Canadian organizations are asking for something specific from their technology right now: the ability to decide what happens to their own data and infrastructure.
I hear a version of that in nearly every conversation I have — with banks, hospitals, utilities, transit operators, government departments, and more. What they’re describing is control over their digital infrastructure as a whole: what runs where, who can reach it, and who gets to change it.
That’s why Cisco is launching its Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio in Canada today. We first introduced the portfolio in EMEA in September 2025, and Canada is the next market following sustained customer demand.
On-prem, on your terms
The portfolio spans networking, security, compute, collaboration and management application, enhanced by Splunk’s security and observability capabilities. It puts management of critical systems firmly in the hands of the organizations that operate them, with more choice than they’ve had before.
The hardware and software run on the customer’s premises and are configurable throughout, so customers operate the environment themselves. Licensing across the Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio is trust-based: products don’t need to connect to the cloud or to Cisco to operate.
Customers also decide which workloads run on Sovereign Critical Infrastructure, and which don’t. Organizations that need to be completely disconnected can run it fully air-gapped, with no connection to the internet or to any external systems. Others can architect hybrid deployments, keeping critical workloads in disconnected environments while other workloads run in traditional settings that use cloud services. In a fully sovereign deployment, operation, access, and control sit entirely with the customer.
Running sovereign infrastructure takes expertise. Our CX teams and our partner ecosystem provide that support here in Canada today through our recently launched Canadian Secure Technical Services (CSTS) offering, spanning planning, design, implementation and Day 2 operations, with additional on-premises and air-gapped service options rolling out.
Sovereignty isn’t one size fits all
We brought Sovereign Critical Infrastructure to Canada because across government, financial, healthcare and critical infrastructure organizations want to decide how and where their most sensitive systems run, and what that looks like differs by sector.
For governments, it keeps mission-critical systems under their own control, with no dependency on a remotely managed cloud connection. For banks, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure providers, it means their systems keep running through connectivity disruptions or period of reduced external support.
Compliance matters as much as capability. Most of our on-premises portfolio is already IPv6-ready, FIPS 140-2/3 certified and Common Criteria certified, and Sovereign Critical Infrastructure is designed to align with ITSG-33. For a department working toward Authority to Operate, that means the foundational security controls it needs are in place, rather than building the case from scratch.
Investing in Canada for the long run
This launch builds on more than three decades of Cisco helping Canadian organizations solve their most complex technology challenges. We invest more than $325 million CAD annually through our six Canadian development sites and our engineers and developers here contribute to roughly five per cent of Cisco’s global patent filings annually.
The talent is what drives this investment further. More than 450,000 students have come through Cisco’s Networking Academy Program in Canada, and we’re leaning on it now to help customers close the skills gaps that come with running these environments.
Organizations here are moving fast on AI. Now they can do it on infrastructure they control, where they decide what runs where and who can access it.
For more, read our press release on Cisco Sovereign Critical Infrastructure.
— Raj Juneja, President, Cisco Canada
