Cisco has unveiled what it's calling "intent-based networking solutions" which, it claims, are the culmination of its vision to create "an intuitive system that anticipates actions, stops security threats in their tracks, and continues to evolve and learn. It will help businesses to unlock new opportunities and solve previously unsolvable challenges in an era of increasing connectivity and distributed technology." Cisco's pitch is that companies are currently managing their networks through traditional IT processes that are not now sustainable as the network grows and gets more complex - there are just too many buttons to push and adjustments to be made, so the whole construction is becoming unmanageable, it claims. So in response Cisco's says it's harnessed the concept of'intent networking' to create an "intuitive system that uses AI and machine learning to constantly learn, adapt, automate and protect, to optimize network operations and defend against today's evolving threat landscape." The broad idea of an'intent model' is easy enough to understand and one of its most robust originators and promoters has been Tom Nolle of CIMI Research who, as I thought he might, has popped up today with a timely blog post on the Cisco launch.