Modernizing Infrastructure for the Age of AI
Modernize, operate, and secure your AI workloads—end to end.
AI continues to gain traction across manufacturing, supporting new use cases in forecasting, training, quality, and operational efficiency. At the same time, many organizations are pausing to ask practical questions before moving forward. As interest grows, so do concerns about whether existing infrastructure can keep up.
Rather than diving into long-term strategy, this update provides a high-level look at why infrastructure is coming into focus and where manufacturers are turning for guidance as AI adoption accelerates.
What We’re Hearing From Manufacturers
As AI initiatives expand, similar questions are surfacing across organizations:
- “Our current infrastructure is fine — do we really need to change it for AI?”
- “Our IT team is already stretched — how do we take on more?”
- “The security risks around AI feel too high.”
These concerns are common — and they reflect how quickly AI workloads are pushing environments in new ways.
Why Infrastructure is Coming Into Focus
AI workloads introduce significantly higher demands on compute, networking, and data movement than many traditional environments were designed to support. Limited visibility into infrastructure performance and internal traffic can make it difficult to understand how AI applications are impacting operations and risk.
Rather than reacting after performance or security issues appear, manufacturers are beginning to evaluate whether their current infrastructure can scale, remain manageable, and support AI reliably as adoption grows.
Resources to Support Evaluation
For manufacturers looking to explore what AI-ready infrastructure requires, Cisco offers several practical resources that provide additional context and real-world examples:
- Cisco AI Infrastructure Infographic: A quick visual overview of the trends driving infrastructure updates as AI workloads expand.
- Cisco AI-Powered Infrastructure eBook: A deeper look at architectural, operational, and security considerations behind AI-ready environments, including unified management, automation, and safeguards for internal data movement.
- Video: How Cisco Built an AI-Ready Data Center in 3 Months: A real-world case study showing how Cisco designed and deployed an AI-ready data center to support more than 25 AI use cases.
How the Industrial Solutions Network Helps
The Industrial Solutions Network of locations partners with Cisco to help manufacturers put these insights into context. ISN supports teams as they evaluate their current environment, understand potential constraints, and prepare infrastructure to support evolving AI workloads.
For organizations ready to move beyond research and gain a clearer understanding of where they stand today, ISN and Cisco offer an AI Infrastructure Readiness Review to assess performance, visibility, and security considerations tied to AI workloads. Reach out if you are ready to set up a Readiness Review.