Good morning. Mark Patterson has spent 26 years at Cisco Systems, which is long enough to watch the company navigate multiple technology cycles. But he says nothing compares to what’s happening now.
“AI is the most significant technology transition that we’ve seen in probably our lifetime, and I think Cisco was right at the heart of it,” Patterson, CFO since July 2025, told me. That includes not just building the infrastructure powering the AI economy but embedding AI into how the business runs.
