>> Live from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo Live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem. Barker's >> Welcome Back to the Q. We are running out Day two of our coverage of Sisqo Live 2019 from San Diego. Finally. Smartened. Joining Me with David Dante, David Ayer welcoming Carl Hobart to the queue for the first time. Director of product management for network service orchestration from Cisco. Welcome, Carl. >> Thank you so much. Thanks for having you guys >> wearing the Definite Zone. This area has been completely jammed. So buzzy, so full of excitement. For the last two full days, 95% we've been talking about all of the news, the announcement. But network automation is something that we've also been talking about. I was looking at some stats from this Cisco website. I think it was an infographic the other day where of network management is still manual, and I think what hit toe optics alone does that create talk to us about network automation and orchestration? In 2019 what's thie state of the art >> A LL. That's a big topic, but let me see if we can feel some of the layers >> off feeling you can. >> I do spend equated with quite a bit of time with this. And I also have the pleasure of having this conversation with many, many customers because, let me tell you, as uncomfortable as it may feel, you know, for a company like Cisco that is actually the number one topic that customers bring to us. They trust us on so many other dimensions in terms, in terms of the infrastructure that we bring. But the one thing that they really don't want to bring to the front is how can we help them automate their networks? Right? And there's a couple of pressure points going for them. I mean, it's the obvious basic stuff. That manual steps introduce an insane amount of outages and lowers equality. But it's also preparing for what's going to come. So it's that perfect mix between unavoidable and somewhat tedious. It is truly somewhat tedious. It's about cleaning up in front of your door, right? So they're turning to us to try to understand, and this is where it gets really interesting. What are others doing around this? Right, so we get to build a very nice and interesting body of experience working with a number of us, you can imagine large network owners going through the motions towards natural automation because that's number. The observation number one is that it's a long journey. It involves a whole lot of rolls inside of the organization, and it just takes time. So it's not one of these things you can buy yourself out of or you can, you know, hardware yourself out of. It's literally a big a turning point for how they organize themselves, how they hire people, which is huge. We've even had example. So they had to rethink the interior decoration off some of their some of their sight because with the emergence of software people of automation experts, they don't work the same way as traditional network engineers, right? They need another type of building, and that's how it really daunts on some of our customers that okay, way have to step back. So I was coming back to your actual question. Question is that the state of the art right now is the insight that it's a big, big I wouldn't say revolution but evolution towards the software centric world and that it permeates the entire life off people that owns large networks. That insight is actually >> what I saw that the light bulb goes off, okay, but it's it's a maturity curve. It's a bell curve it is for so do you still have? Sure you do. You see complacency. You see fear. What's that? What's that mix look like right now? Is it just a tip of the spear leaning in? Or is it the fat middle is now going for it >> from a vendor perspective. I am, after all, representative with Vova vendor. What's really unique at this place in time is that customers are open and front, loading the conversation with their problems. In many other faces off technology turn, they don't want to talk about their problems. Even even worse, They don't want us to remind them about their problems. They take a front now that's what they want to do, and they want to talk about how bad it is, right, Dave? It's almost like they're competing Now. I'll tell you about it is for me compared to how the others are. So that's huge, because that's true. The tip of the iceberg, like you said on the Insight that they actually have a big honking issue and that time is against them, right? So they are reaching out to vendors wanting to talk about the problems that that's pretty unique. So I think most of the fear and most of the, you know, rationalizing whether in a bad spot that's actually behind them Now it's about getting to solutions. Now it's about opening up, asking for help, sharing the problem with other vendors and other players in the field, and actually kind of almost like huddling around the problem and trying to move it forward as an industry. >> Now is it because you saw that the hyper scale er's had so much success with automation? Is it because of digital transformation? Trying to, you know, grow global scale? They they want to take cost out and shift Resource is why now? Why is it so total mind? >> So not one big thing, but a certain number of incremental pressures that has bean, you know, building up towards a breaking point. I'd say the one thing maybe that comes around mostly is that everybody's very excited about to see what virtualization Khun do for them, right, But virtualization assumes a certain type of the frame roll asset management in a sort of type of automation that blind the assumes, humans or other group, Right? So a big pressure point is to understand, as long as we're doing things manually, there is no virtual ization to be had or actually, virtualization will just make it more complex, and there are no gains to be had. So when I'm thinking about maybe the number one pressure, that's the one thing we have to get humans out of the loop in order to be able to virtual eyes, anything right? Otherwise, well, there will be no gains to be had. And also, I think it's the pressure on the expectations from the customer base. And they don't fundamentally don't understand why networking isn't as agile as workload management applications and all that kind of thing. So we're kind of inheriting the flexibility of the application world on the expectations are kind of falling back on the networking side of things. >> So you talk about virtualization your presume here, including containers in that in that context, right? So that adds another dimension of >> yeah, so the thing you like you want to spend up a container takes, you know, optimized cases below a second. Then go to the phone and call the networking team and ask for a new villain in the top of racks, which simply won't be a good thing, right? So you wanted exactly inside that was fast. Took less than a second. Now let me put a faxing to the networking team so they can go and set the connectivity of said No one. Ever >> right smoke signal that they're never smokes. You go. It makes the string phone carrier pigeons that fly >> little one fly on. Eventually we will have a villa so that that is the thing. They expect the network to respond with the same lightning speed and not only to creating things but moving things, actually tearing down things and removing configurations from the network. That whole lifecycle making the network looked like a malleable resource in the same sense that applications now are through continent generalizations and other things. Is this true at the breaking point, then, for the network engineers? I mean, they've had a uphill battle for a while anyway, but that one really took the price, right? >> Are there any industries in particular that you're seeing were there first or are the first to raise their hands and say, We've got a problem, anything that surprises you Or is it pretty horizontal? Whatyou're saying? >> There's one thing that I really tried to follow and I'll let you in on this secret. You know, between the three of us here, of course, communication service providers and let me spend a couple of seconds on this, mostly the carriers carrier. So there's a whole slew off cos that does nothing but sell Ben with the other carriers. They don't have many end customers themselves, but they passed traffic between the cloud giants and others. Write. It's paper thin margins on enormous amounts of band with, and there's simply no room for humans, right? It's almost like cloud economics, where power is the deciding factor. How cheap you khun game, you can get power. It's the same thing for these people. How how cheap can we produce Massive band with? Those guys were the 1st 1 to do things like connecting their serum system, a sales force or whatever. They're running straight into their network, right? No humans, nothing like that, right? So that's one of my little secrets. I track what they do because they're they're under such extreme margin pressures. >> Yes, right. But because it costs are coming down. And that man, the data volumes or going to the so they're so >> they're they're the probably the first, like, true commodity player in networking, right? So they have to get everything that's not, you know, fixed. Just get it out, get it off the ship, right? Just get it off the shape to win, Right? So there, there, my little secrets. You know, I try to track what they do because they're usually a little bit ahead. >> So what are they doing? >> So they they are again what they're trying to do, You know, normally, in a complication service provider or for that matter, and ambitious enterprise, you have a pretty thick stack of software, right? So at the bottom, obviously, you have the package passing things physical or virtual. Then you have orchestration. Maybe then provisioning, you know? Yeah, layer after layer after layer that has served the services companies really well over the years. Right? But when you step back and look at what you actually do with commodity services, we realized that the little path through that software you can fix with a very, very small set off functions, right? So they're literally just ripping things out and connecting again. They're crn systems straight into the network, and you can hear the pain scream of many. You know, companies that make a whole lot of money and integration, services and and business services and billing and rating in charging and all. That kind of stuff they do is just like like a bear metal implementation ofthe communication, right? So that's what they do. It turns out to be first of all, doable. So they're showing as all that you actually don't have to. Now they have a pretty particular menu off services that they provide. It's pretty short and sweet. It's bad with >> it's a cost for megabit, no frills, exactly >> nothing. No up selling here. But it's what it is, is what it is. So they have having a little easier, but they're really blazing the trail and showing that this can be done with very, very limited amounts off software. But I think that's what they're showing, and the second thing you almost said, it is many of course, enterprises are now extremely application centric that permeates the whole conversation, right? People think of the world in applications apologies, and the network supports the applications. Apologies. So being able to have the network then lock step move with the applications is truly key. I know it sounds simple, but it's it's a It's a big thing for many of our customers >> to ocean. >> It is, well, it is an ocean, and it's it's about making the network come alive for the application owners so it can follow in an ergonomically nice and robust fashion. That's the other really big pressure. So following people that has a strong application bias and trying to delight them as a networking person, which is by no means easy. Some of them actually don't like as much. You know. Some of them would actually like to get rid of the network if they physically could write, but they can't, so they have to live with it. And it's up to us then, to prove that there's actually value in the network by surfacing all the cool stuff that we have to them on their home turf, so to speak. So that's the kind of the second >> driver here, this gold in that net, then that data that's traveling over that it is it is for sure >> is just We haven't made it really easy for them to love way have to improve on them. That's what we have. >> We'll, Carl, thank you so much for a excited, passionate conversation with David me about network service, orchestration and the opportunities. And I love how you're starting to see customers first step in any problem. Situation is admitting. I have a problem and you're saying that that's awesome. We thank you so much for sharing your time and your energy with us. Thanks >> for having me. >> Our pleasure for day Volante. I'm Lisa Martin. We're wrapping up Day two of our coverage of Sisqo live. Join Dave student Amanda myself tomorrow as we broadcast all day. Our third and final day here and Sisqo live in San Diego. Thanks for watching