Cisco Tech Stories - ep 30 - The day Obama didn't learn my name

New year, new us? Probably not. But we ARE talking all things about resolutions - from Kat's witchiness and vision boards to Ian's list of goals we share our process and take a look back at our 2025 resolutions and year-over-year (YoY) improvements - including Ian drinking less soda...shock! We then dive into how to go about making good resolutions (~6:20 in) before devolving into Kat mocking Ian once again. Feels like this should be a resolution for her? Short and sweet this week! If one of your resolutions is to learn more about Cisco's solutions for small and medium businesses, check them out here: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/small-business/index.html

In this episode of Cisco SE Talks, we dive deep into the practical applications of AI with many of our financial and high frequency trading customers. We’re thrilled to also bring in Sudheesh Subhash – VP of Innovation & Emerging Technologies at EPlus, Zeki Yasar - Principal Architect focusing on AI and Jake Perakis, Cisco SE - as we talk through customer financial pain points and challenges, as they embark on their AI journey. We also take a deeper dive on how cloud with AI can sometimes be the easy button but comes with significant security challenges and cost restraints. Join us as Cisco SEs lead the way as Cisco re-defines the AI market transformation with our customers and partner! #Cisco #CiscoSE #CiscoEPlus #AI #SELed #CiscoAI #SETalks #CiscoSETalks

Dig into recent outages at Cloudflare and Venmo, and the growing challenge of maintaining reliability and resilience in a world of increasingly interdependent Internet infrastructure. ——— CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:50 Cloudflare Outage 06:54 Venmo Outage 12:01 The Challenge of Layered Dependencies 13:36 Outage Trends: By the Numbers 15:28 Get in Touch ——— For additional insights, check out the links below: - The Internet Report’s latest blog: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-cloudflare-venmo-outages?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy26q2_internetreport_q2fy26ep5_podcast - The Internet Outage Survival Kit: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/the-internet-outage-survival-kit?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy26q2_internetreport_q2fy26ep5_podcast ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at [email protected]. Or follow us on LinkedIn or X. ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on SoundCloud or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theinternetreport_official

In this episode, Kristopher Gabrielsen, a CX Principal Engineer, is telling us about his most critical network down situations and high-profile cases. From healthcare to critical infrastructure, sometimes you really have only 30 minutes to fix a problem before lives are at stake or the president gets a call.

Kat and Ian are FRESH off of an AI training, but first we obviously have a couple detours: Kat's dad's fear of the government (he's okay); Oura ring might be selling our data (they still haven't); and the ocean (Ian's not about it.) After we cover the hard hitting news, Kat and Ian recap their AI training and (surprisingly) drop a little knowledge. Check out 11:06 for tips on how to structure prompts into your GPT and 13:51 for notes on creating parameters for responses. And finally, Ian educates Kat on the actual name of Cisco's AI Tool (yikes) 16:08. Learn more about Cisco's AI solutions for SMBs: www.cisco.com/c/en_uk/solutions/…mall-business.html

Tune in for a deep dive into the November 18 Cloudflare outage that impacted multiple services including X, OpenAI, and Anthropic—and explore key takeaways for ITOps teams.    For insights on the other recent outage that Cloudflare experienced on December 5, see this blog post: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/cloudflare-outage-analysis-december-5-2025    ———    CHAPTERS  00:00 Intro  00:55 The Nov. 18 Cloudflare Outage  02:34 Configuration Changes & Outages  03:45 Diagnosing the Fault Domain  05:47 Why Outage Recovery Can Take Time  10:43 Are Cloud Outages Increasing?  12:09 ITOps Best Practices  14:01 Outage Trends: By the Numbers  15:35 Get in Touch  ———    Explore the Cloudflare outage further in the ThousandEyes platform (no login required): https://ahhplivtvmhdmbduwcuonefullpkkohp.share.thousandeyes.com/ 
  For additional insights, check out The Internet Outage Survival Kit: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/the-internet-outage-survival-kit?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy26q2_internetreport_q2fy26ep4_podcast    ———    Want to get in touch?    If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at [email protected]. Or follow us on LinkedIn or X.   ———    ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT  This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why.     Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue?    Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more.    Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform:    - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526    - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773    - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report

We’re talking cookies today – both kinds. Kat harkens back to her digital marketing days to share her knowledge on first- and third-party cookies, and more importantly why you keep getting asked to accept them when you visit a landing page. We also clear up if your phone is listening to you, and if the internet will get even better at predicting your buying decisions. We then spend the last 5 minutes going in-depth on cookies (the kind you eat). From our favorites, wildcards and how wild Oreos have gotten, we give a comprehensive breakdown of them all... Weigh in with your takes! If you haven’t already, and want to help us keep making sure this podcast gets funded, please check out Cisco’s solutions for small and medium businesses: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/small-business/index.html

In this episode, Venkat Kirishnamurthy, a principal Architect at Cisco, explains what are the ins and outs of designin an AI datacenter. How is it different from another datacenter ? What kind of scale are we talking about ? What is the throughput required to connect 1000 GPUs together ? Learn more about CX Services and how we can help you design your datacenter: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/services/index.html

Get an inside perspective on how autonomous AI agents are reshaping the Internet, and what that means for the future of data, resilience, and digital innovation.    We’ll chat about the new requirements for agentic AI success that call for a significant shift in priorities for NetOps teams.    CHAPTERS  00:00 Intro  00:56 About Agentic AI  02:41 Data Quality Matters  10:17 Service Resilience  10:06 End-to-end Capacity Planning  14:22 NetOps Best Practices  15:13 Get in Touch    ———    For more insights, check out the links below:    [PODCAST] Beyond "Break-Fix": Assuring Performance in the AI Era: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-assuring-performance-ai-era?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy26q2_internetreport_q2fy26ep3_podcast  [EBOOK] Delivering Assurance at the Speed of AI: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/delivering-assurance-at-the-speed-of-ai-ebook?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy26q2_internetreport_q2fy26ep3_podcast  ———    Want to get in touch?    If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at [email protected]. Or follow us on LinkedIn or X.   ———    ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT  This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why.     Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue?    Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more.    Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform:    - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526    - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773    - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report

Kat's out of town, so Ian is joined by Brad Oliver, Director of the US Commercial Collaboration SMB & Midmarket Sales Organization at Cisco to talk hobbies, work/life balance and fighting off burnout. You have to be able to bring your best self everyday, but how do you go about doing that? Just two bros talking life, love and pursuit of happiness. Truly an episode for the people. If you came for Cisco information...sorry, but click here so our boss doesn't fire us! id.cisco.com/app/ciscoid_aemcloudprodsaml_1/exk14lk1xf6SKDANc5d7/sso/saml