Many AI conversations right now middle on how AI must be deployed, secured, and managed in the actual world. At Pink Hat Summit 2026, held on the Georgia World Congress Heart, the message is evident: 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 Pink Hat’s open-source ecosystem that’s designed to resolve among the most urgent challenges for contemporary enterprises from the info middle core to the furthest edge.
Learn on to study extra about Cisco and Pink Hat’s collaboration, in addition to extra insights from Pink Hat Summit.
A partnership constructed for the AI period
The collaboration between Cisco and Pink Hat has developed far past fundamental interoperability. In the present day, 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 way of our joint work on Cisco AI PODs and Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing unit with NVIDIA, we’re offering validated architectures that enable 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 Pink Hat, mixed with Isovalent’s eBPF-powered networking and safety capabilities inside OpenShift, offers a stage of visibility and safety that’s key for contemporary, cloud-native functions.
See the long run in motion: The present ground
At our Pink Hat Summit sales space, we’re bringing this imaginative and prescient to life by way of 4 distinct, high-impact demonstrations:
Safe multi-agents from core to edge (Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing unit with NVIDIA): We’re showcasing a Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing unit 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 offers runtime guardrails to stop immediate injection and information leakage throughout the complete lifecycle.

The sting expertise (Cisco Unified Edge and AI-powered reside 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 also see how the Intersight Ansible assortment automates day-2 operations, whereas Splunk Observability Cloud offers deep insights into AI agent efficiency.
Community as code (Cisco Nexus Dashboard): Our crew will exhibit how one can 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” method to infrastructure, full with GitOps and CI/CD pipeline validation.
Get skilled insights: Talking classes
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 (Pink Hat) are main a technical session on how Pink Hat AI Enterprise integrates with Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing unit with NVIDIA and the way the Pink Hat AI Inference Server works with Cisco Unified Edge. They’ll stroll attendees by way of the Cisco Unified Edge for Pink 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 how one can speed up safe, trusted AI adoption with out operational complexity. She’ll spotlight how Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing unit with NVIDIA, along with Pink Hat, gives a constant, enterprise-grade basis for production-ready, scalable innovation, permitting groups to concentrate on enterprise outcomes somewhat than infrastructure administration.
Why platform considering issues
The widespread thread throughout all these demos and classes is the shift towards “platform considering.” Whether or not it’s the combination 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 way of day N.
From planning to participation
For years, the business has been in a “planning” part with roadmaps, pilots, and theoretical architectures. Pink Hat Summit 2026 indicators that we have now moved firmly into the “participation” part. Organizations are actually deploying AI in methods which are sensible, safe, and aligned with their current operational realities.
Cisco and Pink Hat are dedicated to serving to be sure that as you are taking these subsequent steps, your infrastructure will not be a bottleneck, however a catalyst for innovation.
In the event you’re able to discover these options additional, we’ve developed assets that will help you get began:
