Cisco expanded its Sovereign Critical Infrastructure (SCI) to the Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) market.

Originally launched in September for the European marketplace, SCI is now available in the Middle East and Africa, where organizations “are investing rapidly in AI and digital infrastructure, while placing equal emphasis on choice, control, and resilience,” Gordon Thomson, SVP for EMEA sales and EMEA president at Cisco, explained.

The Cisco SCI offering allows organizations to build and operate their own on-premises, sovereign infrastructure. The portfolio covers Cisco’s core product lines, including networking, security, compute, network management, and observability via Splunk, with each element configurable for air-gapped, on-premises environments.

Cisco also expanded customer support and services for sovereign environments, including options for air-gapped, on-premises, and hybrid setups, as well as broadening its Critical National Services Centers (CNSCs) across EMEA, with new outposts in the U.K., France, Spain, and Italy. Initially established in Germany, Cisco's CNSCs provides local expertise, dedicated facilities, and support aligned with strict data sovereignty requirements.

“We are committed to high-assurance security, with the majority of our on-premises portfolio conforming to IPv6-Ready standards and Common Criteria certification, both global benchmarks for rigorous security,” Thompson added. “Further, we continue our journey toward achieving the new European Union Cybersecurity Certification (EUCC) across our product lines.”

The CSI portfolio includes the Catalyst line’s Switching & Wireless offering for campus and IoT, as well as its SD-WAN solution. Also available are Cisco’s Routing options across its 8000-series, NCS, and ASR 9000-series, as well as the Nexus 9000-series data center switches.

The security and compute sides tout Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) and Splunk Enterprise Intersight. AI provisions come from the Catalyst Center suite.

Splunk's sovereignty role was expanded in February, when Cisco’s Live EMEA event saw it integrated with management platform Nexus One, giving users the ability to analyze network telemetry directly where its data resides, an addition the vendor touted as an “essential capability” for sovereign cloud deployments.

Cisco recently rejigged the leadership of its Middle East, Africa, Turkey, Romania, and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) team by appointing Shane Heraty as its new managing director. Heraty at that time said the region is "a powerhouse of ambition and innovation," concerning AI infrastructure as well as digital transformation and inclusion.