The network is the backbone of most businesses, and for years no one asked more of network providers than to offer reliable and secure connectivity. But even this fundamental basis of technology is transforming, as intent-based networking brings intelligence and automation to connectivity.

“When you think differently about how you use a network, you’ll then start to think differently about the value the network can bring,” said Gordon Thomson (pictured), vice president of worldwide sales, enterprise networking, at Cisco Systems Inc. “We see lots of businesses looking to see how they can use technology to drive differentiation for them in the market. They’re seeing how much data they’ve got on their network … that they can start to use in a meaningful way.”

Thomson spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Barcelona, Spain. They discussed how Cisco is transforming how the business world thinks of the network. (* Disclosure below.)

One large, scalable network

Over the past four years, Cisco has been working on how to make the network more than a pipeline for data, combining their hardware expertise with new advances in software that add artificial intelligence and automation to the network: aka intent-based networking.

Creating what Furrier describes as “one large, scalable network with complexities that’s being managed by software across domains,” Cisco has built a software overlay network that covers different areas: an application-centric infrastructure fabric in the data center, a software-defined access fabric in the branch and campus, and a software-defined WAN fabric in the wide area network.

More than driving southbound automation onto each of these fabrics, the real value happens when the information is taken from each and connected holistically for analysis. “Ultimately, the network can provide us with loads of contextual information around what’s happening in the environment. It’s about how you use that information in a real-time basis,” Thomson said.

One of these uses is security, and Thomson described a scenario to prevent intellectual property loss through employee theft. “They put [the customer database] on a stick; they put it in their pocket. It happens every day,” he stated.

With an intent-based network, a behavioral change — such as an employee downloading information not normally accessed — would be flagged by the network for a network administrator to investigate, thus stopping the potential theft.

“Cisco’s unique because of the scope of the technology, but it’s also about the amount of information we take off the network,” Thomson explained. “We’re beginning to see customers recognize two things: the breadth of the portfolio, but also the power of the hardware to allow the software to do everything it does.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Cisco Live event. (* Disclosure: Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE