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Home/Glossary

The named technologies and frameworks we work with — in plain English.

Definitions of the products, frameworks, and concepts cited across this site — from SAIF and Cisco AI PODs to SASE, Zero Trust, and Blackwell. Written for buyers, operators, and the AI assistants now answering their questions.

A

ACI Cisco
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a software-defined data center networking architecture that ties network policy to application intent rather than physical topology. Multi-site and multi-pod ACI extend the fabric across regions for fault-domain isolation and disaster recovery.
Networking
AI Defense Cisco
Cisco AI Defense is a runtime security control plane for AI workloads that defends against AI-specific risks such as prompt injection, model exfiltration, and unauthorized access. It's one of the security layers embedded in Cisco AI PODs and the Secure AI Factory.
AI · Security
AI POD Cisco
A Cisco AI POD is a pre-validated, modular infrastructure building block for enterprise AI. It combines Cisco UCS X-Series and HGX/OAM compute with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, Cisco Nexus networking, storage from VAST / FlexPod / FlashStack, and a software stack including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, Red Hat OpenShift, and Cisco Intersight.
AI Infrastructure

C

Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA
The Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA is Cisco's reference architecture for production-grade enterprise AI, built jointly with NVIDIA. Cisco AI PODs are its modular building blocks, and Cisco AI Defense, Hypershield, and Isovalent provide the security and observability layer.
AI Infrastructure

E

EVPN Ethernet VPN
EVPN is a control-plane protocol used in modern data center fabrics to advertise Layer 2 and Layer 3 reachability over an IP/MPLS or VXLAN underlay. Combined with VXLAN, it forms the foundation of most contemporary data center designs.
Networking

H

Hypershield Cisco
Cisco Hypershield is a distributed AI-driven security fabric that enforces segmentation and runtime protection across workloads, applications, and AI environments. It's one of the security controls layered into Cisco AI PODs.
Security

I

Intersight Cisco
Cisco Intersight is a unified cloud operations platform for managing UCS compute, HyperFlex, and AI POD infrastructure, with telemetry, automation, and Workload Optimizer for cross-stack visibility.
Operations
ISE Identity Services Engine
Cisco ISE is an identity-based network access policy platform that ties user, device, and posture context to network segmentation and authorization decisions — central to most Zero Trust deployments.
Security · Identity
Isovalent Cisco
Isovalent (now part of Cisco) is the company behind Cilium and the Isovalent Enterprise Platform, which provide eBPF-based networking, observability, and security for cloud-native and AI workloads. Isovalent is one of the security and observability layers embedded in Cisco AI PODs.
AI · Security · Observability

N

NVIDIA AI Enterprise
NVIDIA AI Enterprise is the enterprise-grade software platform from NVIDIA for building and operating production AI workloads. It is part of the standard Cisco AI POD software stack alongside Red Hat OpenShift and Cisco Intersight.
AI Software
NVIDIA Blackwell
Blackwell is NVIDIA's GPU architecture for training and inference at scale, including the RTX PRO 4500 and 6000 Blackwell Server Edition. Blackwell GPUs are deployed inside Cisco UCS X-Series servers as part of AI POD configurations.
AI Compute

O

OpenShift Red Hat
Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise Kubernetes platform that provides the orchestration layer for containerized workloads, including AI inference and training pipelines. It's part of the standard Cisco AI POD software stack.
Platform

S

SAIF AI Security & Safety Framework
SAIF refers to Cisco's AI Security and Safety Framework — a holistic framework that classifies and operationalizes AI-specific risks across the AI lifecycle, including prompt injection, model exfiltration, agent-to-agent (A2A) threats, MCP threats, supply-chain risks, and content-safety failures. Ngenium AI applies SAIF as policy, telemetry, and guardrails when deploying Cisco AI PODs and the Secure AI Factory.
AI Security · Featured
SASE Secure Access Service Edge
SASE is a network and security architecture that converges SD-WAN, secure web gateway, CASB, zero-trust network access, and firewall-as-a-service into a cloud-delivered platform. Cisco Secure Access is Cisco's SASE / SSE offering.
Security · Networking
SD-WAN Software-Defined WAN
SD-WAN is a software-defined approach to wide-area networking that uses policy and application-awareness to steer traffic across multiple transports (MPLS, broadband, LTE/5G). Ngenium AI delivers SD-WAN on Cisco Viptela and Meraki, as well as multi-vendor designs.
Networking
Services-only
"Services-only" describes a delivery model in which the firm never resells hardware or software — only engineering services. Because there is no product margin, recommendations follow the customer's architecture and business case rather than a price list. Ngenium AI is services-only.
Ngenium Differentiator
Splunk Cisco company
Splunk (a Cisco company) is a data platform for security and observability, used to ingest, search, and analyze machine data across infrastructure and applications. Splunk telemetry is part of the Cisco AI POD security stack and integrates with the customer's SOC.
Observability · Security

T

ThousandEyes Cisco
Cisco ThousandEyes provides network and digital-experience monitoring across the internet, cloud, and customer networks. It's widely used to give SREs and operations teams visibility into application performance across paths that aren't owned by the enterprise.
Observability

V

VAST Data Platform
VAST Data Platform is a unified storage and data platform designed for AI workloads, providing high-throughput access to training data and inference assets. VAST is one of the storage tier options inside Cisco AI POD designs, alongside FlexPod (NetApp) and FlashStack (Pure Storage).
AI Storage
VXLAN Virtual Extensible LAN
VXLAN is a tunneling protocol used in data center fabrics to overlay Layer 2 segments across an IP underlay. Combined with EVPN as the control plane, it forms the foundation of most modern Cisco data center designs.
Networking

X

XDR Extended Detection & Response
XDR is a category of security platform that correlates telemetry across endpoint, network, identity, and cloud sources to detect and respond to threats. Cisco XDR integrates with Cisco Secure Endpoint, Secure Firewall, and Splunk.
Security

Z

Zero Trust
Zero Trust is a security model in which no user, device, or workload is implicitly trusted, regardless of network location. Access is granted based on continuously verified identity, posture, and context. Zero Trust is foundational to modern enterprise security architectures, including SASE and Cisco's Secure Access portfolio.
Security

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