With particular due to Arkaprabho Ghosh and David Reed.
As AI continues to rework the enterprise panorama, the problem for giant organizations isn’t simply adopting the know-how—it’s scaling it successfully. At Cisco, we acknowledged that whereas our groups have been keen to construct Retrieval-Augmented Era (RAG) functions, the method was usually fragmented. Builders have been spending months stitching collectively completely different elements of a RAG pipeline—corresponding to loaders, splitters, embedding fashions, and vector databases. Every part carried its personal studying curve and operational overhead. The burden of evaluating an amazing variety of open-source instruments and endlessly experimenting with numerous configurations to seek out the precise match for particular use circumstances in the end led to inconsistent requirements, technical debt, and widespread “know-how fatigue”.
To unravel this, Cisco IT created DRIFT (Doc Retrieval and Ingestion Framework Toolkit), a standardized, scalable platform that helps fast improvement and experimentation in RAG workflows with the power to scale to satisfy enterprise-standard workloads.
Simplifying the AI Journey
DRIFT was constructed with a easy premise: software groups ought to concentrate on constructing AI-first experiences and enterprise logic, not on the heavy lifting of infrastructure. We’re eradicating the limitations to entry by offering a platform that handles the complexity of information pipeline orchestration, permitting groups to fast-track their AI journey with out the necessity for intensive ramp-up time on underlying, advanced applied sciences.
Whether or not you’re a hard-core developer requiring deep API-level management or a enterprise consumer searching for an intuitive interface, DRIFT offers a real end-to-end improvement and experimentation setting.
The Cisco-on-Cisco Benefit: Constructed for Scale & Safety
DRIFT is a strong instance of the Cisco-on-Cisco benefit—the place Cisco software program is constructed to run on Cisco’s personal AI infrastructure. Constructed on a cloud-native microservices structure and deployed on Kubernetes, DRIFT is engineered for agility, resilience, and enterprise-scale efficiency. Its asynchronous ingestion and file add structure is designed to deal with massive volumes of enterprise information effectively, enabling high-throughput pipelines with out sacrificing reliability.
On the coronary heart of this basis are Cisco AI PODs powered by Cisco UCS-C885A {hardware}. This offers DRIFT the high-performance compute spine wanted for demanding AI workloads corresponding to inferencing, embeddings, and reranking. By working on-premise throughout a number of Cisco Knowledge Facilities, DRIFT combines scale, sturdy safety, excessive availability, and operational management in a method that meets the wants of enterprise AI.
The result’s greater than only a trendy AI platform—it’s a clear demonstration of how Cisco AI software program and Cisco AI infrastructure come collectively to ship production-ready efficiency at scale. With DRIFT working on Cisco AI PODs constructed on UCS-C885A, Cisco is showcasing an end-to-end AI stack that’s scalable, safe, and purpose-built for enterprise innovation.
The DRIFT Methodology: Powering Safe RAG
DRIFT streamlines the trail from uncooked doc to clever assistant by means of a strong, modular pipeline structure:
- Doc Preprocessing: We help numerous doc sources and codecs, standardizing numerous enterprise information right into a constant, model-ready format. We even leverage Imaginative and prescient Language Fashions (VLM) to transform photographs inside paperwork into textual content representations.
- Clever Splitting and Hybrid Processing: DRIFT helps quite a lot of splitting algorithms, together with the power to protect a doc’s structural formatting in the course of the splitting course of. For paperwork with blended content material, it additionally permits a hybrid method that selectively processes photographs—serving as a extremely efficient value optimization approach.
- Embedding and Ingestion: Groups can select from a collection of ordinary embedding fashions or convey their very own. We provide seamless integration with each shared multi-tenant in addition to devoted Vector databases to go well with quite a lot of enterprise use circumstances. Our platform helps each key phrase and semantic search algorithms, making certain environment friendly ingestion and retrieval that meet enterprise SLAs.
- Retrieval and Reranking: DRIFT permits for configurable hybrid search and metadata filtering, making certain that retrieved information is exact. Our reranking capabilities additional refine outcomes primarily based on relevance, considerably rising accuracy.
- Adaptive Structure: Designed for the long run, DRIFT helps evolving use circumstances, together with Agentic RAG and Graph RAG, making certain enterprise functions can scale as AI architectures advance.
- Constructed-in Testing and Analysis: Builders can check retrievers in opposition to pattern queries and work together with LLMs immediately throughout the platform to validate generative summaries earlier than deployment.
Why is DRIFT a Recreation-Changer:
- API-First Structure: DRIFT was constructed from the bottom up with an API-first method. We offer complete, ready-to-use APIs for each step of the lifecycle—together with doc add, ingestion, retrieval, and configuration—enabling seamless integration into current enterprise functions and workflows.
- Full Transparency and Experimentation: We have now moved away from the “black-box” method to a real end-to-end improvement and experimentation platform that empowers builders with full visibility. Groups have full management over configuration selections for all elements of their pipelines, permitting them to fine-tune, check, and optimize for max accuracy.
- Curated, Accountable AI: We eradicate the guesswork of evaluating open-source libraries. DRIFT offers fashions which can be already vetted and accredited by Cisco’s Accountable AI (RAI) and governance groups.
- Diminished Expertise Fatigue: By offering a curated suite of industry-standard elements, we save groups from “evaluation paralysis.” We deal with the combination to allow them to concentrate on innovation.
- Flexibility and Scalability: Whereas we offer normal, high-quality choices, DRIFT stays absolutely versatile. Groups can combine their very own customized Vector Databases or fine-tuned fashions—corresponding to these specialised for Cisco-specific monetary or technical terminology.
Driving Actual-World Impression
Since its MVP launch in January 2025, the adoption of DRIFT has been extraordinary. Inside the first 12 months, now we have seen vital adoption with over 600 builders having constructed greater than 1,500 pipelines throughout numerous enterprise items, together with Finance, Provide Chain, Engineering, Authorized, IT Operations, and Folks and Communities.
By lowering the time required to construct a knowledge pipeline from months to minutes, DRIFT has turn into a crucial engine for Cisco’s AI technique, enabling groups to experiment quickly and ship high-accuracy, AI-first options at scale.
Wanting Forward
The success of DRIFT is a testomony to the collaborative spirit at Cisco. By working throughout groups—from IT & Operations to our numerous enterprise items—now we have created a software that not solely powers inner AI assistants (like our company-wide HR assistant) but additionally offers a basis for future product integrations.
As we proceed to iterate, DRIFT stays dedicated to serving to Cisco groups transfer sooner, experiment extra, and ship the following technology of AI-powered options to our staff, clients and companions.
