Each year, Cisco Live brings together tens of thousands of networking professionals for a week of announcements, deep-dive sessions, and the kind of candid conversations that only happen in person. This year in Las Vegas, WWT sent a team of networking subject matter experts covering wireless, switching, SD-WAN, core routing, optical networking, and data center networking. What they brought back was a consistent signal: AI is no longer a strategy conversation, it is an infrastructure conversation, and the network is squarely at the center of it.

Our Networking team's highlights from an exciting week in San Diego.

Today's networking and security trends are driving branches and campuses to rethink their network lifecycle management strategy.

Every enterprise runs on telemetry that streams from apps, networks, clouds and endpoints. Splunk turns that data into insight. WWT turns that insight into outcomes: architectures, integrations and services that scale across observability, security and automation.

As campus networking evolves, enterprises must prioritize AI-driven operations, Wi-Fi 6E/7, cloud-native fabrics, API programmability, sustainable infrastructure, user experience optimization and location-based services. These strategic investments will ensure scalable, secure and energy-efficient networks, meeting future demands for performance, security and operational efficiency.

By 2025, fragmented WAN architectures will be a critical flaw. Embracing SD-WAN is not just a technological upgrade but a strategic pivot towards network agility, security and resilience. The question isn't if you need SD-WAN, but how much value you'll unlock with an intelligent, integrated solution.

If you are considering campus or branch network upgrades, here are four characteristics of the OEM solutions that you should consider.

Delaying the refresh of campus network infrastructure incurs hidden costs including increased security risks, higher IT labor demands, degraded user experience, and operational limitations, ultimately making the cost of waiting equal or exceed the cost of upgrading within one to two years, especially in large distributed environments

HPE Discover 2026 made one thing clear: AI success depends on the network beneath it. HPE's new AI-ready switches and self-driving network vision highlight the need for faster, more intelligent, secure infrastructure.