At WebexOne, Cisco’s Jeetu Patel argues the agent era will be won on context, cost and control

For as long as Cisco Systems Inc. has held its WebexOne event, the show has aimed to drive thought leadership in the collaboration industry. This year, with artificial intelligence on tap, it had its fair share of unified communications and contact center. But more importantly, it was somewhat of a coming-out party for the “new Cisco,” which consolidated much of its historically sprawling portfolio into a single AI platform, with Webex as the place where people and agents meet. The “One Cisco” story has been shared at Cisco Live and other events over the past year, but for many Webex buyers, this is their first exposure to it at this depth. President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel opened his keynote by framing the market around five forces: Agents are the new workforce, inference is the new workload, tokens are the new currency, trust is the new catalyst and control is the new moat. The underlying message was consistent with other presentations from Patel: If agents run everywhere, someone has…