Cisco Podcast Network

In the pluggable optics industry every next generation is led by countless presentations and proposals at standards bodies meetings along with lots of lab development and testing behind the scenes. Right now the industry has its sights set on 3.2 terabit transceivers with 400 Gb per electrical lane. All those meetings and all that testing are happening as we speak.

Today I am joined by John Calvin, Strategic Planner and Datacom Technology Lead at Keysight.

John has been bridging the measurement science gaps of emerging telecom and datacom development efforts for 20 years. He has chaired multiple physical layer interoperability working groups and is currently serving as a contributing member to IEEE 802.3, OIF-CEI, InfiniBand, and PCIe development efforts. John holds a BSEE from Washington State University, and his graduate level studies are in signal processing from Stanford University.

In Episode 64 we begin a new conversation with John. We get into his path into Ethernet, how standards are built, and why they matter to AI networks.

John has very generously made himself available for your follow-up questions. You can find him at IEEE 802.3 technical forums or you can email him at john.calvin@keysight.com.

Please follow the Cisco Podcast Network on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! Better yet, leave a review on Apple podcasts. Remember you're listening to the Cisco Optics Podcast, which is part of the Cisco Podcast Network where you can find other great Cisco podcasts too.

If you want to listen on a website, go to optics.podcastpage.io.

We also have educational videos on youtube. Just go to youtube.com and search on Cisco Optics.

Related links
Cisco Optics-to-Device Compatibility Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/
Cisco Optics-to-Optics Interoperability Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/iop
Cisco Optics Product Information: https://copi.cisco.com/

Additional resources
Cisco Optics Podcast: https://optics.podcastpage.io/
Blog: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog
Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen
Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics

Intro music
Music by Sergio Prosvirini from Pixabay

Outro music
Dreamers by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com
Royalty Free Music by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) manages 1.4 million SRs annually, and today, 97% are touched by AI. As we shift from task-based automation to Agentic AI, some of these interactions are becoming "no-touch"—driving higher customer satisfaction and faster resolution. How did Cisco transform its Support at scale, and where is the IT services industry heading?

In this episode of Scaling AI in the Enterprise, we focus on IT services delivery. Our panel shares advice on how to escape "pilot purgatory" and move into production, the critical necessity of a unified data strategy, and how to maintain deterministic outcomes in a probabilistic world. We discuss why observability is the new "central nervous system" for managing autonomous agents and why the path to success requires reinventing workflows—not just automating the status quo.

Host: Wes Moss, VP, CX Centers Delivery for Americas, Cisco

Guests:

Bhaskar Jayakrishnan, SVP of Engineering, Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

Buffy Ransom, GM & SVP, CX Centers, Cisco

David Jansen, Distinguished Solution Engineer, Global Solutions Engineering (GSE), Cisco

Learn more about Cisco Customer Experience; read our blogs and visit Cisco.com.

Back for part two of our split episode with the founder of Split Futures, Annie Hardy and jump right in where we left off...getting practical about choosing the right AI model—because apparently not every task requires the AI equivalent of a Nobel Prize winner. Annie breaks down when to use smaller models, why bigger isn’t always better, and how those choices connect to energy, water use, and building a more sustainable future.

The conversation then turns to the humans behind all this technology. Annie challenges leaders to look beyond layoffs and efficiency gains and ask a much better question: what could we build if we retrained and reinvested in people instead? Along the way, we cover AI subscriptions quietly taking over everyone’s bank account, the danger of lazy AI strategy, and whether asking Gemini to help your teenager quit band counts as responsible parenting—or just very efficient parenting.

Give us a click, keep us funded! https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/small-business/index.html

Your company bought all the AI tools and now nobody knows what to do with them. Sound familiar?

Kat and Ian sit down with Annie Hardy, founder and Chief AI Architect at Split Futures, to unpack why leaders aren't listening, why measuring employees by "lines of code" is quietly torching everything, and why Gen Z is somewhere between anxious, angry, and low-key sabotaging the robots.

You'll learn how to actually pick the right AI model (spoiler: sometimes you need an intern, not a Nobel laureate), why every search might be gulping a water bottle, and Annie's genuinely useful Code of AI Ethics for people who just want to keep their brains intact.

Also: national security plot twists, "lazy AI-augmented parenting" confessions, and more hot takes to come!

If you liked this episode, as always give us a click! https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/small-business/index.html

In this episode, industry leaders discuss how to redefine “good” technology today — weighing speed, agility and AI against security, ethics and human impact. Panelists share real examples, from digital avatars for pediatric care to network and industrial use cases, and explore how AI can enhance outcomes without replacing human judgment.

The conversation highlights practical steps for bringing organizations along: training, transparency, governance and pragmatic pilots. The episode closes on a hopeful note about creative possibilities in healthcare and research while emphasizing the need for responsible, human-centered adoption.