of Versa's platform.

“What we think lies ahead is the need for security to stop bad actors midflight, real time, as it's happening,” Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora said.

More than half of surveyed respondents say they haven't experimented with the latest artificial intelligence natural language processing tools yet.