Cisco Webex, Soon With AI Canvas, Proves Reality Of 'Better Together' Story: Executives

by Gina Narcisi, CRN

'The way that my leadership team interlocks together is around making sure that we can have connected tissue between our products, so that when someone thinks about buying a Cisco product, the feeling they should get is that all Cisco products look and feel like an integrated platform, rather than individual components and a collection of brands,' said Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer, at WebexOne 2025.

Cisco Systems wants to extend its platform approach across all its business units as the company promotes its "better together" story.

To that end, Cisco took to its annual collaboration event, WebexOne 2025, to reveal that AI Canvas, which was first introduced at Cisco Live in June, will be brought into Webex Control Hub, Cisco's central interface for collaboration management.

AI Canvas is a generative AI workspace, built on Cisco's Deep Network Model, that lets NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps teams collaborate, optimize operations, while reducing IT strain. As part of the Webex Control Hub, Cisco AI Canvas will introduce multi-player, multi-domain troubleshooting through the generative UI, natural-language interface for IT administrators in charge of collaboration environments. This integration will let IT admins proactively diagnose and resolve network, video, and call-quality issues—all within a unified platform, Cisco said.

Giving partners and enterprises access to real-time troubleshooting and shorter resolution times for their collaboration environments is important. It also proves that Cisco is working to integrate its various tools into one pane of glass, Berger said.

"That's something we've all been asking for years. I think Jeetu [Patel, Cisco's President and Chief Product Officer] did a good job of bringing all the different product units together," Berger said. "That 'better together' Cisco story is finally starting to happen."