>> As to the adoption challenges, I wasn't clear on where that should go. I mean, I'm happy to just throw it out there. >> You'll again punch it back to me, right? >> Okay. >> Question comes to me and I'm going to pass the ball to Greg to connect the thread on one backbone is needed. Emphasizing Cat 9K that we just talked about. >> And same thing for the last question. The routes to market? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Great. So we'll use that program for everything. Perfect. >> Masum, could you... Yeah, right there. So mark your place and try not to move that seat. That's it. Now, come forward just a tad, just a tad. There we go. Yeah. Okay, that's fine. Okay Alex, we're good. >> Okay. So Leonard don't leave after this 'Cause I'm going to do my outro. I'm going to do that as a separate asset, okay? >> You bet. >> Okay, great. So guys just it'll be five, four, three, silent, two, one. And then just follow my lead, okay? All right, Alex, you're ready? Masum and Greg, you're ready? >> Ready. >> Ready. >> Okay, here we go on me. On Dave in five, four, three, (beep). Okay, we're back. Digging into the infrastructure to make hybrid work possible. High performance, cost effective, scalable, and secure. That's what it's all about. And so far, we've covered the rapid migration to Wi-Fi 6E technology, and the role that switching is going to play. And now we're going to get into Private 5G and to do that, let's welcome Masum Mir, who is Vice President, and General Manager of Mobile, Cable and IoT business at Cisco. And Greg Dorai who is the Vice President of Product Management for the networking experiences group at Cisco. He's responsible for Catalyst access, that whole portfolio, Enterprise 5G, Cisco DNA Spaces, Cisco ISE, a lot of stuff there Greg. And gentlemen, welcome. >> Dave thank you for having us. >> Yeah, our pleasure. Masum let's start with you on the topic of Private 5G. What do we need to know about that? And more specifically, what's unique about Cisco's Private 5G? >> So most importantly, delivering Private 5G in enterprise terms, that's super important to look at 5G. Many of our peer groups might have got it wrong. We're looking at Private 5G with the lens of enterprise, what enterprise really needs. Is 5G going to come and displace a lot of existing technology, or is it going to help augment the technology that enterprise. It has an excellent the digitization journey. I wanted to start Dave with the basic premise of hybrid work. And what hybrid work really means. Is it only for knowledge worker, or is it for all workers? So we strongly believe hybrid work needs to empower all workers. It's not only connecting remote workers but also bringing people, things and space together. And we strongly believe the combination of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G for private network is going to accelerate that journey bringing people, things and space together in a very, very cohesive way. Why our offer is so unique? We are going to create a continuum. Enterprises don't have to make a hard choice. They will be using Wi-Fi technology and 5G technology hand in hand without creating a disruption on their policy and identity systems. They don't have to rethink, "Do I have to go and build a new backbone?" Is a common backbone that will support both Wi-Fi as well as 5G. Most importantly, delivering this entire offer as a service with the ease of consumption, ease of operation, and a trusted environment that they can put their mission critical workload on. >> Now, I like it. So a couple takeaways there. I mean, it's inclusive of all workers not just knowledge workers, non disruptive, everybody loves to hear that. And of course, it has service model as key Masum, let me stay with you. I mean, we can't wait for 5G, right? It's lightning fast, it got super low latency, very high bandwidth. So that's what everybody's excited about. The question though is, 5G gets introduced, yeah it's going to power things like IoT networks. Is that going to replace Wi-Fi and legacy wired broadband? >> Absolutely not. So we see Private 5G as an augmentation to the enterprise on top of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi as you heard in the previous conversation, Wi-Fi is bringing more capability with Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. And 5G is going to be yet another augmentation. Wi-Fi and 5G will coexist within enterprise for many years to come. I would like my friend, Greg to talk a little bit about this continuum. Greg? >> Yeah, I think it's sort of like, I like to say it's an and not an or. Because there's enough use cases out there which require spectrum. And you know, spectrum is a constraint. So you have Private 5G, your Wi-Fi 6, and both offer opportunities. So for example, in an indoor carpeted setting where you're basically connecting your phone for basic browsing, or connecting your laptop, Wi-Fi is sufficient. But if it's a process automation factory where you need seven nines of reliability, Private 5G is the better technology. Similarly outdoor, large areas, it's probably Private 5G, right? 'Cause you can have easy handoff between public and private. So it's use case driven. And once it's use case driven, it's going to be an or because there's so many next-gen use cases. Whether it's AR VR, drones, you know, self-driving cars you name it, right? And so I think these two technologies, 5G and Wi-Fi 6E is going to work hand in hand to deliver awesome outcomes for our customers. >> Yeah. And just the data volumes are going to be incredible. We always talk about the data volumes. You ain't seen nothing yet is what I always say. But the thing is every new tech that's introduced into the enterprise, you can almost be certain that it's going to bring adoption challenges. And not only that, it also is going to bring changes in the way you do things. And that brings new complexities from an operational standpoint. So my question is, how are you addressing this with the introduction of 5G? >> Dave, this is a fantastic question. And this is why we have spent, me and Greg have spent tremendous amount of time to create continuum. I'll start with the foundation first, backbone. So we have been building this enterprise backbone supported with wired connection as well as Wi-Fi connection. We wanted to make sure that as Private 5G comes within enterprise, you don't have to rethink and reimagine your backbone. It's the common backbone that will support what Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, as well as Private 5G. You're rest assured that it is the same backbone that we have heard in the previous section on the Cat 9K that will also support a Private 5G access. The second aspect of Private 5G is as you build any new technology into enterprise often time we get into this trap. To get to an outcome, we move fast and we create a silo. And then that silo operation creates barriers to mainstream it. So upfront, we have to think about not creating another silo. And how we are doing it. Number one, is a device that can connect into Wi-Fi network or a Private 5G network. You don't have to reimagine or rethink how I'm going to manage the identity. We'll create continuum with a common identity across the Wi-Fi access or 5G access in the same environment. The second aspect of that is how are we going to retain all our staff? Our enterprise staff is well trained with Wi-Fi technology and wired technology. Now 5G comes with tremendous amount of value and benefit. But it also comes with inherent technology complexity, learning curve problem. This is where our simple to consume, simple to operate model of SaaS comes to play. That we're going to take all those complexity away. It is a cloud delivered service. So enterprise don't have to go through this massive learning curve adopting this technology. Last but not least, on how we are going to manage your capital. Any new technology and enterprise often time, you need huge amount of upfront investment to adopt the technology to get to the other side of getting the outcome. So again, our business model of SaaS will allow enterprise to adopt this new technology and pay as your grow model to meet with enterprise needs. Finally, I also wanted to pass to Greg to touch a little bit more on how we are thinking about this common identity across any access in the enterprise. Greg, to you. >> So we thought about it in two different ways. One is, a lot of enterprises today use our identity and secure management platform. We call it ISE, Cisco ISE platform. And so, years and years of policy and identities, and which access servers, radio servers they use et cetera, are plugged in already into our ISE, right? So, if you can share that with this Private 5G as a service infrastructure that Masum's been building, we think we'll be able to create that bridge. Because we are not forcing enterprises to create new identities or new policies. So that's sort of step one to make it easier. We also thought through so something where in the case of a public 5G network, for example. It's very convenient because you take your phone out of your pocket and it's connected to the network, right? Versus for wifi, you have to log into an SSID in your hotel, or in your home, and in home, it's automatic. But that's that login process that creates friction. And that's a problem because then you can't be seamless. So we initiated what we call as open roaming, right? Like that's a identity federation that we first created between identity owners. Could be carriers, could be anything, right? Anyone who owns an identity. And they will share with venues. And so if the sharing happens, then that onboarding can be automatic. And once onboarding is automatic, then it's easy to pass off between Wi-Fi and 5G. And so that's again, another way in which you can lower the adoption barriers 'cause you share across public Private 5G and Wi-Fi networks. So these are two concrete examples of how we thought about lowering the barriers of adoption as we enter into this heterogeneous world. >> Nice, I can't wait. Let's talk about how this thing, scales in the go to market. What are the most likely, or maybe preferred, or obvious routes to market for Private 5G from Cisco? >> So Dave stay tuned right when they announce more about it. But I can also assure you that access to this spectrum is a challenge for many enterprises when it comes to cellular technology. In some countries there are more spectrum accessible by enterprise. In many countries, that's not the case. So we have thought through very carefully that how do we bring this offer to the market partnering with many service providers and mobile operators. Where in countries where you don't have direct access to the spectrum, our partnership with mobile operators, that you will hear more about as we come to Mobile World Congress, is going to allow our enterprise to consume this technology. even if they don't have the spectrum. In the places where the enterprise might have spectrum access, we'll also in our manage service providers to hide the complexity of the new technology on top of our SaaS services, or cloud delivered services. This is the augmentation with the partnership with manage service providers and mobile operators that will ease this journey for enterprises. Our most important primitive in this journey is to keep it simple for enterprise, make it intuitive, and trust it from day one. >> Outstanding. Okay, Masum, Greg, thanks so much. It was great to have you guys on. I really appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> In a moment, I'll be back with some closing thoughts and an opportunity for you to actually see this technology in action and talk to the experts directly. Keep it right there.

(upbeat music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE! Covering Cisco Live! Europe, brought to you by Cisco and it's eco system partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Cisco Live! 2019 here in Barcelona, Spain. I'm Stu Miniman, my co-host for this segment is Dave Vellante. Dave, myself, and John Furrier here, gettin' wall to wall coverage. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest, Dave Stanford, who's the Customer Experience Cloud Product Management at Cisco, Dave thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me here. >> Alright. So, we've been digging into the whole multi-Cloud piece here, some real big announcements. A lot of their business solutions talking about being anywhere, it's the bridge-to-possible here at the show- >> Exactly. >> So, tell us exactly the customer experience there. Is this, the gooeys, much more than that, do you know? >> It is. >> What's that encompass? >> We really want to put a whole wrapper around all these products and solutions from a service perspective, and that includes everything from advisory, really guiding our customers, how do I get there, we see all these products and sometimes, it's like, well what do I use these for? So, we want to guide them, help them adopt it and then, support it, support's probably the most important piece. With all these multiple solutions, who can the customers call to get support for all of these? >> You know, I mean, I've worked with Cisco, partnered with Cisco my entire career, and the last few years, boy, things are changing so fast. >> Absolutely. >> A year ago kind of opened my eyes, and said, oh Cisco's movin' to be a software company? You really see the movement when I come to the show here, when I talk to people like the Cisco DNA Platform Solutions. >> Exactly. >> And all the things that customers need to change. Bring us inside how you're helping customers with that change, the services, and everything that you're wrapping around there. >> Sure. My role today is to develop the offers and scale them out and enable our other advanced services folks to deliver, but previously I was delivery myself. So, I understand the challenges that the customers have, so I know what they expect, they want the products to go out there and seamlessly work together, now they do. There's APIs, there's connectivity, but we have to actually show them what they can do with them, what are the use-cases. And from our perspective, when a product's released, a CX offer or service package should go out the door with that, too. QuickStarts are the biggest thing we have. >> Yeah and actually one of the keys things we talk about that move to software, with hardware it was inner-operability and how do all these things wire together? >> Exactly. >> Software, right, it needs to be seamless. >> It does. >> It should be platforms. And solutions in there, so give us the critical eye, a look internally, how's Cisco doing, what's the feedback you're hearing from the teams and partners? >> I think we're on the right track. We're well ahead with some of the solutions we're released with Cisco Container Platform, Cisco CloudCenter Suite. The biggest thing we hear from customers, a lot of, especially developers, application users, they don't care, they just want it to be up and running. So, with our integrated solutions, with things like the new HyperFlex 4.0, we build on top of that, they don't have to worry about connectivity to security or to load balancing, name the technology, they can bring it up and we can actually have the software do exactly what it needs to do. >> So, I've observed for decades the evolution and the services' business. >> Yeah. >> When I started in the business, it was all about break-fix. >> Yes. >> Right and then you had large software projects and ERPs. >> Yeah. >> And business process, re-engineering, a lot of consultative selling, internet came in. A lot of e-commerce activity. >> Yeah. >> How has the Cloud changed the service role, the organization, and how you go to market and scale, as you mentioned before. >> I think the biggest change with the Cloud, it's no longer just break-fix, let me go and install it and figure it out. It's, we really need to understand what our requirements are before we move to the Cloud, we hear about speed, cost-performance, but there's a lot more thought that has to go into it. We have to look across the IT infrastructure. So, that advisory upfront, that guidance, that wasn't necessarily always there, that's the biggest change, before we even think about using the product, we need to understand why we purchase this product. >> And so, what do you need from the customer? I mean, you obviously need data and participation and buy-in from the customer, what do you need to be successful there? >> Really from the customer we need to know, what are you trying to accomplish? What are the use-cases, and we have a lot of common use-cases we've seen, security is always a concern. How do I securely connect to the Cloud? How can I leverage Cisco's software to do that? And it's not just about connecting to Cisco's software, but how do we use Cisco's software to do that connectivity? So, it's over and over we see this constant pattern of, I want to build a manager hybrid Cloud securely, multi-Cloud network it and take the complexity out of what we do there. >> As the demographics of your buyer changes- >> Yes. >> How do you service them differently? How do you create a customer experience that's more focused on the way they want to interact with you? Whether it's chat or talk about that a little bit. >> So, you're not really talking to the IT infrastructure person anymore, you're talking to the lines of business or the application developers. So, you have to go in with the understanding of, I'm not going to go in and say, we're going to refresh the hardware, we're going to do this, we're going to give you new switches, new routers. You start the conversation at the application level now. What types of applications do you have? Are they traditional, do we have to re-factor them? Can't we just move them to the Cloud? Then, you go to the next level of, we understand this, now let's get our hardware in place to support this and then our infrastructure. But applications, that's the big shift. That's where the discussion is now. >> Alright, so we've talked about some of the impact of Cloud. >> Yeah. >> We've been hearing about how AI and ML are getting infused- >> Yes. >> Into all the products and that has to have a huge impact on how the customers interact and manage- >> It does. >> And there's got to be a little bit of the retraining that we talked about, too. >> Definitely, I mean, that's probably the biggest challenge, even hiring right now to find the right fit for Cloud or for Dev-Ops, AI, ML, it's a challenge. So, you have to have a plan in place with this background. And, what we've done within CX is we have a five tiered model. So, we start with the pre-requisites, where are you in this scale, we'll give you a rating based on what you have, but you really still have to train the folks, you have to give boot camps, cohorts, then code deliver on different engagements. But you still have to bring in folks with the right background, even if it's network route-switch, you can train them, but you have to have that program in place to be able to ramp them up. >> Yeah, we always said one of the biggest strengths Cisco has, is you've got those army of Cisco certified- >> Yes. >> The CCIEs out there. >> Yes. >> CCNPS and the like out there. Now, a lot of what they have to manage, it's either outside of their control, it's in the public Cloud >> It is, yeah. >> Or, right there's automation. I don't need to just get an alert and go do it, wait I need to make sure that the business rules are in place and- >> Exactly. >> The tooling's going to take care of that. So, help us understand what's the new, what's the new role inside the customers, that's got to change who you're negotiating with and who's involved in the conversations when you're putting this solution together, as well as, kind of the pre as well as the post deployments. >> Sure, sure I think the biggest difference is our customers now have customers. >> Yeah. >> Before we just managed their IT infrastructure. A good example, we have a healthcare comp, a healthcare corporation in Canada, the clinics are basically the clients of the overall organization, they don't care how long it takes to spend, they want speed. They can't go to the IT department and say, give me a VM and then three weeks later, they give it up or they provision it. And then, they'll go and say, well this is too slow. Here's my credit card, I'm going to buy Amazon Web Services and provision it, now we need to bring all of that together so, the route-switch folks need to become multi-Cloud architects. And when I talk about multi-Cloud, they need to know everything up the stack, infrastructure, connectivity with the CSR, security with our Cloud Protect Portfolio, and then the applications, not to mention the vast array of third party solutions, Cooper Netties is everywhere now. It's the defacto standard for containerization. This is really something that's come up over and over. And that's probably one of the biggest challenges is to get our folks to look at the overall stack rather than one piece. >> You challenge. I mean, Cisco and Hallmark, and Cisco has always been partner friendly. >> Yes. >> It's worked with all the different infrastructure that's out there. >> Yup. >> Now, you add in all the different Clouds. >> Exactly. >> And it's not just a cloud. >> It's an entire cloud stack, all the APIs. Your eyes bleed when you look at all the different APIs from Amazon- >> Yup. >> Data services, even. >> Exactly. >> There are dozens and dozens of them and so, so how do you manage (chuckles) that challenge? You can't just throw bodies at it? >> No, so we leverage the tools that we have. Cisco Container Platform's a good example. We use it in-house, but it's the biggest thing we position to our customers in the Cloud story because it's made deploying and managing containers or Cooper Netties simple. Before CCP, my team would deploy open source Cooper Netties which worked great, it was complex to set up, but then you had to look at, I need a tool for monitoring, I need one for logging, for load balancing, you ended up with 10 different applications. You thought you were moving to containers, but hey, there's much more to it. So, now with CCP, it's all packaged, everything's simple to manage. So, that's just the containers. And you mentioned governance before. I think this is a big thing, CloudCenter Suite, we can model our applications in there, deploy to any Cloud endpoint, so we support over 15 Clouds. And what my team does is bring this all together. So, it's not just a service, we want to show you how you can automatically provision those clusters and move it anywhere you want to go. >> Yeah, I wonder if you can put a point on that. The CloudCenter Suite, CloudCenter's been around for awhile. >> It has. >> But there's really been a re-architecture. It's built, Cloud native. >> It is. >> Cooper Netties' in there, but what, as a customer, is going to be like, oh wait, this isn't what I was used to in the past, help us understand what it is for the future. >> Absolutely, I think CloudCenter has been around for awhile, it's an amazing product. I took over this Cloud Portfolio and Services about a year ago and I'd heard all about it, started to ramp up on it, within four hours I couldn't believe this is really gooey-based. This is simple, so I can model the application and it's a simple as clicking deploy, and I can push it to any Cloud environment. And I think that's the biggest challenge, it's always been, how do I migrate my applications from the data center to the cloud or vice-versa. And CloudCenter's made it so simple within two minutes, you can actually migrate an application or deploy it, and they've added so many other features around cost and orchestration that it's everyday, I see customers starting to adopt CloudCenter Suite. >> I want to ask you about Swimlanes. >> Yeah. >> Cisco's a product company. >> Yes. >> You R&D. You build product, you ship products. >> You're not a services company. but you have a large services organization. How do you, what's your swim lane relative to some of the big SIs, what's your relationship with them? How does that work? >> Sure. So, I'm really closely partnered with all of the engineering teams, but at the same time, the partner organization, the systems integrators, they're still partners, especially in the new CX organization, we want to drive the solutions out to our customers, so we're actually taking some of our partners, bringing them on board, ramping them up on our services. And saying, hey you know what, you go deliver it, we'll support you, there's not a competition. I think, with CX now, we've combined everything together, the partners are just as important to us as the products that we sell. >> Will they private label those services or is- >> Yeah, absolutely, so our QuickStarts for example, these smaller packages, to turn up the solution stack quickly and drive adoption, we can hand that off to 'em, they can sell it themselves and label it. >> Yeah, so you're open that. And that drives their brand and their value. Their intimacy with their customers, yeah. >> I mean, we have a big market, but still the partners can reach them different spaces that we wouldn't traditionally be able to get to in professional services. >> Yeah, they have those relationships. Services has always been very local by nature. >> It has. >> The world's not just going to, we've talked about this, not just going to go to three clouds. I mean- >> That's right. >> Services, people want to meet people and they're in the same neighborhood. And there's trust. >> Yup. >> And that just doesn't disappear over night. >> And you have to build that, too. But you have to build the expertise before you get that trust. >> Yeah (chuckles). >> So, Dave, lot of customers here, you've been in meetings, giving presentations all week, give us a little bit of what's the buzz at the show? What are some of the top conversations? People are doing their planning for 2019. >> Yeah. >> You know, big hurdles and big opportunities that people are excited for. >> So, two common themes, security has come up over and over again, customers who haven't moved to Cloud they're concerned, how do I connect? And can I really put this in the Cloud? Or do I have to keep it in the data center? So, we talk about how we can secure and it- >> And I'm sorry, are they concerned about security, compliance, governance- >> They are. >> All of the above. >> One example. Yesterday, a customer said, I have a top secret application. And my company's pushing me towards the Cloud, can I really put this top secret application in a container in a public Cloud environment? So, that's just one conversation. It's the concern of, I don't own this anymore. It's not my data center, so how do I secure the application? How do I make sure there's no type of interference with that app, any type of interjection into damage it, right? And then, the other thing is, I see your stack, I see you have infrastructure, I see all the products, I don't think it's that simple to put together. It's great on a PowerPoint, but show me in the real world how this works together. And, that's what we've been doing, showing these demos, how we can build everything. >> Alright, so once you've shown them, walked through everything, they're feeling answered? >> They're feeling much better, but we go back to the whole CX lifecycle, advisory, implement, support, and that brings it all together. >> Yeah, and the top secret thing, Google, you've been highlighting partnerships with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they've got specific Clouds, we've been watching this- >> They do. >> 'Specially, all the stuff happening at the government level. >> Yeah. >> And one of the great proof points about public Cloud adoption. >> Yeah, definitely. >> Alright, want to give you the final word as people come away from Cisco Live! 2019, when it comes to customer experience, what do you want them to understand? >> It's all about solutions, putting it together. So, you see all these products, it's not that complex, CX, our partners can help you build it, scale it out, and really adopt it. >> Alright, well Dave Stanford, really appreciate you helping us understand the CX experience here. >> Thank you. >> Definitely lots of opportunities here. Cloud, AI, ML, putting all the solutions together. For Dave Vallente, I'm Stu Miniman, back with more coverage here of Cisco Live! 2019. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (funky upbeat music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's The Cube, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, Net App and The Cube's ecosystem partnership. >> Welcome back, we're here live at The Cube here in Orlando, Florida, for Cisco Live 2018. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman have been co-hosts all week here for three days live coverage. Day one and I'm winding down. Great keynotes, CEO of Cisco laying out the next generation network and it's not just the old networking, it's a whole nother thing. Our next guest is Salman Asadullah, who is the CTO and VP in Engineering at Netnology.io. Like technology, Netnology.io, former Cisco fellow been twenty- >> Distinguished engineer. >> Distinguished engineer, sorry, fellow engineer, well you look distinguished today. So how many years have you been at Cisco? >> 22 years. >> 22 years, welcome to The Cube. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for the invitation. >> So I got to ask you, before I get into the company, which we were talking before we came on camera, you doing really, I think you're on the front end of a big wave we see, certainly in The Cube, but you've been at Cisco 20 years and I've been working with Cisco since the beginning of time, 1993, in some capacity or another in the industry and I've had friends that have sold companies to Cisco. There's always been a debate within Cisco's engineering organization as to how to move up the stack. One team, yes no. So there's been but now it's time. Can you add some color and reaction to that because I think that's kind of where it is now. So all those conversations, even go back 15 years ago, where in the stack should we go? What's the right time? How about some of the history of Cisco and now they're moving up the stack. >> Yeah so I think first of all just to start with, our company name is Netnology.io but our tagline is full stack system integrator because we call ourselves a full stack system integrator because we know end networking, we know Cisco but we know how to move up in the stack as well. With the APIs and the STKs and what not. So the thing what is happened when you kind of look into this from Cisco's perspective, and I was there for 22 years, I am what I am because of Cisco, like when people say in Cisco when they work in Cisco I am Cisco but I still say I am Cisco because all of our business, 70% of our business is around Cisco. But the thing is when people are in Cisco, from Cisco's perspective when they say okay we are a software company and all of that good stuff, they look at the software from a networking perspective but the world, the industry when they say software, they are kind of talking about up in the stack from the application perspective. This is what you see even in Cisco they are sort of trying to pivot and all of the requisitions which are happening is around that. That they are acquiring companies which are basically up in the stack. There are more application based companies and also they are building organically some stuff in there as well. >> What's interesting is that the trend is their friend right now because they are getting to have their cake and eat it too. They are going to have best of both worlds. The networking is becoming more and more important with something to find and then you've got Kubernetes which Google Cloud is out there on the stage today. You've got Kubernetes and containers and Service Mesh is coming on that all look like networking. It's got words like policy, QOS, I mean this is networking world moving it up the stack. What does that mean for a customer? Is that the path in your mind? >> Yeah and I'm a big believer of that. I'm a big believer of that even before leaving Cisco for last five years of Cisco, I was basically working around all of these SDN, NFE, APIs and making sure in organizations I was leading or I was part of that how do I enable our engineering force to do some of that, to gain those capabilities. This is what we are trying to mimic on a much smaller scale in our company. That the way we sort of call it we are a bunch of hybrid engineers. The people who are CCIs but they can also code as well. This is our sort of a focus because just like what you said John, five years ago or three years ago when people talked about this stuff it was only about if you are a data center, cloud these things matter. But now, if you really see all Cisco's solutions are around APIs, around STKs, around SDN and NFE concepts. So let's say if you look into Cisco enterprise solution like SDA or SDVAN it's all around that. If you look into collaboration, Spark, Intropo it's all around that. So the point is that for any network, for any engineer or any organization to get to the next level they have to go through this evolution. >> And that's scaling too then. The network's got to scale and the new software environment. >> You bet. >> So there has been a big debate in the networking world, Salman, for many years, okay I ran networks, wait I have to be a coder. Maybe there's not that skillset. Will my solution providers and my software providers and the platforms I build on take care of some of that or is the traditional role of the network dead? You're saying your company's got a hybrid role but what percentage of people that are the CCIEs and the network admins today, how many of them need to be coding, developing, working with APIs and everything in the future? >> Yeah I think the way I sort of look at it that there's some push back. There is some push back but mainly more in the younger generation. They get it, they get it because if I give you an example of our company, we have 15 to 20 people company, the last two hires we had these were fresh grads, computer science grads and what I asked them to do, first six months go get your CCNA so then they start to understand some of the basics of the networking so they can work with our senior CCI engineers who know how to write 50 lines of five tone script but they can work with the coders to get bigger things developed. >> That's the new strategy from millennials. Throw them in CIE training, get them up to speed. Okay I got to ask you the question, because I want Netnology, the company that you're the co-founder of, is small but you're doing a unique thing. You're taking and SIE approach, obviously Cisco DNA is in your blood, you in the Cisco family if you will, but you still got to work with other platforms like Amazon and what not, as you guys go out there is a trend towards automation and we're seeing that professional services, whether they are from global SIs, the trend is towards accelerating down the cycle of deployment, faster, faster, faster, it's almost like the old days was eight months to roll out an SAP deployment, now that's eight weeks, now is it going to be eight minutes. This is the trend, it requires automation, what is your vision on how this is going to pan out going forward because this is the beginning of a new kind of Cloud scale at a service level. What's your vision? >> So if you really see from the compute world guys they were already doing that stuff for the longest time and they always asked us, the networking people, how come if my CAPEX is 30% but my OPPEX is 70% when it comes to the networking because we were lacking all of those capabilities. And the reason was that all the vendors they had these closed systems but now with this whole trend of SDN, NFE, people want to have more control. Cisco, and a lot of the vendors, they have all opened up their APIs and given the SD case so now you have the capability to go and take this talk to the compute guys. Say you are ahead of the game but we are catching up as well. By using all of these different tools what we are using in our deployments day in and day out. So if I give you an example, recently we did a project for a customer which was a multi-vendor fabric, VXLAN fabric, for data center, and we automated that whole deployment using Ansible Tower. So the thing is that if you would have done that manually, my God it would have taken a long time but now you can do it in minutes. >> Sal, talk about the Devnet explosion, because obviously we've reported all day today it came out in the keynote, over half a million developers are on Devnet, Susie Wee who's heading up Devnet and now Devnet Create which is the Cloud version of Devnet. Those two worlds are coming together and you're seeing network guys, even old school folks, adopting Cloud Navis. A natural migration and the younger guys are going and get networking as you pointed out. Devnet's been popular, you're seeing some great demos here. You can get a free Meraki Switch if you can code a little bit, take it home with you and play with it. A lot of tools, a lot of APIs as you're talking about, this is the new software development environment. What are you guys doing with Devnet? Can you share some insight into some of the things that you're doing that's relevant? Things that you're kicking the tires on? What's up? >> So first of all, to start with, we do a lot of work with Cisco Devnet and we are so humbled and honored by that because we get to learn while we are working on a lot of cool stuff. Then we can go sell that to our customers. Just to kind of tell you tomorrow, Susie Wee is announcing Devnet's cord exchange you might have heard about. So we are among those few partners who have contributed to that cord exchange. So we have put our code for everybody go get it, play with it, like we couple of use cases we have shared on that cord exchange, free for everybody. Think about you have Cisco VNFs running on AWFs how would you use cisco Cloud Center to model and deploy that service on AWFs? Using the APIs and then in the back end we have done scripting using Python and Shell and Ansible. These sort of things. And also we have a booth over here at the Devnet zone partner village and we are demonstrating some of these demos over there as well. >> That's really the standard now, people are getting the scale up in multiple clouds then deploying. That seems to be the big trend, automation there. >> Oh yeah, because as I said, the way we are partnered with Cisco we are also partnering with AWS and GCP so we have close to 35 certifications in our team including 13 CCIs. >> You're a veteran at Cisco, obviously to work at Cisco that long it's very entrepreneurial inside so it's always kind of been there. It's still a big company even when you were there but not you're an entrepreneur. What's it like on the other side? >> Oh my god, I'm living someone's dream. I'm blessed to be afford to do this. It's an awesome time for us. Of course it's a little stressful. >> Heavy lift there huh? It's not easy right? >> Me being in the silicon valley and I wanted to kind of do this but I tell you I recently Cisco included me in the Cisco designated VIP, which is a very selected group of people and worldwide, so I'm one of those people and I wrote a blog about that and I said something in there that although I have left Cisco but I don't feel like I've left Cisco because I'm still you know- >> Extended family. >> Yeah extended family. >> So what's up for the company, what's next? What's you're mission? Are you hiring? What are you working on? Share some insight into what's next for you guys? What's on your road map? >> So it's the growing pains. It's the growing pains, we are growing, our work is expanding. We are basically hiring some good talent. But more exciting something that we are also building a platform. So hopefully in the next six months we are going to be releasing something around that as well. Because again, think about we are recently named as a top 10 SDN providers by Enterprise Networking Magazine, so we are focusing on three Cisco SDN solutions. SDI in data center, SDA in branch and campus, and SDVAN on the VAN side. Now think about that you have segmentation in all of these solutions. How you can simplify this whole thing. How you can map these different perimeters between these three different solutions. So we are working on some cool ideas and some product as well so that's something really exciting for us. >> Are you guys self funded? >> Until now we are all privately funded. >> Sal, I'll put the hard question to you. As a startup, congratulations by the way, we know all about startups, we started a startup ourselves, it's growing pains but it's fun. It's hard work but it's a whole different joy. What problem are you solving? When you look at hiring an engineer what's the tough problem that you guys are trying to tackle? If you could boil it down into, the full stack great mission, what's the hard problem that you guys are trying to solve? >> So we just want to further simplify the Cisco story. As a matter of fact, in some of these SDN NFE based environments, that's our goal. How we can further simplify it. We are small enough that we can tackle some of these things. >> So tackle the complexity, that's where your mission is? >> Yes. >> Salman, thanks for coming on The Cube. Great to meet you, great to have you here. Thanks for sharing your insight here on The Cube with us live here- >> Very good, I appreciate the opportunity. >> Yeah let's follow up, love what you do. I think the future is going to be changing the game on how professional services are built, deployed and leveraged. Certainly code sharing. Collaboration is the new competitive behavior. You don't have to beat the other guy to win, you can work together. This is the new normal. This is what's going on at Cisco Live. Here in The Cube we're bringing you all the content. Stay with us, we'll see you tomorrow for day two of coverage. Thanks for watching.