During December's AWS re:Invent, a senior Cisco exec introduced the vendor’s vision for an "Internet of Agents".
But what exactly is an "Internet of Agents"?
In short, the concept envisions a system where various AI agents - developed by different vendors or organizations - can communicate and collaborate seamlessly.
For Vijoy Pandey, SVP of Outshift by Cisco, the company’s self-described "incubation engine", in an ideal world, the approach would mirror the collaborative spirit of the original internet.
Pandey made these remarks in an interview with Zeus Kerravala, Founder of ZK Research, where the Cisco man championed the importance of interoperability to allow agentic AI to really flourish.
Currently, each vendor is developing its own agents. Yet, Pandey believes that this could lead to what he refers to as "walled gardens" (isolated systems).
For example, if a Salesforce agent doesn’t communicate with an Adobe agent, inefficiencies will bubble to the surface.
"Wall gardens or overarching agents may exist, but they don't derive maximum value for every entity," said Pandey.
"We want value for vendors, developers, operators, and customers.
Building an open, interoperable system ensures we avoid a ‘Lord of the Rings’ super-agent and instead create a distributed framework.
Pandey’s Lord of the Rings reference relates to the idea of "One Agent to Rule Them All".
However, for Cisco, a distributed model is the preferred strategy, as it maximizes value and ensures no single entity dominates the ecosystem.
A Rising Tide
For Pandey, a significant benefit of an Internet of Agents is in the cross-collaborative opportunities that it could bring.
As an example, the Cisco SVP suggests that AlphaFold’s protein folding tech and OpenAI’s language processing capabilities could combine with robotic entities to help with drug discovery.
Another advantage to an internet/network system is that it encourages more vendors to join, which provides customers with a greater variety of solutions and platforms to choose from.
