Opengear Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2025

Enabling Agentic AI and Securing the Data Perimeter with Opengear SMF and UDOP

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At Tech Field Day during Cisco Live San Diego, Opengear CTO Douglas Wadkins introduced the Unified Digital Operations Platform (UDOP), a new category of intelligent infrastructure built for AI driven network operations. UDOP builds on Opengear’s Smart Out of Band technologies to deliver a centralized, secure, and intelligent foundation for enterprise grade AIOps.

Opengear, has over 20 years of experience in IT and network management solutions. They are leveraging their established platform to develop a Unified Digital Operations Platform (UDOP) for AI driven network operations. This initiative stems from a recent push into the rapidly evolving AI landscape, which revealed both immense potential and significant societal implications, particularly concerning the future of junior roles in the workforce due to increased AI driven efficiency. The core challenge in developing effective AI agents is providing them with rich, contextual data, which is often fragmented across various siloed business systems.

Opengear’s UDOP aims to break down these data silos by building upon their existing platform’s ability to connect to virtually any sensor or management port, pulling in diverse contextual data and enabling control. This is critical because, as the presentation highlights, siloed data leads to siloed, less intelligent AI agents. The discussion also touched upon the industry shift away from traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) applications towards agent centric models, as evidenced by statements from CEOs of major tech companies like Microsoft and Salesforce. This transition emphasizes the need for new platforms that can secure proprietary domain knowledge when exposed to AI agents.

The presentation then discusses the evolution of AI agents, from simple first generation query response systems to more sophisticated second generation agents that incorporate external data and tools, and finally to the anticipated third generation agents that will operate with a higher degree of autonomy. Opengear’s UDOP is designed to support these advanced agents by providing a secure and governed framework for data ingestion, access control, and a feedback loop, potentially incorporating simulation and digital twins for training. The platform addresses emerging industry protocols like Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) for normalizing disparate data and Google’s agent-to-agent protocol for inter-agent communication, while also emphasizing the critical need for robust security and identity management within these new AI driven ecosystems.

Personnel: Doug Wadkins

AI-Driven Network Automation and Insights with Opengear’s Production Platform

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This session will feature live demos showing how Opengear’s Unified Digital Operations Platform (UDOP) uses an Independent Data Management Path (IDMP) to overcome data silos, improve security, and reduce congestion. Attendees will see how UDOP enables resilient operations, enforces governance end to end, and powers proactive, agentic AI to drive automation from day one.

The presentation focuses on the practical application of OpenGear’s Unified Digital Operations Platform (UDOP) in standard network engineering scenarios, encompassing design, deployment, operations, and troubleshooting. The demo highlights how UDOP, enhanced with agentic AI, addresses key challenges in network management. The presentation details various OpenGear solutions, including Lighthouse Service Portal (LSP), Smart Management Fabric (SMF), and Connected Resource Catalog (CRC), emphasizing the extensibility and flexibility of the OpenGear platform beyond traditional console servers. The demo showcases a high level network architecture and a detailed network diagram to illustrate the use of these tools in real world scenarios.

The presentation outlines a scenario where Acme Corporation expands its Utah location, requiring the integration of a new rack into the existing network. The process begins with a network architect creating a diagram, which is then converted into structured JSON data using a custom web application. This data is pushed to the Connected Resource Catalog (CRC), enabling automated inventory management. The demo further illustrates the staging process at an integration lab, where the OpenGear Operations Manager (OM) utilizes LSP for zero touch provisioning. This process automates the configuration of connected devices, including Cisco routers, and reconciles the deployed devices with the reference design. The presentation also covers the operational phase, demonstrating how the system handles vulnerability audits by checking CVEs and generating reports, and how log analytics are used to identify and address network issues like port flapping.

The presentation concludes with a discussion of log analytics and the use of AI to analyze log data for network troubleshooting. Matt Witmer demonstrated how the system can identify potential network issues, such as spanning tree loops, by analyzing log data streamed from connected resources. The AI, while still in early development, shows promise in providing actionable insights, though it requires further training to differentiate between standard functional behavior and actual network anomalies. The presentation also addressed the flexibility of the system, including the ability to swap out AI models and integrate with customer’s private AI systems. The demo underscores the early stage of development but highlights the potential of OpenGear’s UDOP in streamlining network operations and enhancing security through intelligent automation.

Personnel: Andrew Pearce, Matt Witmer