Nico Vibert is Director of Technical Marketing Engineering for Isovalent at Cisco. Isovalent, acquired by Cisco in 2024, leverages eBPF, Cilium, and Tetragon technology, which have become de facto building blocks for cloud-native networking infrastructure.
To find out how Cisco is extending cloud-native networking functionality across enterprise networks and cloud fabrics, I recently interviewed Vibert about the benefits of Isovalent technology and how it fits into the Cisco portfolio of networking, observability, and security.
Integrating the enterprise and cloud fabric
Vibert had many unique insights about how Isovalent will be applied across the Cisco portfolio, from enterprise data centers to the cloud.
First, some background. Isovalent was created after Kubernetes and containers became standard infrastructure in the cloud. It became clear that container networking and cloud-native networking needed a different network and security model.
Cisco had the foresight to purchase Isovalent in 2024, acquiring the leader in the container and cloud networking space. Isovalent uses open-source eBPF technology to build Cilium, one of the most popular tools for container networking in cloud-native environments.
Because Cilium is built into the Linux kernel, it can enable engineers to leverage fine-grained security and network properties without impacting performance.
"Cilium really took off and became widely adopted in the container space and Kubernetes space to the point where it was used by all the major cloud providers, like Google, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, for Kubernetes offerings," Vibert told me.
Vibert said that Cisco now has a unique leadership position among networking data centers and cloud infrastructure, including AI infrastructure. By melding cloud-native software-based networking capabilities with networking underlay, the company can deliver full-stack security and observability for any type of network, including hybrid and multicloud networks.
"For me, it's the best of both worlds," said Vibert. "You bring Kubernetes networking expertise scalable, high-performance modern workloads. And then you have Cisco bringing decades of experience Like Cisco Nexus One running high-performance critical applications in the data center."
A unified operational experience
The updates to Cisco Nexus One, which I have highlighted in this blog, give Cisco unique capabilities to build a consistent operational experience across on-premises, cloud, and API-driven environments.
Vibert describes it as a layered approach, with Nexus One doing the heavy lifting for the networking underlay and physical infrastructure and Isovalent doing the work at the higher layers of the software stack-with additional visibility at the operating-system level.
"You have Nexus, which provides the foundation," says Vibert. "It provides predictable performance, reliability, and security at the physical level. Isovalent provides enterprise networking extended to containers, the cloud-native world. This provides consistent networking and security for Kubernetes, where you can put repeatable code-driven operations," continues Vibert. "We configure Nexus as infrastructure as code and it's all policy driven. We are applying the same model in Kubernetes, and it's driven from code with business logic to deploy networking from intent."
What Vibert describes is the holy grail of networking technology, using a software-defined approach to tie together traditional enterprise underlays with cloud-native fabrics.
Potential for AI environments
As AI workloads demand unprecedented scale and deterministic network performance, this approach will become useful for scaling the immense size and demands of Kubernetes clusters, which are key to AI applications.
Kubernetes quickly became the universal platform to stand up and deploy modern cloud applications, and AI isn't any different. Whether it's LLM training, inference, or agentic AI, Kubernetes clusters and data will proliferate in the AI world.
"There are case studies of Kubernetes environments with thousands of nodes, right?" said Vibert. "Kubernetes has become the platform to run AI workloads. In the traditional world, when you run high-performance computing, you need a very strong networking foundation, so it's the same in Kubernetes. That's where we excel. Cilium is being used by some of the largest AI and large language model (LLM) providers in the world, and one of the reasons we've become successful is with eBPF."
Another area where Cisco thinks Isovalent will help AI is by reducing the cost of managing the infrastructure to connect GPUs. With a significant investment in AI infrastructure and a compressed timeline for execution, it's important that AI data centers get connected quickly, at the lowest possible cost. Isovalent provides a mechanism to connect AI and Kubernetes pods with multi-tenant security and high performance.
"You need to have a secure multi-tenancy platform," said Vibert.
Vibert says that eBPF and Cilium are perfect for this task because they are built into the Linux operating system at the kernel level, providing programmability and performance benefits. Using Cilium and eBPF, Isovalent can add networking functions into Cilium without compromising performance because most of them become kernel functions.
"Cilium is letting us do networking functions at kernel speed," says Vibert. "That makes a massive difference for LLM companies that can't have bottlenecks in the networking."
Addressing cloud tool sprawl
Vibert said that Isovalent's Cilium and Tetragon can also help by addressing cloud tool sprawl and integration complexity. He believes tool sprawl is pervasive in cloud environments and contributes to costs. The rise of AI has the potential to exacerbate the problem.
"What happened over time is that platform teams started to adopt more and more single-purpose tools for lots of different use cases, including for security, for encryption, and for observability. There will be individual tools deployed for service mesh and proxies."
Isovalent has already helped many customers reduce tool sprawl in hybrid and cloud environments, including a major financial firm, according to Vibert. It gives enterprises the real-time, actionable visibility they need to move fast with confidence, turning reactive firefighting into proactive optimization.
"What organizations have to do is be able to make the most of [their resources]. You can spend weeks building an AI app to have it break. That's why we are going to be strong at Cisco around observability because you've got Cilium and eBPF operating at a deep level to understand network performance to see every packet across the platform."
In summary, Cisco Isovalent offers high performance and secure cloud-native networking that connects your workloads and infrastructure across Kubernetes, cloud, data centers, and legacy infrastructure.
As Vibert has outlined, Cisco is off to a powerful start with the Cisco Nexus One extension of infrastructure fabrics to cloud-native Isovalent networking. The use of eBPF, Cilium, and Tetragon will provide seamless connectivity with cloud-native environments, fine-grained network visibility, high-performance security, and a streamlined operational experience with both networking and cloud teams.
Learn more about Cisco's innovations in AI networking