Cisco Systems Inc. has been named the winner of the 2026 Tech Innovation CUBEd Award for the most innovative IoT or edge platform. The recognition honors the company’s Unified Edge solution, a hardware and software system designed to meet the growing infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence workloads operating outside traditional data centers.
Much of the existing edge infrastructure was not originally constructed to handle AI tasks. Cisco developed Unified Edge to bridge this gap by providing enterprise-grade computing capabilities directly at the location where data is generated and processed. The platform debuted in November as a converged system that integrates computing, networking, and storage into a modular chassis.
The hardware supports both central processing units and graphics processing units, offering up to 120 terabytes of storage capacity. It also includes redundant power and cooling systems along with integrated 25-gigabit networking. James Leach, director of product management at Cisco, stated that the company avoided adapting standard workstations or personal computers for this purpose.
Instead, the goal was to deploy real enterprise-level computing power to support enterprise-level AI workloads.
Leach noted that the shift from standard enterprise workloads to generative AI, and now toward agentic AI, has placed significant stress on existing infrastructure. He described the current challenge as needing to support a workforce that is effectively ten times larger due to AI capabilities, requiring robust support for employees in the field.
To help organizations manage these distributed systems, Unified Edge integrates with Cisco Intersight, a SaaS management platform. This integration allows IT teams to centrally monitor and control infrastructure spread across thousands of edge locations. Leach explained that this approach simplifies the complexity of managing distributed environments, helping customers derive value from their AI investments at scale.