Cisco Introduces Motific, Empowering Businesses to Navigate the Complexities of Generative AI Deployment

TL;DR:

  • Cisco launches Motific, its first SaaS product for reliable GenAI deployments.
  • Motific streamlines the entire GenAI journey, offering centralized control over data, security, responsible AI, and costs.
  • Businesses face challenges in ensuring trustworthy AI deployment, with customization and data cleanliness being key hurdles.
  • Motific accelerates GenAI deployment, reduces risk, ensures compliance, and tracks ROI.
  • Availability: Preview at Cisco Live EMEA; General availability expected by June 2024.

Main AI News:

In a move to address the escalating demand for trustworthy generative AI (GenAI) deployments, Cisco has unveiled Motific, its inaugural Software as a Service (SaaS) offering. Developed within Outshift, Cisco’s incubation arm, Motific delivers a comprehensive overview of the entire GenAI journey, granting central IT and security teams the capability to swiftly implement reliable GenAI functionalities across their organizations while maintaining control over sensitive data, security protocols, responsible AI practices, and expenditure.

Since the proliferation of GenAI accessibility, an overwhelming 97% of companies have acknowledged a heightened urgency to incorporate AI-powered technologies into their operations. Nonetheless, numerous organizations encounter obstacles in ensuring the reliability of the AI they employ, particularly in terms of utilizing data that aligns with specific use cases and adheres to organizational guidelines. Customizing GenAI applications and solutions to leverage bespoke knowledge bases and data sources remains a significant challenge. The acquisition and maintenance of current and clean data are imperative for operational efficiency, achievable through methodologies like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).

The process of provisioning and managing GenAI assistants and APIs, integrating models from various providers, and recruiting suitable talent for oversight can be excessively time-consuming for companies. Consequently, businesses seek solutions that streamline AI deployments while minimizing investment. Motific, a vendor-agnostic platform, facilitates the entire GenAI journey, from evaluation and experimentation to deployment. Motific empowers customers to:

  • Accelerate GenAI deployment: Motific significantly reduces GenAI deployment timelines, transitioning from months to mere days, by enforcing compliance controls for usage thresholds, cost management, and integration with organization-specific data repositories. With simplified configuration processes, Motific automatically sets up assistants, abstracted APIs, and RAG functionalities across enterprise-wide data sources and foundational models, ensuring optimal accuracy, cost-efficiency, security, and access management.
  • Mitigate risk and ensure ongoing compliance: Motific offers pre-configured policy controls that organizations can swiftly implement or customize to align with their internal regulations. These automated controls cater to sensitive data protection, encompassing personally identifiable information (PII), security measures such as prompt injection and access management, and risk mitigation concerning trust-related issues like toxicity and hallucinations. The platform integrates enterprise-grade security, data protection, and trustworthiness mechanisms capable of accurately identifying and mitigating discrepancies or risks between user inputs and responses generated by Large Language Models (LLMs).
  • Monitor return on investment (ROI) and glean business insights while optimizing expenses: Motific facilitates the tracking of business processes and prompt usage analytics, enabling ROI assessment and cost analysis. It offers consolidated monitoring and auditing capabilities, alongside key metric tracking for all user interactions. By providing visibility into unauthorized third-party GenAI utilization, Motific helps deter shadow AI usage within organizations, while assisting IT administrators in provisioning compliant alternatives. Additionally, the platform enables the establishment of cost budgets and estimations to prevent runaway expenditure.

Vijoy Pandey, Senior Vice President at Outshift by Cisco, remarked, “Cisco is rapidly expanding its product portfolio in the Generative AI domain to address the escalating demands for artificial intelligence and security compliance within enterprises. Motific streamlines the time-to-value for enterprises leveraging GenAI by proactively mitigating risks and fostering accelerated innovation.”

Availability

Motific, developed under Cisco’s internal incubation engine Outshift, will be showcased for preview at Cisco Live EMEA and is slated for general availability by June 2024. Customers can access further details on the Motific webpage or schedule consultations with the team.

Conclusion:

Cisco’s introduction of Motific signifies a significant advancement in the realm of Generative AI deployment solutions. By addressing key challenges faced by businesses, such as customization, data integrity, and compliance, Motific is poised to streamline AI implementation processes across industries. This move highlights Cisco’s commitment to meeting the evolving demands of enterprises, further solidifying its position as a leader in the AI solutions market.

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