NTT Data is expanding its AI factories with longtime partner Cisco, bringing Cisco’s Cloud Control, networking, security and data center technology into environments designed to help enterprises test and validate AI use cases before making larger investments.
NTT Data is teaming up with its longtime technology partner Cisco Systems for the expansion of AI factories, environments where enterprises get expert advice, ask questions, and test their AI use cases before launch, the solution provider behemoth revealed on Tuesday.
Together, the companies want to close the gap between AI pilots and production. To do that, NTT will be combining Cisco’s Cloud Control, an agentic AI platform designed to manage, monitor, and defend critical IT infrastructure across various domains, as well as its networking, security and data center technology, into its own platform, said Dilip Kumar, president and global head of technology solutions at NTT Data Inc.
“Cisco creates the intelligence, and NTT Data industrializes this intelligence at scale for enterprise clients,” he said.
[Related: Cisco’s AI Play: Turn Security, ROI Challenges Into Partner Growth]
The partnership between NTT Data and Cisco isn’t new. Spanning 35 years, the relationship between the two companies has evolved from connecting enterprises to making them AI-ready, secure, and autonomous, Kumar told CRN.
“Our partnership has evolved from just a technology partnership, now to an AI outcome partnership, which means we work with Cisco not just on the co-sell motion. We co-create, co-sell, and co-deliver solutions for our clients,” he said.
AI infrastructure, said Kumar, needs a new operating model.
“The old operating model was largely SaaS and software and people-based, and today an AI infrastructure requires an agentic operation where people, AI agents, all work together and turn those insights into actions,” he said. “The AI infrastructure opportunity for Cisco and NTT Data isn’t in just deploying AI, but it is operating the infrastructure differently with autonomous operations.”
To that end, businesses want proof of value and need to test their use cases ahead of time, Kumar said.
“Our philosophy is simple: Don’t explain AI infrastructure in a [PowerPoint] slide. Let the clients experience it,” he said.
NTT Data expanded this month its global AI factory footprint with new facilities in Paris and Singapore, adding to existing sites in Plano, Texas, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The company also recently opened its NTT Data AI Factory Munich, a location that is giving customers a production-grade environment to test and validate AI use cases before making larger investments, the company said.
In addition to Cisco, NTT Data works with a number of other technology partners within its AI Factory environments, including Nvidia and Dell.
For Kumar, the evolution of the Cisco-NTT Data relationship is only beginning as AI reshapes enterprise infrastructure, security and operations.
“I’m more excited [about] the next five years. The next five years is going to be significant because AI is changing the infrastructure, AI is changing the security, and AI is changing the operations simultaneously,” he said. “We have an opportunity to turn this technology into real outcomes for our clients.”
