This year’s Cisco Partner Summit 2025 was a powerful reminder of what is possible when innovation meets purpose. Every year, as part of the summit, we organize a Global Partner Innovation Challenge — an open call for our partners to bring their boldest ideas and innovations to use technology for good.
This year’s entries in the Partnering for Purpose category reignited my passion for this work. The solutions our partners create address some of today’s most pressing challenges in energy, healthcare, emergency response and more. Together, we are working towards our shared Purpose of powering an inclusive future for all, one innovation at a time.
Purpose-driven innovation at scale
Year after year, our partners continue to raise the bar, and this year was no exception. Seventy-six of our total 87 submissions – an impressive 86% – fell into the Partnering for Purpose category. Additionally, 76 of the total submissions included artificial intelligence components, demonstrating how partners are leveraging new technologies to maximize results and impact.
What stood out this year was not just the number of entries, but the ambition behind them.
It’s clear that our partners are thinking bigger, solving problems at scale, and creating solutions designed for real-world impact.
Among so many strong submissions, I’m excited to celebrate four partners who exemplify the best of purposeful innovation.
Meet this year’s Partnering for Purpose winners
- KIW – This Spain-based partner addresses two critical challenges at once with its Splid.AI platform: the growing demand for more computing power to run AI applications and the waste of renewable energy due to grid constraints. KIW has developed Splid.AI, an artificial intelligence marketplace that converts excess renewable energy into computing power by connecting producers of excess energy with businesses in need of AI processing. Leverage Cisco AI PODsSplid.AI enables high-performance AI workloads to run exactly where and when renewable energy is available, helping to reduce costs and turn wasted energy into a valuable resource for AI development.
- Morgan Solar – This Canadian partner is rethinking how buildings use and generate energy. Energy blinds Morgan Solar are photovoltaic window treatments that generate clean energy while keeping building occupants comfortable. Building owners report real savings, with a payback period of less than two years. Blinds are connected via Cisco Power over Ethernet (PoE) networks and use smart algorithms to adjust their position throughout the day, helping to reduce energy consumption when heating and cooling a room. They also collect valuable heat flow and occupancy data that can be used for building management and AI applications.
- EchoStor technology – Tackling the critical issue of physician burnout and workflow inefficiencies in healthcare, this US-based partner developed Friendly Whisper, an AI-powered voice assistant platform built on Cisco technology. The solution integrates with existing hospital systems—electronic health records, labs, and monitoring devices—and provides real-time, contextual patient summaries via headsets, headsets, or mobile apps. By transforming existing hospital infrastructure into an intelligent voice assistant for doctors, Friendly Whisper saves time, improves communication and makes healthcare safer for staff and patients.
- Iron bow – When emergency systems do not work together, response times suffer and lives are put at risk. Iron Bow, also based in the US, created SignalPoint to solve this problem for organizations managing complex emergency response operations. The platform combines Cisco technology and partner emergency platforms into one unified solution that keeps multiple systems in sync while ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. SignalPoint also provides advanced location services that can pinpoint 911 callers within five meters, giving first responders the precise information they need to get to the scene quickly and save lives.
This year’s strong engagement in the Partnering for Purpose category confirms the powerful truth that doing good and doing business are not competing priorities; they are complementary forces that drive long-term business success.
To all our partners who participated in this year’s Global Partner Innovation Challenge: thank you. Your commitment to combining innovation with purpose reinforces what we already know – when we use technology for good, there is no limit to what we can achieve.