(upbeat music) >> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Cisco Live 2018, brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partnership. (upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome back everyone to the live CUBE coverage here in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Stu Miniman. Three days days of wall-to-wall live coverage, we have Mandy Whaley, senior director of developer experience at Cisco DevNet and Par Merat, who is the senior director of community and ecosystem for DevNet. Mandy, great to see you, CUBE alumni. Every single time we had theCUBE with DevNet team, Par, great to see you. Congratulations, first of all. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, we're happy to be here. >> Congratulations, so, really kind of a proud moment for you guys, and I want to give you some mad props on the fact that you guys have built a successful developer program, DevNet and DevNet Create for Cloud Native, over a half a million registered, engaged users, of developers using it. Not just people who come to the site. >> Correct. >> Right. >> Real developers. For an infrastructure enterprise company, that's a big deal, congratulations. >> It is, thank you, thank you. We were just chatting this morning about the really early days of DevNet at Cisco Live, and the first year of DevNet Create. And it's been great to see that community grow. And see, early on we had this vision of bringing the application developers and the infrastructure engineers together, and cross-pollinating those teams, and having them learn about each other's fields, and then build these programmable infrastructure enabled apps, and that's really, that synergy is happening within the community, and it's great to see them exchanging ideas here at events like this. >> And so we love to talk about seminal moments, and obviously DevOps drove a lot of the Cloud, and Chuck Robbins, your CEO said, "Without networking, there'd be no Cloud." True statement, absolutely, but Stu and I have always talked about the role of a network engineer, and that the power that they used to have in the enterprise is still due. It used to be the top people running the networks, mission critical, obviously security, but it's not about a retraining. It's about a path, and I think what you guys have done in success is you've shown a path where it's not about pivoting and being relevant and retraining to get a new job, it's been an extension of what they already know, >> An incentive. and I think that's very refreshing, and I think that's the real discovery. >> And we've been able to grow, because I think in our foundational years, we really spent a lot of time providing the content and the skill training, and what Mandy likes to say is, "We met them where they are." So no question was too novice. Likewise, if they were a little more advanced, we could direct them and point them in that same direction. So those early years, where, Mandy, we were just reminiscing about the first DevNet-- >> Coding 101? >> Yes, exactly, she wrote it over the weekend, and we rolled that whole event out, literally, in three months. >> And what year was that, just to kind of, this is an important seminal moment. >> 2014. >> May of 2014. >> 2014. >> 2014, the seeds of we should do something, and you guys have had certifications. We're looking at CCIEs, you go back to 1993 all the way now to 2018, so it's not like you guys are new to certification and training. It's just taking the IQ of network people, and giving them some insight. So what happened in 2014? Take us through the, obviously you bootstrapped it. >> Yes. (laughs) >> What happened, what happened next? >> We did. >> Everyone's like, whoa, >> So-- >> we can't, we're not, we're staying below the stack here. >> Well, we knew there was a lot of buzz around SDN and programmability, and we both actually, I should even back up further. We were both on the DevNet team when the DevNet program was Powerpoints, so we weren't even there yet. >> Right, when we were just planning what it even could be, like the ideas of having a developer program, and like Par was saying, we knew SDN was coming. We knew Network Controllers were coming. We didn't know what they were gonna be called, we didn't know what those APIs looked like, but we said, "The network engineers are gonna need "to know how to make REST API calls. "They're gonna need to know how to operate in Python." And so we started this program building around that vision before the portfolio is where it is today. Like today, now, we have APIs across the whole portfolio, Data Center, service provider, enterprise, and then up and down from the devices, all the way to controllers, up to the analytics level. So the portfolio's really filled out, and we've been able to bring that community along with it, which has been great. >> I want to dig into the north/south, east/west and that whole, kind of the Cloud paradigm, but I got to ask you, on a personal question, although relevant to the DevNet success. Was there a moment where, actually the seminal moments of 2014, was there a moment where you were like, "Wow, this is working." and like the, you know, (laughs) pinch me moment, or was it more of, "We got to get more resources, this is not just, "this thing's flying." >> Well it's always that. That's always the challenge. >> When was the point where >> We are, >> you said, "This is actually >> We are very-- >> "the best path, it's working, double down." When was that happening? >> I mean, I think after we started teaching those very early coding coding classes, I got this, like, flood of email from people who had attended them that said, "I took this task, I automated it, "it saved my team months of work," and getting that flow of information back from the community was early signs to me, from the technical level of, there's value, this is gonna take off, and then I think we just saw that kind of grow and grow. >> Mushroom, just kept it going. >> The other thing that I heard from a network engineer, which really resonated with me, was, you were saying, the network guy or gal likes to be there and solve the problem, and they're sort of at this deep level of control. And what I heard them say about the programmability skills was that that was another tool that they added to their sort of toolbox that let them be that person in the moment, solving that problem. And they could just solve it in a new way, so hearing the network engineers say that they have adopted programmability in that fashion, that let me know that that was gonna work, I think. >> All right, so let's get into some of the meat and potatoes, because you guys have some really good announcements. We saw you have the code ecosystem that you announced at DevNet Create, which is your emerging Cloud Native worlds coming together. That's available now. >> Yes, it's fully released. >> So take a minute to, so give us the update. >> Yes, so DevNet Code Exchange is developer.cisco.com/codeexchange so you can go there, it's live, and the idea behind this was we wanted to make it easy for the community to contribute, and also to discover code written by the community. So it's on GitHub. You can go and search on GitHub, but you get back a ton of hits if you go search Cisco on GitHub, which is great, but what we wanted to have was a curated list that you can filter by product, by language. I sometimes joke that it's like Zappos for sample code cause you can go on and say, "I want black boots, "you know the two inch heel." You can say, "I want, I want code for DNA Center, "or ACI, and I want it in Python," and then see all of the repositories submitted by the community. And then the community can also share their codes. "Hey, I've been working on this project. "I'm gonna add it to Code Exchange, so that other people "can build off of it and find it." So it's really about this community contribution, which is a strategic initiative for DevNet for this year. >> Mandy, how does that tie into other networking initiatives happening in the industry? I think of OpenDaylight, a lot of stuff happening, Docker comes this week, Kubernetes, and networking's a critical piece of all of these environments. >> Yeah, so some of the projects that you'll find in Code Exchange are things that relate. So we have some really good open-source community projects around YANG models and the tooling to help you deal with YANG models. So those might be in Code Exchange, but those are also part of the OpenDaylight community, and being worked in that. So because it is all open-source, because it is freely shared, and it's really just a way to improve discoverability, we can share easily back and forth between those communities. >> The Code Exchange is designed to really help people peer-to-peer work together and reuse code, but in the classic >> Reuse code within >> open-source ethos. >> the community. Exactly. >> Okay, so Par, you have something going on with Ecosystem Exchange. >> We do. >> Okay, so it sounds like Code Exchange, ecosystem partners, matchmaking service. What is it, take a minute to explain. >> It's kinda the next level up, and what I think we have to understand is, when we've got Code Exchange and Ecosystem Exchange under the umbrella of exchange, because within our 500, half a million community of developers, where they work, what we've found is predominately at SIs, at our VARs, at our ISVs. So these are the builders, so Code Exchange will even help that persona because they can come and see what's already been built. "Is there something that can jumpstart my development?" And if there's not, then they can work with each other, right? So if I am looking for a partner, a VAR in Australia to help me roll out my application, my navigation application, which needs to know and get data from the network, I can partner through this exchange because I can go in, see everyone, and be able to make that connection digitally versus organically. And this really started, you asked earlier what was one of the pinnacle moments? Well at these DevNet Zones, what we found is that an ISV would partner and start talking to an SI or to a VAR, and they'd start doing business planning, because what this is all about is driving those business outcomes for our customer base. And we're finding more and more they're trying to work together. >> So you're enabling people to get, do some work together, but not try and be a marketplace where you're actually charging a transaction. It's really kind of a matchmaking-- >> This is all about discovery right now. >> Community-driven discovery around business. Yeah, it's interesting, a heard a story in the hallway about DevNet, cause I love to get the examples of, we love what we're doing by the way, but want to get the examples, overheard a guy saying, "We were basically "cratering a business, jumped into the DevNet program, "and turned it around," because there was deals happening. So the organic nature of the community allowed for him to get his hands dirty and leverage it, but actually build business value. >> That's exactly right. >> That's a huge, >> That's exactly right. >> at the end of the day, people love to play with code, but they're building something for business purposes or open-source projects. >> And that's what this is about. It's really transitioning from the, "I'm gonna build," to now there's business value associated with it, and that's spectacular. >> I think so much of my career you talk, the poor network administrators, like "Help, help, "I'm gonna lock myself for a month, "and I'm gonna do all this scripting," and then three months later their business comes and asks for something that, "I need to go it again," because it's not repeatable. It's what we say is that the challenge has been that undifferentiated heavy lifting that too many companies do. >> Exactly. >> Well, that's exactly it, and the interesting thing, especially around intent-based networking is that's opening up a whole new opportunity of innovation and services. And one of the things that isn't very much different with our Ecosystem Exchange is it's the whole portfolio, so we have SIs in there as well as ISVs. And most marketplaces or catalogs really look at it in a silo version. >> I have one example of kinda the two coming together that's really interesting. So, Meraki, which is the wireless network, has really great indoor location-based services you can get from the WiFi. And then there's been ISVs who have built indoor wave finding on top of it, they're really great applications. But those software companies don't necessarily know how to go install a Meraki network or sell a Meraki network to something like this. And so it's been a great way to see how some of those wave finding companies can get together with the people who actually go sell and install and admin Meraki networks, and, but come together, cause they would have a hard time finding each other otherwise. >> And the example is actually rolled out here at Cisco Live. We've, Cisco Live partnered with an ISV to embed a Cloud-based service in their app, which is navigation. So you can go into the Cisco Live app, tap on the session that you want to see. A map will come up that will navigate you from where you are here to get there, and this is, I think this is the second largest conference center in the United States, so having that map >> So you need it. >> is really important. >> I've gotten lost twice. >> We've all got the steps to prove that that is, but, yeah, and that actually brings, one of the questions I had was, is it typically some new thing, to do wireless rollouts and SD-WAN on discovery, or is it core networking, or is it kind of across the board as to when people get involved? >> It's definitely both. It's definitely both. I mean, from the Code Exchange piece, I've talked to a lot of customers this week who are saying, "We've got our core networking teams. "We want to move towards more automation. "We're trying to figure out how to get started." And so we give them all the resources to get started, like our video series and then now Code Exchange. And then I heard from some people here, they actually coded up some things and submitted it to Code Exchange while they were here because they had an idea for just a simple, quick automation piece that they needed. And they were like, "I bet somebody else "needs it too," so it was definitely in that. >> I noticed you guys also have your Cisco team I was talking to, some of the folks here have patents are being filed. So internally at Cisco, it's kind of a wind of change happening, where, >> It is exciting times. >> IoT cameras, I just saw a solution behind us here where you plug a Rasberry Pi hardware prototype to an AP, makes the camera a video. Now it looks like facial recognition, saves the metadata, never stores video, so this is kind of the new model. >> Pretty remarkable. So final question I want to ask you is, as you guys continue to build community, you're looking for feedback, the role of integrating is critical. You mentioned this Cisco example about going to market together. It used to be, "Hey, I'm an integrator of our solution, "business planning," okay, and then you gotta go to the Cisco rep, and then there's, they're dislocated. More and more it's coming together. >> It is. >> How are you guys bridging that, those two worlds? How are you tying it together? What's the plan? >> So we're, what we're finding is a lot of those partners are also sort of morphing. So they're not just one thing anymore, and so what we're doing is we're working with them, enabling them on our platforms, providing solid APIs that they can leverage, transitioning or expanding the code, the skillsets of their workers, and then we're partnering them up with our business partners and with our ISVs, and doing a lot of that matchmaking. And with Ecosystem Exchange, again, they'll now be able to take that to a digital format, so we're seeing the whole wave of the market taking them. >> So you guys see it coming. You're on that wave. >> Yes. >> All right, real quick, I know we're short on time, but I would, Mandy, if you could just talk about what Susie Wee, you're leader talked about on stage on the keynote, she mentioned DNA Center. Can you just take a quick second, describe what that is, why it's important, and impact to the community. >> Yes, so we're really excited about DNA Center platform. DNA Center is the controller, kind of at the heart of all of our new enterprise networking software. So it sits on top of the devices, and it exposes a whole library of APIs. It'll let you do Assurance, policy, get device information. It would allow you to build a kind of self-service ops models, so you could give more power to your power users to get access to network resources, on-board new devices, things like that. >> So it sets the services. >> So it's APIs, and then you can build the services on top. And part of that is also the Assurance, which Dave Geckeler showed in his keynote, which we're really excited about. So, in DevNet we've been working to build all the resources around those APIs, and we have many code samples in Code Exchange. We actually have a community contribution sprint going on right now, and that's called Code Intent with DevNet, and it's all around DNA Center. It's asking developers to take a business intent and turn it into code, and close the loop with Assurance, and submit that back to DevNet. >> That's great. It's a real business process >> We're real excited about >> improvement with code, >> that, yeah, so you're enabling that, and slinging APIs around, having fun, are you having fun? >> Definitely having fun. >> Par? >> We always have fun >> Absolutely >> on this team. >> We always have fun, yeah. >> It's a great team. >> I can say working with you guys up close has been fun to work, and congratulations. You guys have worked really hard and built a very successful, growing ecosystem of developers and partners, congratulations. >> Thank you. You guys have helped. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for supporting >> We appreciate it. theCUBE, really appreciate, this is crew of the DevNet team talking about, back in the early days, 2014, when it started, now it's booming. One of the successful developer programs in the enterprise here. Cisco's really showing the path. It's all about the community and the ecosystems, theCUBE, of course, doing our share. Broadcasting here live in Orlando at Cisco Live 2018. Stay with us for more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco it's The Cube. Covering Devnet Create 2017. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Welcome back everyone. Live in San Francisco this is The Cube's exclusive coverage of Cisco Systems inaugural DevNet Create event an augmentation, extension and build upon their successful three year old DevNet Developer Program. Our next guest is Amanda Whaley who's the director of development experience at Cisco DevNet. Congratulations Amanda on one DevNet being successful for three years and now your foray into DevNet Create which is some call it the hoodie crowd, the cloud native developers, open source, completely different animal but important. >> Yes. >> From DevNet. >> Absolutely so the hoodie crowd is more my tribe that's my background is from software development and I came to Cisco because I was intrigued when they reached out and said we want to start a developer community, we want to start a developer program. I talked to Suzie Wee for a long time about it and what was interesting to me was there were new problems to solve in developer experience. So we know how to do rest APIs, there's a lot of best practices around how you make those easy for developers to use. How you make very consumable and developer friendly and there's a lot of work to do there but we do know how to do that. When you start adding in hardware so IOT, network devices, infrastructure, collaboration, video, there's a lot of new interesting developer experience problems to solve. So I was really intrigued to join Cisco bringing my software developer background and coming from more the web and startup world, coming into Cisco and trying to tackle what's this new connection of hardware plus software and how do we do the right developer experience around... >> Okay so I have to ask you what was your story, take us through the day in the life as you enter in to Cisco, you have Suzie wooed you in you got into the tractor beam 'cause she's brilliant she's awesome and then you go woah I'm in Cisco. >> Amanda: Yeah! >> You're looking around what was the reaction? >> So what was interesting was so DevNet started three years ago at Cisco live we had our first DevNet developer zone within Cisco Live. That was actually my first day at Cisco so my first day at Cisco. >> Peter: Baptism by fire. >> Yes absolutely and so that was my first day at Cisco and Suzie talked to me and she said hey there's a lot of network engineers that want to learn how to code and they want to learn about rest APIs. Could you do like a coding 101 and start to teach them about that so literally my first day at Cisco I was teaching this class on what's a rest API, how do you make the call, how do you learn about that and then how do you write some Python to do that? And I thought is anyone interested in this that's here? And I had this room packed with network engineers which I at that time I mean I knew some networking but definitely nothing compared to the CCIEs that were in the audience. >> John: Hardcore plumber networking guys. >> Yeah very very yeah. And so I taught the course and it just like caught on like wildfire they were so excited about because they saw this is actually pretty accessible and easy to do and one thing that stood out was we made our first rest call from Python and instead of getting your twitter followers or something like that it retrieved a list of network devices. You got IP addresses back and so it related to their world and so I think it was very fortunate that I had that on my first day 'cause I had an instant connection to what that community... >> They're like who is she's awesome come on! >> Co-Ost: Gimme that code! >> You're like ready to go for a walk around the block now come on kindergartners come on out. No but these network guys they're smart >> Really smart. so they can learn I mean it's not like they're wet behind the ears in terms smarts it's just new language for them. >> And that was the point of the class was like you guys are super smart you know all of this you just need some help getting tarted on this tooling. And so many of them I keep up with them on Twitter and other places and they have taken it so far beyond and they just needed that start and they were off to the races. So that's been really interesting and then the other piece of it has been working in our more app developer technologies as developer experience for DevNet I get to work across collaboration, IOT, Networking, data center like the whole spectrum of Cisco technologies. So on the other side in application we have Cisco Spark they have javascript SDKs and it's very developer friendly and so that is kind of going back to my developer tribe and bringing them in and saying to you want to sell to the enterprise, do you want to work with the enterprise, Cisco's got a lot to offer and there's a lot of interesting things to do there. >> Yeah a lot of them have Cisco networks and gear all around the place so it's important. Now talk about machine learning and AI the hottest trend on the planet right now in your tribe and in developer tribe a lot of machine learning going on and machine learning's been around data center, networking guys it's not new to them either so that's an interesting convergence point. IOT as a network device. >> Amanda: Right right. >> So you got IOT you got AI and machine learning booming, this seems like it's a perfect storm for the melting pot of... >> It really is so today in my keynote I talked a little bit about first of all why have I always liked working with the APIs and doing these integrations and I've always thought that it's what I like about it is the possibility you have a defined set of tools or Legos and then you can build them into whatever interesting thing you want to and I would say right now developers have a really interesting set of Legos, a new set of Legos because with sensors, whether that's an IOT sensor or a phone or a video camera or a piece of a switch in your data center a lot of those you can get information from them. So whatever kind of sensor it is plus easy connectivity and kind of connectivity everywhere plus could computing plus data equals like magic because now you can do now machine learning finally has enough data to do the real thing. My original background was chemical engineering and I actually did predictive model control and we did machine learning on it but we didn't have quite enough data. We couldn't store quite enough of it, we didn't have enough connectivity we couldn't really get there. And now it's like all of my grad school dreams are coming true and you can do all these amazing things that seemed possible then and so I think that's what DevNet Create has been about to me is getting the infrastructure, the engineers, the app developers together with the machine learning community and saying like now's the time there's a lot of interesting things we can build. >> And magic can come out of that. >> Magic yeah right! >> And you think about it that's chemical reaction. The chemistry of bringing multiple things together and there's experimentation sometimes it might blow up. >> Amanda: Hopefully not! >> Innovation you know has is about experimentation and Andy Jassy at Amazon web services I mean I've talked to him multiple times and him and Jeff Bezos consistently talk about do experiments try things and I think that is the ethos. >> It is and that is particularly our ethos in DevNet in fact in DevNet Create an experiment right a new conference let's get people together and start this conversation and see how it comes together. >> What's your reaction to the show here? The vibe your feeling? Feedback your getting? Observations. >> I'm so happy it's been great. I had someone tell mt today that this was the most welcome they had felt at any developer conference that they'd been to and I took that as a huge complement that they felt very comfortable, they liked the conversations they were having they were learning lots of new information so I think that's been good and then I think exactly that mix of infrastructure plus app developer that we were trying to put together is absolutely happening. I see it in the sessions I see it in the birds of a feather and there's a lot of good conversations happening around that. >> Question for you that we get all the time and it comes up on crowd chat I'd like to ask you the question just get your reaction to is what misperception of devops is out there that you would like to correct? If there could be one and you say you know it's not that what's your... >> The one that seems the most prevalent to me and I think it's starting to get some attention but it's still out there is that devops is just about about the tools. Like just pick the right devops tools. Docker docker docker or use puppet and chef and you're good you're devopsing and it's like that is not the case right? It's really a lot more about the culture and the way the teams work together so if there was anything I could, and the people right, so it's flipping the emphasis from what's the devops tool that you're using to how are you building the right culture and structure of people? That's the one I would correct. >> Suzie was on yesterday and Peter and Suzie had a little bit of a bonding moment because they recognize each other from previous lives HP and his old job and it brought up a conversation around what Peter also did at his old job at Metagroup where he talked about this notion of an infrastructure engineer and what's interesting. >> Peter: Infrastructure developer. >> I mean infrastructure developer sorry. That was normally like a network engineer. So the network engineer's now on the engineering side meeting with developers almost like there seems I can't put my finger on it just like I can feel it my knee weather patterns coming over that a new developer is emerging. And we've talked a little bit about it last night about this what is a full stack developer it doesn't stop at the database it can go all the way down to the network so you're starting to see the view a little bit of a new kind of developer. Kind of like when data science emerged from not being an analyst but to being an algorithms specialist meets data person. >> Right I think it's interesting and this shows up in a lot of different places. When I think about devops I think about this spectrum of the teams working and there's the infrastructure teams who are working on the most deepest layer of the infrastructure and you kind of build up through there into the Devops teams into the app dev teams into maybe even something sort of above the app dev team which would be like a low code solution where you're just using something like build.io or something like that. Something that we wouldn't normally think of as developers right. So that spectrum is broadening on both ends and people are moving down the stack and moving up the stack. The network engineers one of the things in DevNet we're working on is what we call the evolution of the network engineer and where is that going and network engineers have had to learn new technology before and now there's just a new set which includes automation and APIs and configuration management, infrastructures, code and so they're moving up the stack. And then developers are also starting to think I really want my application to run well on the network because if no one can use it then my application's not doing anything and so things like the optimized for business that we have with Apple where a developer can go in through an SDK and say I want to set these QOS settings so that my app gets treatment like that's a way that they're converging and I think that's really interesting. >> Peter: So one of the things that we've been working on at Wikibon I want to test this assumption by we've talked a little bit about it is the idea of a data zone. Where just as we use a security zone as a concept where everything that's in that zone and it's both the technologies there's governmental there's other types of, has this seized security characteristics and if it's going to be part of that conglomeration it must have these security characteristics. And we're no thinking you could do the same thing with data. Where you start saying so for example we talked earlier about the idea that the network is what connects places together and that developers think in terms of the places things are like the internet of things. I'm wondering if it's time for us to think in terms of the network in time or the network is time and not think in terms of where something is but think in terms of when it is. And whether or not that's going to become a very powerful way of helping developers think about the role that the network's going to play is the data available now because I have an event that I have to support now and it seems as though that could be one of those things that snaps this group, these two communities together to think it's in time that you're trying to make things happen and the network has to be able to present things in time and you have to be cognisant of in time. It's one of the reasons for example why restful is not the only way to do things. >> Right exactly. >> IOT thinks in time what do you think about that? >> Yeah I think that's really interesting and actually that's something we're diving in with our community on is so you've been a developer you've worked with rest services and now you're doing IOT well you need to learn a lot of new protocols and how to do things more in real time and that's a skill set that some developers maybe don't have they're interested in learning so we're looking at how do we help people along that way. >> John: Well data in motion is a big topic. >> Exactly yeah absolutely. And so I think and then the network, thinking about from a network provider like I need this data here at this time is very interesting concept and that starts to speak to what can be done at the edge which is obviously like an interesting concept for us. >> But also the role the network's going to play in terms of predicatively anticipating where stuff is and when it needs to be there. >> Yeah yeah I think that's a really interesting space. >> But it's programmable if you think about what' Cisco's always been good at and most network and ops guys is they've been good at policy based stuff and they really they know what events are they have network events right things happen all the time. Network management software principles have always been grounded in software so now how do you take that to bridging against hat's why I see a convergence. >> Amanda: We should have a conference around that. >> It's called DevNet Create. Okay so final question for you as you guys have done this how's your team doing with the talks was one going on behind us is a birds of a feather IOT session you've got a hack-a-thon over here. Pretty cool by design that we heard yesterday that it's not 90% Cisco it's 90% community 10% Cisco so this is not a Cisco coming in and saying hey we're in cloud native get used to us we're here you know. >> Absolutely not so it's I'm really proud of how my team came together around that so I have our team of developer evangelists who we connect with the developer community and we really look at our job as this full circle of we get materials out and learning and get people excited about using Cisco APIs and we also bring information back about like here's what customers think about using it, here's what the community's doing all of that. So when we started DevNet Create we set the stake in the ground of we want this to be way more community content than our content we produce ourselves. And so the evangelists did a great job of reaching out into communities, connecting with speakers, finding the content that we wanted to highlight to this audience and bringing it in so that the talks have been fabulous, the workshops have been a huge hit it's like standing room only in there and people getting a seat and not wanting to leave because they want to keep their seat and so they'll stay for four workshops in a row you know it's been amazing. >> I think it's great it's exciting for me to watch 'cause I know the developer goodness is happening. People are donating soft we see Google donating a lot of open source even Amazon on the machine learning you guys have a lot of people that open source but I got to ask you know within Cisco and it's ecosystem of a company we see a lot or Cisco on our Cube events that we go to. We go to 100 events last year we've been to 150 this year. We saw Dehli and Ciro we saw some Cisco folks there. Sapphire there's a deal with Century Link and Honna Cloud, Enterprise Cloud so there's Cisco everywhere. There's relationships that Cisco has, how are you looking at taking DevNet Create or are you going to stay a little bit decoupled, be more startup like and kind of figure that scene out or is that on the radar yet? >> So I think we know with starting DevNet Create for this first year what we really want to do is get foundation out there, stake in the ground, get a community started and get this conversation started. And we're really looking to in the iterative experimental way look at what comes out of this year and where the community really wants to take it. So I think we'll be figuring that out. >> John: So see what grows out of it. It's a thousand flowers kind of thing. >> Yeah and I think that it will be, we will always have the intention of keeping that we want to keep the mix of audience of infrastructure and app and we'll see how that grows so... >> Well Amanda congratulations to you, Rick and Suzie and the teams. I'd like to get some of those experts on the Cube interviews as soon as possible. >> Absolutely! >> And some crowd chats. You guys did an amazing IOT crowd chat. I'll share that out to the hashtag. >> That was really fun. >> Very collaborative you guys are a lot of experts and Cisco's got a lot of experts in hiding behind the curtain there you're bringing them out in public here. >> That's right. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you very much. >> We're here live with special inaugural coverage of DevNet Create, Cisco's new event. Cloud native, open source, all about the community. Like The Cube we care about that and we'll bring you more live coverage after this short break. >> Hi I'm April Mitchell and I'm the Senior director of Strategy and Planning for Cisco.

Upbeat techno music >> Live, from Barcelona Spain, it's theCUBE! Covering Cisco Live Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Cube's exclusive coverage, here in Barcelona, Spain, for Cisco Live Europe 2019. I'm John Furrier. With hosts this week: Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman, here all for three days. So, we're wrapping up Cisco Live 2019, here in Europe. Guys, we're breaking it down. We had some great editorial segments, where we unpacked everything here. But, as we look back over the show, I want to get your observations and insights into, kind of what's going on with Cisco, the secret formula around why DevNet- their developer program; which also has Devnet Create, which is cloud native- is growing very rapidly. Huge resonance with the customer base in Cisco. It's created a revitalization of Cisco, as a company. And you can see that permeating throughout the organization with their branding, how the teams are organized, and they're engineering their products. Is this the future model for all infrastructure companies that don't have a cloud? And why is that successful? And then other observations. Guys, we'll start with DevNet. The very successful program, led by Susie Wee, Senior Vice President and CTO, executing flawlessly how to transform a community, without killing the old to bring in the new. Stu. >> Yeah, John, it's been fascinating to watch. We've talked about the ground effort, a lot of hard work by a small team, build a community. Last year, over 500,000. We hear they're at 560,000 people using this tool. Four and a half years ago, you know, Cisco- mostly a hardware company. It really- what I've seen over the last year or two, they were talking about software, but I've really seen deliverables here. You talk about CloudCenter Suite, you talk about the DNA Center platform; if they're a hardware company, there's a disconnect between what's going on in the DevNet zone, and what's happening in the company. But, we've seen rallying around software solutions. I've heard from the partnering system, from the customers: this isn't Cisco of a few years ago. Very fragmented, lots of lines of businesses, lots of different things. I remember back when Chambers announced, like, "oh, we've got, you know, 37 different adjacencies we're going to go into." No. Now it's: solution suites and platforms and, you know, DevNet- it is a unifying force of what they're doing. That's a great term, John. Love it. And see, that transformation of being a software company, that DevNet set some of the groundwork, and we heard the CIO of Cisco saying that, you know, security and the developer activity, are his partners in crime. Helping him, driving change, and... >> And they did a nice clever play on words: Data Centered. And that's kind of a shot across the bough of the classic data center, which shows it is a cloud world. And data is a center part of it. And, I think the API-centric economy's certainly doing it. But, Dave, I want to get your thoughts, because you asked a question to Susie Wee of DevNet- a very important question Other companies couldn't be successful with developer programs. Cisco has been. What's the secret formula? Well, I asked Amanda Whaley, who's her right-hand woman around what's going on, and she said, "well, there's no secret formula..." Guess what. There is a secret formula. They're being humble. But seems to be content- seems to be the unifying force of the community. They understood the need, they saw the future around cloud native and API's, being a very important connection tissue- connective tissue, for this cloud native world, and an upstream path for Cisco. They understood the future, knew the need, and they provided great content. The sessions and the education are open, inclusive, very education oriented. But, conversations with their peers have been key. TheCUBE's been here, talkin' to... They treat everyone the same, not the big pitches. Real authentic and genuine content that allowed people to learn and grow, and connect with others. To me, I think that is kind of- this is one of my observations. Your thoughts, Dave, on that. >> Yeah, so... First of all, there is a secret formula. And, this is the new blueprint, or the blueprint that infrastructure companies should be following. Cisco's clearly leading there. I think it's content and community. And, they're used their programmability, of their infrastructure, and they've socialized that. They've developed the technology. They say big companies can't innovate; DevNet is a real solid innovation. And it's- we witnessed all week, people coming in, training, learning; these are network engineers. They're learning new skills. They're learning how to be developers. And that is, to me, a huge innovation in business model, in technology. It's creating a flywheel for them. So, they've created- they've come up with the idea, that the network is a data platform. And it's now, also, become an application development platform. On which, they're deploying applications all over the place. Edge, we heard applications being deployed in police vehicles! And so, this is a very important trend, and from what I can tell, they're way ahead of other infrastructure companies: HP, I don't see this, they talk that game. Dell EMC; we talked about code. You know, IBM trying to make it happen with Bluemix. Oracle owns Java, and it still sort of struggles to own the development, developer marketplace. >> So, Dave, I love what you say there. I saw Jack Welch speak a number of years ago, and he's like, "eh, people always tell me all the time that big companies can't innovate." He's like, "well, maybe big companies, but what are companies made up of? Companies are made up of people, and people can innovate." And I think that's- you know, the key there is, it was very people-focused. Absolutely, content. When you talk about what were the big sessions here: oh, they're doin' Java, they're doin' kubernetes. It's like, okay, wait: is there a connection to Cisco products? Absolutely. Is it a product pitch in a product training? There's plenty of that going here! People need that. People built their careers out of Cisco. But this new career? A big question question I had coming in, is: it's a multi-cloud world, you know... Infrastructure, developer, and everything. Cisco's a piece of that. You know, how do they make sure that they get- sticking this with them, and helping them to build their career, and move forward. There's going to be some nice activity, there. And, you get a good glow, and you know, Cisco makes themselves relevant in those communities. >> The other observation that I saw, and I want to get your reactions to it, guys, is: that we saw Scale- and we talk about this all the time in theCUBE. Scale is now table stakes, to compete in this global landscape. But, complexity with multi-cloud, and these things, is there. Every major inflection point in the industry- abstraction layers and software, and/or hardware advances- certainly, Moore's Law kicks in and helps that. But, it's been software abstractions that have really moved the needle, because that's where you can have complexity, and still remove it; from an integration standpoint, from a consumption standpoint. This seems to be- Cisco's buying into this, across the companies, Stu- software. Not just hardware. They've coupled it, but they all work together. This is the magic of DevNet, the magic of API's. It's the magic of an internet operating system. Your thoughts. >> Yeah, and look- we talked to a number of the companies that were acquired by Cisco over the last few years, and I think those are helping to drive some of the change. You have, of course, APT is the big one, Duo in security; companies that were born in the cloud, and helping to move that change along the way, and John, as you said, that unifying factor of, "we're rallying," it's not just, the new Chip Stubbs standing up on the- and saying, "you know, okay, we spent millions of dollars in developing this thing, everybody go out and sell that." It's now- there's co-creation, you're seeing that evolution of that partner ecosystem. And, it's a challenging change, but Cisco is, you know, moving in the right direction. >> It starts at the top, too, Stu. And, I wanted to make a point of- we learned, also- and this is learning for me. Chuck Robbins is behind all this, okay. The CEO has identified DevNet, and said, "this is strategic to our company." All new products now, that are introduced at Cisco, will have API support and a DevNet component. This is a radical change from Cisco of the past. This means that every solution, out of the box- literally- and software, will have that in there. So, with API's and DNA Center, those are two areas to me, that I think will really be a tell sign. If Cisco can execute on the DNA Center, and bring in API's and a DevNet- a real supporting community behind every product; I think the programmable network will be a reality. >> So, help me squint through this. You know, we talk to a lot of people, we go to a lot of shows. We're gettin' the Kool-Aid injection from the DevNet crew here- but, there's real substance. We're going to challenge some of the other companies that we work with. Some of the other infrastructure companies. The IT business, it's like the NFL. It's a copycat league. So, HP is going to say, "oh, we got ATI's." EMC, Dell: they're going to say the same thing. But, what's different here... I mean, clearly, you see it in the evidence of being able to cultivate a community of developers. >> Of course. >> Is it because of the network? >> No, it's management. HP has people- I've talked to them on theCUBE- that believe in cloud native. The company just doesn't fund them properly. They've got the smallest booth at the events, they're always, you know, a partner booth. They're part of an adjunct of something else. HP and Tony O'Neary, I don't think is funding open cloud native... Or certainly the marketing people, or product people, are not funding developers. >> Well, certainly not to the degree that Cisco is, obviously. >> There's no physical signs of any kind. We go to all the shows. >> What about Dell? What about Dell EMC? >> I think Dell EMC is kind of keeping it open, but there's no coherent group. I can't, in my mind's eye, point to one group, saying, "wow, they're kickin' ass." >> They got bigger problems now. It's how you consolidate the portfolio... >> What is- Michael Dell's state of goal, is for Dell to be the leading infrastructu&re company out there. There's a big hardware component of that. Absolutely, they participate in open source, they have some developer- API's are great, and they love standards. But, you know, this is a software movement. >> Yeah. >> Infrastructure's code is where they're going. VMWare, you know, they've made some pushes and moves, in this space... >> With developers? >> Not big developers... >> But, where are the developers? They had their operators on the IT side, so- back to Dell for a second. I think Dell Boomi is one signal, I've seen some sign there. But then- and that's still relatively new, but there's no one- there's no DevNet for Dell. On VMWare... >> People Labs is someone that is helping customers learn to code, do that kind of activity. But, you know, broadly across the Dell family, I haven't seen as much. >> I think VMware has a good ecosystem. I think they have good technical people. I don't think they need a developer program, per se. I think they need more of an operator program. I think that's VMWorld. You go to VMWorld and you see a lot of the partners, and how they integrate in. >> So, who are the favorites in the developer world? Obviously, Microsoft, and MUS... >> I mean, to me, it's Amazon- as a kid in a candy store, if you're a developer, you're all over Amazon. They have great stuff, they're always introducing new candy for the kids, all the time. New services; Amazon, number one. Azure, I think- not so much, in my mind. I think it's a lot of legacy, there, with Azure. But, they are- they're puttin' up the numbers on the profit, and you know my stand on Azure. I think Azure's sandbagging the numbers. But, the growth's there, it's going to be a matter of time. I think, Azure, is on the path. And they have the legacy developer program, world class, Microsoft. Microsoft is in the Cisco kind of wheelhouse. If they can transform their existing developer community, to be cloud native, they hit a home run. >> Yeah, but, John, you were talking about IT ops, out there; Microsoft does great in that. They've got a lot of big push there. They absolutely- the DotNet developers are there. You go to the Build conference, they play. We go to CUBECon, and a lot of the developer shows, and Microsoft, strongly there... >> No, let me just clarify my point. Let me clarify my point on Microsoft. Yes, they have a pre-existing, huge, development. They've been successful by the core competancy, no doubt. Cisco had a developer community: all networking. So, I think Microsoft has that legacy win, but they have to transform, and go the next level. The question is, do they have that. So- with Azure, I'm saying... >> What about Google? You guys were at the Google Cloud Show last year, we'll be there again in April. >> Yeah, you got to put Google in the mix. No doubt, I mean, no question. And, what about Red Hat? With IBM, on the developer front? >> Yeah, look, when you talk to the developers, and all the- a lot of the training their doing, if you've got LITIC skill sets, you've got a leg up in a lot of these environments. There are a lot of developers. It's not like people at Red Hat- some, are like, "oh wait, 6here's my first hoodie, and I'm going to learn to start code." They're already there. They're in this ecosystem. Red Hat: huge part- everybody we just talked about, Red Hat has a strong piece in there. That's one of the reasons why IBM bought them, Dave, is to help ride that wave. >> That's expensive, but they got the ingredients now. >> Red Hat's- check, I love those guys. Google has a lot of developers. They contribute heavily in open source. But, in terms of a Google community, that's really the CNCF in my mind. I think they're doing great job stewarting CNCF, but there's not a lot of people- users, in the Google ecosystem, they've got tons of developers. And, that's an opportunity for Google, in my opinion. >> Well, let's bring it back to Cisco. So, are we in agreement that they've got a leg up on the other infrastructure competitors... >> Yeah, I do. >> Specifically, as it relates to developers. >> They have a huge leg up, but I think it's even bigger that that. I think that this company is going to skyrocket, if they crack the code on network programmability. They're at the early stages now, you're talking about intro to Python, they give more advanced classes... Give them 24 months, if they continue momentum on DevNet, that's the tipping point, in my mind. Two years, they could own everything, and just be a whole other level company, if they crack the code. 'Cause the network is the value. Payload, network effect, this is the new normal in today's.. >> It's a big challenger. I mean, it's really not- and, the networking companies, for years, haven't been able... The Aristas, and the Junipers, haven't been able to unseed them, as the leader. They still got 60 percent of the marketplace. >> DMWare- DMWare and Cisco. >> DMWare, alright. >> DMWare and Cisco, 'cause DMWare and Amazon, that's a lethal combination. I think that's what I'm going to watch, the frenemy action between DMWare and Cisco. I think that level of where NSX, and what Cisco's trying to do, within ten paces of that working. >> Well, and Outpost is the hybrid infrastructure. Does that eventually become a multi-cloud play? Maybe it's a few years off, but... >> Yeah, absolutely. Look, we've watched- a year ago, we were saying, "okay, Google's a strong partner to Cisco, how 'about AWO's?" Well, they're integrating with kubernetes, they're starting to do more with AWS. It's always an interesting partnership with Amazon. Cisco's got lots of products in the marketplace, they're growing in that environment, but Amazon's learning from everybody and can potentially be a threat down the road to where Cisco is. And, I'd love to see Cisco doing more in the Microsoft space, too. >> We'll be watching Cisco, over the year. We're going to continue to go deep on Cisco. We got the Cisco Live North America Show on the cal... >> San Diego. >> This year in San Diego. So, we'll see theCUBE there, for multiple days, as well. Of course, we'll be following all the traction of software define everything, as the world goes completely cyber, dark, encrypted; whatever it is, we're going to be covering it. Well, thanks for watching. I want to give a shout out to the crew. Good job, guys. Well done. Thanks for watching theCUBE here, in Barcelona. I'm Jeff Furrier with Dave Vellonte, Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)