>> Live from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo Live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem. Barker's >> back to San Diego. Everybody watching the Cube, the leader and live tech coverage. My name is Dave Volante, and I'm with my co host, Steuben. Amanda, this is Day two for Sisqo. Live 2019. We're in the definite. So still. I was walking around earlier in the last interview, and I think I saw Ron Burgundy out there. Stay classy Sleeping Gow is here. He's the founder and CEO of Met Net Brain Technology's just outside of Boston. Thanks very much for coming on the Q. Thank you there. So you're very welcome. So I want to ask you, I always ask Founders passion for starting companies. Why did you start? >> Well, maybe tired of doing things, Emmanuel. Well, that's alongside the other side of Yes, I used Teo took exam called a C C. I a lot of folks doing here. I failed on my first try. There was a big blow to my eagle, so I decided that we're gonna create a softer help them the past. This is actually the genesis of nettle. I met a friend help people three better doing their network management. >> That's a great story. So tell us more about that brain. What do you guys all about? >> Sure, we're the industry. First chasing time. Little confirmations after our mission is to Democrat ties. Merrick Automation. Every engineer, every task. They should've started with automation before human being touched. This task, >> you know, way go back. Let's say, 10 years ago people were afraid of automation. You know, they thought I was going to take away their jobs. They steal and they still are. We'll talk about that. You get this and I want to ask you about the blockers. They were fearful they wanted the touch thing. But the reality is people talk about digital transformation. And it's really all about how you use data, how your leverage data. And you can't be spending your time doing all this stuff that doesn't add value to your business. You have to automate that and move up to more valuable test. But so people are still afraid of automation. Why, what's the blocker there? >> They have the right reason to be afraid. Because so many automation was created a once used exactly wass right. And then you have the cost ofthe tradition automation. You have the complexity to create in their dark automation. You guys realize that middle confirmation You cannot have little gotta measure only work on a portion of your little way. You have to walk on maturity if not all of your narrow right. So that's became very complex. Just like a You wanna a self driving car? 10 You can't go buy a Tesla a new car. You can drive on a song. But if you want to your Yoder Puta striving always song Richard feared it. That's a very complex Well, let's today, Netto. Condemnation had to deal with you. Had a deal with Marty Venna Technology Marty, years of technology. So people spent a lot of money return are very small. There's so they have a right to a fair afraid of them. But the challenges there is what's alternative >> way before you're there. So there, if I understand it, just playing back there, solving a very narrow problem, they do it once, maybe twice. Maybe a rudimentary example would be a script. Yeah, right, right. And then it breaks or it doesn't afford something else in the network changes, and it really doesn't affect that, right? >> Yeah. I mean, you know, I think back to money network engineers. It's like, Well, I'm sitting there, I've got all my keep knobs and I get everything done and they say, No, don't breathe on it because it's just the way I want it less. It can't be that doesn't scale. It doesn't respond to the business. I need to be able to, you know, respond fast what is needed. And things are changing in every environment. So it's something that I couldn't, as you know, a person or a team keep up with myself, and therefore I need to have more standardized components, and I need to have intelligence that can help me. >> Let's sit and let's >> s so we've laid out the generalized way that we've laid out the problem. What's what's the better approach? >> Well, give you looking out of the challenge today is you have to have Dave ups, which a lot of here they have not engineer know howto script and the mid off the engineer who know how little cooperates walk together. So there's a date, a part of it. There's a knowledge. A part of this too has to meet to create a narrow coordination and that Ned Ogata may have to be a scale. So the challenge traditional thoracotomy here, why is for short lie on if you're going down? Technical level is wise A terra, too many data and structure and the otherwise Our knowledge knowledge cannot be codified. So you have the knowledge sitting people's head, right, Eh Programa had to walk in with a narrow canyon near together. You make it a cost hire. You make it a very unskilled apple. So those are the challenge. So how fast Motor way have to do so neither brand for last 15 years You decide to look differently that we created some saying called operating system off total network and actually use this to manage over 1,000 of mental models technology. And he threw problem. You can't continually adding new savings into this problem. So the benefit of it is narrow. Canyon near anybody can create automation. They don't have to know how to writing a code. Right? And Deborah, who knows the code can also use this problem. All the people who are familiar with technology like and people they can integrate that never >> pray. Okay, so you have all this data I wish I could say is unstructured So he doesn't have any meaning. Data's plentiful insights aren't, uh And then you have this what I call tribal knowledge. Joe knows how to do it, but nobody else knows how to do it. So you're marrying those two. How are you doing that? Using machine intelligence and and iterating building models, can you get that's amore colors? Tow How you go about that? What's the secret sauce >> way? Took a hybrid approach. First call on you have to more than the entire network. With this we'll kind of operating system called on their own way have about 20 12,000 valuables modeling a device and that 12,000 valuable adults across your let's say 1,000 known there or there will be 12,000,000 valuables describing your medal. That's that's first. Zang on top of 12,000,000 valuables will be continually monitored. A slow aye aye, and the machine learning give something called a baseline data. But on top of it, the user, the human being will have the knowledge young what is considered normal what is considered abnormal. They can add their intelligence through something called excludable rumble on couple of this system, and their system now can be wrong at any time. Which talking about where somebody attacking you when that OK is un afford all you through a human being, all our task Now the automation can be wrong guessing time. So >> this the expert, the subject matter expert, the main expert that the person with the knowledge he or she can inject that neck knowledge into your system, and then it generates and improves overtime. That's right, >> and it always improve, and other people can open the hood. I can't continue improving. Tell it so the whole automation in the past, it was. Why is the writer wants only used once? Because it's a colossal? It's a script. You I you input and output just text. So it wasn't a designer with a company, has a motive behind it. So you do it, You beauty your model. You're writing a logical whizzing a same periods off, we decided. We think that's you. Cannot a scale that way. >> OK, so obviously you can stop Dave from inputting his lack of knowledge into the system with, you know, security control and access control. Yeah, but there must be a bell curve in terms of the quality of the knowledge that goes into the system. You know, Joe might be a you know, a superstar. And, you know, stew maybe doesn't know as much about it. No offense, too. Student. So good. So how do you sort of, you know, balance that out? Do you tryto reach an equilibrium or can you wait? Jos Knowledge more than Stu's knowledge. How does that work? >> So the idea that this automation platform has something called excludable Rambo like pseudo Rambo can sure and implacably improved by Sri source One is any near themselves, right? The otherwise by underlying engine. So way talk about a I and the machine learning we have is that we also have a loo engine way. Basically, adjusting that ourselves certainly is through Claverie Partner, for example, Sisko, who run many years of Qatar where they have a lot of no house. Let's attack that knowledge can be pushed to the user. We actually have a in our system that a partnership with Cisco attack South and those script can be wrong. slow. Never prayer without a using woman getting the benefit of without talking with attack. Getting the answer? >> Yes, I think you actually partially answered. The question I have is how do you make sure we don't automata bad process? Yeah. So And maybe talk a little bit about kind of the training process to your original. Why of the company is to make things easier. You know, What's the ramp up period for someone that gets in giving me a bit of a how many engineers you guys have >> worked with? The automatic Allied mission. Our mission statement of neda prayer is to Democrat ties. Network automation, you know, used to be network automation on ly the guru's guru to it. Right, Dave off. Send a satchel. And a young generation. My generation who used come, Ally, this is not us, right? This is the same, you know. But we believe nowadays, with the complicity of middle with a cloud, computing with a cybersecurity demand the alternative Genetic automation is just no longer viable. So way really put a lot of starting to it and say how we can put a network automation into everyone's hand. So the things we tell as three angle of it, while his other missions can be created by anyone, the second meaning they've ofthe net off. Anyone who know have knowledge on metal can create automation. Second piece of automation can lunched at any time. Somebody attacking you middle of the night. They don't tell you Automation can lunch to protect Theo, and they're always out. You don't have people the time of the charter. Automation can lunch the tax losses, so it's called a lunch. Any time certain want is can adapt to any work follow. You have trouble shooting. You have nettle changes. You have compliance, right? You have documentation workflow. The automation should be able to attack to any of this will clothe topping digression tomorrow. We have when service now. So there's a ticket. Human being shouldn't touches a ticket before automation has dies, she'll write. Is a human should come in and then use continually use automation. So >> So you talk about democratizing automation network automation. So it's so anybody who sees a manual process that's wasting time. I can sort of solve that problem is essentially what you're >> doing. That's what I did exactly what we >> know So is there, uh, is there a pattern emerging in terms of best practice in terms of how customers are adopting your technology? >> Yes. Now we see more animal customer creating This thing's almost like a club, the power user, and we haven't caught it. Normal user. They have knowledge in their heads. Pattern immunity is emergent. We saw. Is there now work proactively say, How can I put that knowledge into a set of excludable format so that I don't get escalate all the time, right? So that I can do the same and more meaningful to me that I be repeating the same scene 10 times a month? Right? And I should want it my way. Caught a shift to the left a little while doing level to the machine doing the Level one task level two. Level three are doing more meaningful sex. >> How different is what you're doing it net brain from what others are doing in the marketplace. What's the differentiation? How do you compete? >> Yeah, Little got 1,000,000 so far has being a piecemeal, I think, a fragment. It's things that has done typical in a sweeping cracker. Why is wholesale Hardaway approach you replace the hardware was esti N S P. Where's d? Let there's automation Capitol Building Fifth, I caught a Tesla approached by a Tesla, and you can drive and a self driving. The second approaches softer approach is as well. We are leading build a model of your partner or apply machine learning and statistics and was behind but also more importantly, open architecture. Allow a human being to put their intelligence into this. Let's second approach and insert approaches. Actually service little outsourcer take you, help you We're moving way or walk alone in the cloud because there's a paid automation there, right so way are focusing on the middle portion of it. And the landscaper is really where we have over 2,000 identifies customer and they're automating. This is not a just wall twice a week, but 1,000 times a day. We really excited that the automation in that escape scale is transforming how metal and is being managed and enable things like collaboration. But I used to be people from here. People from offshore couldn't walk together because knowledge, data and knowledge is hard to communicate with automation. We see collaboration is happening more collaboration happening. So we've >> been talking about automation in the network for my entire career. Feels like the promise has been there for decades. That site feels like over the last couple of years, we've really seen automation. Not just a networking, but we've been covering a lot like the robotic process automation. All the different pieces of it are seeing automation. Bring in, gives a little bit look forward. What? What do you predict is gonna happen with automation in I t over the next couple of years? A >> future that's great Way have a cloud computing. We have cyber security. We have the share of scale middle driving the network automation to the front and center as a solution. And my prediction in the next five years probably surrounded one izing automation gonna be ubiquitous. Gonna be everywhere. No human being should touch a ticket without automation through the first task. First right second way. Believe things called a collaborative nature of automation will be happy. The other was a local. Automation is following the packet from one narrow kennedy to the other entity. Example would be your manager service provider and the price they collaborated. Manager Nettle common little But when there's something wrong we don't know each part Which part? I have issues so automation define it by one entity Could it be wrong Across multiple So is provider like cloud provider also come Automation can be initiated by the Enterprise Client way also see the hado A vendor like Cisco and their customer has collaborated Automation happening So next five years will be very interesting The Manu away to manage and operate near Oca will be finally go away >> Last question Give us the business update You mentioned 2,000 customers You're hundreds of employees Any other business metrics you Khun, you can share with us Where do you want to take this company >> way really wanted behind every enterprise. Well, Misha is a Democrat. Eyes network automation way Looking at it in the next five years our business in a girl 10 times. >> Well, good luck. Thank you. Thanks very much for coming on the queue of a great story. Thank you. Thank you for the congratulations For all your success. Think Keep right! Everybody stew and I will be back. Lisa Martin as well as here with an X guest Live from Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego. You watching the cube right back

(techno music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage here at Barcelona, Spain of Cisco LIVE! Europe 2019. I'm John Furrier. Stu Miniman, and Dave Vellante here this week covering all the action in cloud, data center, multi-cloud. Our next is Jim Frey who's the Vice President's alliances at Kentik Technologies. Groundbreaking report that came of the Amazon Reinvent Conference. A lot of customers. Part of the multi-cloud discussion. Jim, great to see you, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks. It's Frye by the way. >> Frye. I'm sorry. >> Okay. No worries. No worries. >> Multi-cloud, your report has some interesting data. Talk about the survey, the results. What is is telling us? >> Yeah, we've been working hard at Kentik on extending our solution to start covering the cloud, multi-cloud server hybrid environments. And so we were at the AWS re:Invent show and we decided to take the opportunity to talk to some of the attendees and just sort of get their view of what some of the challenges are. So we talked to a little over 300 of em and we asked them a few questions not a, you know, rigorous thing, you're doing it on the show floor, right? But we found some really interesting things out of that. So the first thing is is that it really is a multi-cloud world already. More so even in hybrid. And so we had nearly 60 percent. 58 percent of the people who we talked to had more than just one of the cloud in play. They almost all had AWS of course cause it was an AWS event, but not all, of which is really interesting. But, you know, they either had AWS plus Google or plus Azure or plus some other cloud. More so than even hybrid. And so we also asked, are you using AWS in conjunction with you know, your own private data center or a third party host to go low center. Only 33 percent were doing that. So, we were surprised. And the reason that that is really significant is monitoring in management of these environments is much more complex in a, well. It's complex in a hybrid environment. It's even more complex in a multi-cloud environment. So it sounds like there's some real need for some help there. >> What are the challenges and what are the some of the complexities? What are the challenges in the monitoring? >> Well, so that was the next question. What's the key challenge, ya know? And usually whenever you ask someone about the challenges, the number one answer is always, oh, security is my biggest concern. That did not turn out to be the case here. The biggest overriding concern across all the different sort of levels of people we talked to was actually cost management. And cost management is, it was a bit surprising. You know, but, usually, you hear security, security, security and then something else. This was cost management either number one or number two. And number one for most of the constituencies. And in some of the subgroups, like VP level, SVP level, architect level, it was overwhelmingly the first choice. 40 and 50 percent of them are saying yeah, cost control is their biggest issue. Even ahead of other things like performance, like visibility, like actual, you know, control of the environment. You know, its cost was really the biggest concern. That's the big issue. >> Jim, something we've been tracking especially at shows like this, at the Cisco show is the challenges I used to understand kind of the stuff I had in my data center. I could get my arms around it. I might not love the management tools that I have. I might complain about some of the cost. But, it's all very well understand. It's bought most of the cap and freight. When you get to the public cloud, like totally understand what you are saying. multi-cloud. Now I've got all these different pieces and how will I have them defined. There's different skill sets between them. >> Right >> And when it comes to cost, right, the big unknown is oh wait, am I getting surprised by what happens, in that environment and across all them, I mean, I've talked to plenty of companies that will dedicate an engineering resource just to manage cloud or >> Right. >> I have many friends in the industry that are helping you know, cost optimization is something that is, you know, software consulting, there's huge business in that because we're still early in this getting to the steady stage. Help us connect the dots. Where does Kentik play into this then. So you talk to all these customers. >> Thank you. Our viewpoint is network and we're trying to give a viewpoint of what's happening in this environment by watching the network. And that's always super valueable because it helps you localize where things are, you know, what activity's happening and it helps you see, you know, which workloads are talking to which workloads. And that reveals sometimes things you don't expect. And this is where the cost control come in because you know, the cloud environment, you have to pay for certain network traffic. Especially between availability zones or when you're shipping it out of the cloud back to your other, you know, your home environment. And we have talked to a lot of customers who have said, hey, end of the month comes around, I get my bill and there's this big number there for data, you know, transfer. I don't know what drove that. And why am I being surprised time and time again by this. Well then there were viewpoints really awesome for seeing that. And if you can do it with a monitoring system that's watching for that all the time, the good news is that you can catch it, figure it out if it's real or not, needed or not, and fix it before 20 days later you get a big, fat bill. >> What does fixing it mean, does it mean like keeping it contained in the cloud, or on frame, or managing what's moving around? >> Could be combination of things, one of the things that we've seen in some of our earlier deployments are someone moved a workload into a different availability zone. Well, there was an application dependency they didn't recognize. And, you know, that workload was talking to, you know, home datacenter, or the another availability zone, and creating traffic across there and just running up the meter on the network costs. So if you can see that and it becomes very obvious to watch the traffic patterns. You can at least have someone go say, Hmm, okay, that's a surprise. They had a big rise to my zone to zone traffic or my, you know, cloud to home traffic. Let's just take a look to who's driving that and whether something that should be or shouldn't be. >> One of the interesting trends we've been watching on scene with cloud and hybrid cloud is kind of the consumption and deployments of cloud and hybrid's interesting because hybrid's with a cloud operation on premise. Which is been slowest to deploy. WikiBound's done a lot of research on private cloud and why that's happening. But it seems that clouds sprawl on the public side has been there. So yeah, I've got some Amazon, easy to stand up. I've got some Azure and now Google. So it's probably easier to get stuff in the clouds and then now they've got repurpose on premise to kind of have this seamless cloud native environment and Cisco's announcements, et cetera, et cetera. >> Yeah >> So as that's happened, what have you guys learned and scene in terms of the customer behavior. They wake up obviously, the bills are higher, so makes sense that the cloud is higher than hybrid and the cost containment is a concern. How did they get there? What are you seeing? And what's the psychology the customer just share some insight into the customer behavior. >> Well. >> Oh shoot, I got to unwind this, do I double down? What's going on? >> I think it really depends a lot on what the projects are, what the objectives are and what the skillset is. But one of the things that we found in this survey is that, network viewpoint that helps you understand what's really happening in the production environment is often being underutilized or underappreciated in the cloud environments, in the cloud, you know, deployments in cloud infrastructure. So one of the things we asked about was, how many of you folks at this event are actually taking advantage of, for instance, VPC Flow Logs, which can tell you exactly what's happening with an AWS, and between the availability zones. And it was surprising, they've been around, VPC Flow Logs have been around for years as a technology and as an additional service available. But, only about a third of the response were actually using them. So they weren't taking advantage of this important insight and viewpoint ceilometery set. About a third kind of knew about em, but wasn't using em yet. And then another third didn't even know what they were. >> Yeah. >> So I think there's still some maturity happening some maturation happening in terms of understanding what can I do about this? How can I get ahead of this? What's at my disposal? So part of the challenge of course then is that I have that piece covered, but as you said now, how do I cover my home, you know, home front? And where do I find, you know, some sort of tools that can be put these things together so I can see it all as one. >> That's where you guys fit in. >> That's where we fit in, yeah. >> So let me get some anecdotes from you. One it's clear that's a, there's a pain point. Take the aspirin. Understand what's going on, contain the bills. Is, give a scenario of what they're doing to contain the, you mentioned a few of them, but also to give an example of where they're using the data to be proactive, so there's the vitamin side of it. The vitamin, aspirin, whatever metaphor. So, you know, I've got contain my cost, I get that. How are people using the data to be more proactive in either architecting or deploying? >> So I think the, I don't know that anyone's being proactive yet. That is certainly the promise and the opportunity. Most organizations are simply want to be more aware of what happened. Or more affectively reactive and you start there. And once you start to realize, hey, I can do this then you can start turning toward being more proactive. So, for instance our solution was built to allow you to trigger corrective actions back to the environment. We don't take the actions, but we can trigger the systems that would change configurations or change policy and then form those systems of, you know, what's happening and what sort of parameters can we recognize that indicated and issue? So we believe that in especially watching the change in patterns of activity, noticing the anomalies. Anomaly detection often times used around security use cases. We do that. But also, it should be applied to operational use cases. When does a new workload pop up or a new, you know, volume of traffic show up that they didn't expect? And if it's something that I recognize happens at a regular basis and I know the answer, let's automate the corrective response. So that's kind of our theory of provide you the understanding of what's happening then with the tools to trigger and automatic corrective action. >> Alright, so Jim, we're talking a lot about multi-cloud this week with Cisco. Of course, you know, Cisco dominant in the networking space. Really feeling out where they live in multi-cloud, how networking plays across all of them. What's the relationship between Kentik and Cisco? How does that work? >> Thanks, so we're a member of CSPP Program. We are a partner. We joined because we manage a lot of Cisco gear. (laugh) So, a lot of our customers have Cisco. A lot of our use cases, historically, have been at the edge of the network, in particular the service providers. So, those that are delivering internet services or using the internet to reach their customers in some way. So, what's really different about us is we do a really deep and detailed approach of integrating a path, BGP path data, PGP rev data and correlating that with the traffic. As well with other enhancements, and augmentations of the data that give business and service context to the network traffic. Makes it more actionable. >> Yes, and what are you doing in the container space? You mentioned edge computing got some interesting use cases maybe explain a little bit where you play there? >> So when I say edge, I'm saying internet edge, not EDGE computing, although we're fascinated by what EDGE computing represents and the new challenges that's going to bring. Now when it comes to containers, actually we're very fascinated working in that area too, because, Jon, as you mentioned, moving and implementation of new cloud workloads is cloud native, using Kubernetes, using things like Gist T O, you know, that changes the environment once again. So, we've actually built a connector into Kubernetes so that we can use that to pull service information, you know, in terms of what workloads, what containers are out there. What are they doing? What's there purpose? So when we show you activity map of, you know, site to site communications we can say, here are the actual, you know, services that are being, participating in this activity. Its G was another place where we're really interested in to look at the service mesh, you know, that's being set up to run and operate communication between containers. Cause that's a new sort of virtual cloud network. It's a way that these containers are communicating. and again, the more you understand about the communication patterns, the better you can recognize problems, the better you can balance and plan, the better you really get a handle on what's really happening. >> Jim, I want to get your thoughts on since you brought up edge of the internet, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud, data moves around, certainly brings up the question of which routes the packets are moving around? There's always been debates but SL lays around, you know, direct connection versus go through the internet? Is China looking at it? So, there's a security kind of concern. >> Yep. >> What's the trend that you're seeing with respect to say either direct connects, cause I'm a company that I have multiple clouds. I have the connections in there. I'm concerned about latency, certainly cost, you know, whether it's cat videos or whatever, or application too. It still costs money. >> Yep. >> So latency's important so each cloud is its own kind of latency issues. What have you seen? >> Well, getting to the cloud and then within the cloud. >> Yeah, exactly. So it's complicated. So, this is a new dynamic, but it's similar concept. Is there standard latencies? Is it getting better? What's the trend look like? >> That's a great question, and I honestly don't have a good answer for you. But I recognize and agree that those are common concerns that we hear. And the best thing at least for what Kentik is doing is to provide the means to measure and understand that. So you can compare what's working. You can, you know, document a baseline, your different options and your different paths, and recognize when there's a real problem occurring. When you start to see latencies spike to any particular cloud service or location or zone so that you can try and get on top of it and figure it. >> That's a classic case of evolution. Get it instrumented. >> Yeah. >> Get the providers, get better what there services. That's the out of, really out of your hands. >> Yeah. >> That's not really. Okay, so, getting back to the survey kind of wrap things up. Interesting it said Amazon the biggest cloud show Azure pops up on the list as pretty high. >> It sure does. >> Makes sense Microsoft's got great performance. I mean Azure's kind of like, they move a lot of stuff into Azure preexisting Microsoft stuff plus they're investing. What's the bottom line summary as you kind of, you know, the aroma of the rapport. What's coming out of the rapport? What's the key insights that you can glean out of this? >> So I think it indicates normal pattern of adoption, and sort of we're growing into this marketplace. It's evolving as we go, you know. We saw big early-end option hopping in like lift and ship approaches to just move stuff into the cloud. Throw it in the cloud. It's going to be cheaper. It doesn't turn out to be cheaper. It can be. Then you've got another, you know, set of organizations that are born in the cloud, right? And they've started out from the beginning. So those two early approaches are merging into how do we really use this as a true, strategic approach to I.T.? What are the real world complexities we're going to deal with? And how are we going to deal with those? It's really no different from the way that technology has evolved within traditional data centers. And why, the way virtualization came in and changed the way we build and architect datacenters. It's awesome. It's great. It save you money in one area, but then it created huge blindspots, cause you couldn't tell what was going on in those virtualization layers, so we had to adapt our operational monitoring, and operational practices to accommodate the new technology. I think we're going through the same thing now with cloud. People recognize that they don't necessarily want to be holded to a single cloud provider. They want alternatives. They want, you know, cost competitiveness. They want redundancy. And so multi-cloud, I think, is becoming more and more real in part because people don't want to put all of their eggs in that one basket. >> And cost certainly looks good on paper at the beginning. >> Yeah. >> But then as you said, there's side effects. It's a system so there's consequences to the system. >> Yes, absolutely. >> When you start growing or whatever. And that's just where people have to work it better. Right? >> Yep. >> That's pretty much the operational. >> I mean, let's apply the same rigor that we used to apply to traditional data center environments. And let's start embracing the cloud, right? >> So, Jim, you've talked about the multi-cloud bid. Why don't you put a fine point on it. There's a reason why you jump from being an analyst into the vendor world. Some people on the outside will be like, well, you know, cloud's been going on for ten years, seems we understand where this is going. But, tell us why, you know, now is so important for this multi-cloud environment and the opportunity that you see again. >> Sure. >> In this ecosystem. >> Kentik in particular what we're starting to hear, very loud and clear amongst the what. Our traditional an initial base of customers was facilities based, service providers and digital enterprise that managed big routed networks and needed to understand better control their relationship with the internet and delivery across the internet. There coming to us and saying, hey look. We're splitting. We're adding cloud workloads. So, we're moving our content that we're serving up into the cloud, you know, more and more of our systems are moving into the cloud and we rely on you for this visibility in our production environment. We need you to add this. So, we saw a demand from our customers to, you know, accommodate this and in parallel we're just really inspired by this next generation of cloud native application development. It seems to be starting to reach that point where's it's becoming reality and it's becoming mature, and it's becoming a reliable approach to I.T. That now's the time to really get serious about bringing these other best practices for the traditional world, and applying them there. >> And the survey data has created proved multi-cloud and hybrid all here, costs can run out of control. You've got to work. You've got to operationalize cloud. And same rigor. I love that. Great insights, Jim. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Sure. >> Live CUBE coverage here in Barcelona for Cisco Live! Europe 2019. It's theCUBE. Day three, or three days of coverage. We'll be back with more, after this short break. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCube, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCube's Ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone and welcome back. It's theCube's exclusive coverage here in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. It's day three of three days of live coverage. Go to thecube.net, siliconANGLE.com, to get all of the stories. And of course, I'm here with Stu Miniman, analyst at Wikibon, my co-host for the week. Our next guest is Gary Harrison, Head of Technology Services, Metsi Technologies, welcome to theCube. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you guys, it's good to be here. >> So, you're in the Cisco Ecosystem, so Stu and I have been talking about this all week. A couple of big trends: open, Cisco's opening up, you've got DevNet success with developers. Cloud is a new architecture, okay. Intent driven architectures are huge. Sounds like outcomes to me, so I hear a lot of these conversations about "what's the outcome?", and then building a technology. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that, from your perspective, what does that mean to you? When you hear that, intent networking, developer community, it sounds a lot like a different Cisco. >> It's a different model. It's changing, I think, the way business processors are today, and getting organizations to understand the process of capturing what they want the infrastructure intent, and their application intent look like. And then understanding how that drives different models for deploying services, as well as the operations behind it. >> You guys do a lot of stuff with customer, I want you to take a minute to explain what you guys do, your company. What are some of the things you guys get involved in? Where are you in the ecosystem? What kinds of projects are you engaging on? >> We're a company, so we're a professional services partner, we're a service only integration partner with Cisco. So it's just through, we don't resell, so we get to focus on purely customer success, and we help enable the channel and the partners directly. And the focus is the Enterprise Cloud Suite. So it's really around helping customers understand how to get the most out of those technologies, how to choose the right element of the cloud suite for the job. >> Gary, so you're in an interesting position, to watch some of the transformations going on in Cisco. We said the old way of measuring Cisco was boxes and ports, and the new way is, you know, software, to open and those things. Since you're not one of the, you know, not in a derogatory way, box sellers, you know, give us your viewpoint as to how Cisco's going through that transformation and how your customers are reacting to that. >> So it's definitely a good shift towards those softer elements of it. And we're seeing the strength of the software and the products that come out, and the capabilities, it's rapidly changing. And you're seeing the increase in the product suite recently, the number of, the move towards analytics and other software to support operational life cycles as well as just the provisioning cycles. I think a challenge for the customers is a lot of complexities introduced. A lot of the new tools out of the box out there. And the difficult question is always how to best use each particular tool to get value for the business. >> Yeah, it's one of the big questions is it used to be, I really understood my network because I built it. I racked it, stacked it, wired it, you know. Configured it in the CLI, today a lot of the pieces of the network you're managing, you don't own. They're in the cloud, they're extending beyond. How do your services and solutions help customers get their arms around this, kind of, multi-cloud world? >> It's always the focus on, I guess, is reducing that complexity. There's a lot you can do with the different software that's out there. And really, to try and step back from just the solo tools, and looking at the cloud stack as a whole, and starting small, starting simple. Identifying those early use cases that will help drive cloud adoption in an organization, and then understanding how the software and the tools benefit them to do that. You know as you say, you can't see inside the software easily. If you're going to bare the infrastructures code, you need a way to make sure that as you build that code and those processors that you keep that visibility into what that softwares meant to be doing for you. >> Gary, on that point, I want to just double down on that concept holistically. We hear that, all week we've heard from interviews, from Cisco executives as customers, that it's the systems view almost, it's not the box view. What does that mean to the customer today, and how far along are your customers in that mindset? Are they there, are they kicking the tires? 'Cause you got to engage on real frontline projects where there's outcomes involved and the plumbing's in place. Okay, so how do you get there without disrupting? Right, that's the question we hear. But so how do I get the holistic view without disrupting the business? What's your thoughts on customer's position on that? >> I think to get the holistic view, it's about the business needs I think embrace that. And understanding, though, it's about delivering applications and services now. And the infrastructures there to support that. And not focus on these infrastructure-centric models. So that's the first journey, is understanding, you know, what are the services that are important to the business, and how those services are involved. And then I think the challenge we see from the customers is actually, you know, intend to your organizational and process challenges. The technology itself is not necessarily all the complexities, it's how that aligns to the organization. And so I think those early wins and those early outcomes are a organization that's aware of those challenges. >> Like almost getting a little stepping stone, you get a little success, you know, don't take a big project. What's your take on road-mapping in that? Because that's challenging. What have you seen for success use cases that customers can take right out of the gate to get this intent thing going? What are some of the low-hanging-fruit opportunities? >> So one thing we focus on, I guess, is changing our engagement model with the customers. It's something we sort, I guess, of pride ourselves on. Is we're a lot more flexible and agile, ourselves, as a, in terms of delivering infrastructure services. So again, we try to communicate to our customers find used cases that deliver value and return on investment early. And focus on delivering that, sort of, one use case. It doesn't matter what it is in the cloud-sect, whether it's through automation of network infrastructure, orchestration of services on top of there. We pick a very clear use case and develop that first, and then once you understand how the technology's stitched together end to end, you can then start to grow that inside the organization. >> Is there any use cases that pop out that you can just point to, anecdotally, that seem to be popular? >> So there's a couple different extremes, so ACI is a massive enabler at the moment. You know, it's really, since SDN's come along it's a catalyst to drive the rest of the cloud change infrastructure. So we have some very specific use cases around automating that infrastructure. Not just what ACI does itself, but to create that automation layer on top of that. So, you know, people are deploying lots of infrastructure, so that's one of the specific use cases we see. >> Gary, I really like what you said about it's changing the engagement model, because it used to be "I'm gonna' roll out a new application, "okay, I need to figure out the plumbing." Now when I look at intent based offerings there, it's really more about I'm building new applications and the network is a critical piece of it, it actually helps me drive some of these new, you know, modern micro architectures there. You've got to, I'm sure, be talking to a little bit of a broader, you know, jobs inside the customer. How does that change your engagement? Who are the roles that you're talking to today? >> Well actually this is what we find, is tools like Cloud Sender, and for me one of it's strengths is it's fine ability to tangibly capture intent in a application blueprint. And I find that's a good way to bring organizations together, because now we have a focal point for your network and infrastructure, your platforms teams, and your application teams to come together. And it provides a common language to talk about it. And that's one of the real strengths we find to start having those conversations with those different teams within the organizations. >> Gary talk about the old way and new way. We always like to kind of break things down in a very simplistic way. And Chuck Robbins, the CEO, on stage said "that's the old way", it looked like an architecture, hey, firewall, I get that. And he's like, some people actually have this today. And he's kind of looking at the modern cloud, obviously the circle with all the different services. So kind of Cisco plug. But from your standpoint, when you talk to customers, what was the older conversations, that you could point to saying "we used to do it this way", this is what we would talk about, these are the meetings we would have, now the shift is towards this. What's the old way, and what's it transforming into, when you actually have those conversations, what is it like? >> So the big difference for the infrastructure projects, where they were projects, they're very traditional waterfall model. You work out what you want to buy, where you want to be, you put a project plan around that and deliver that. But the engagement we have today to say to people, all the importance is in the software. It's the services you're delivering on the software, and the capability to develop in the software. And that's not something out of the box. It's very difficult to say: where do I want to be in six months, or where do I want to be in a year? So again the way we encourage and the way we engage with our customers is to put a roadmap together, but to identify something in a much shorter term that you can deliver. Start delivering something, and then take a more agile approach around it, to come back, review, and re-plan again, and look at what your priorities are. >> What's the role of the solution architect on this, 'cause a lot of the things we're seeing and then we're trying to, kind of, connect the dots here. Holistic roadmaps are interesting, because you've got have to have a foundational architecture. What is the preferred kind of consistent theme you're seeing around architectural decisions? Are there table stakes, are there certain things that are always going to be in flux? How do you view the big picture on the solution architect piece of it? Is there certain things that are must-haves, weight on this? What's your reaction to that? >> I think a solution, I think it's a challenging piece. I think it's probably where you see organizations are probably weaker, is having a cloud-solution architecture function. We still see infrastructure architecture, enterprise architecture, but that solution architecture for the cloud model, I think that's actually more a challenging piece. I don't think there's any obvious answer in what, you know, for the customers we see, there's no common answer. >> That's a really hot area right now. >> Gary, one of the biggest challenges we see in multi-cloud, is no two customers are alike. >> No. >> But through the customers that you're talking to, what are some of the common stumbling blocks or hurdles for really getting, you know, full value out of their solutions that you see from customers today? >> I think it's understanding the end to end life cycle of a service. So we can do a lot with a multi-cloud capabilities, in deploying when an internal infrastructure to external. But the processes have to be the same, with security, compliance, these other aspects that come into it add a lot of complexity. And also it's not just the way the applications and the infrastructure are built, patching life cycles, you know, post-deployment of, you know, virtual images. The way people then update and maintain them and that life cycle around it. And I think it's different in a virtualized world, in a containerized world we see a lot more advancements around it, and multi-cloud is easier. I think it's for people to take their legacy applications and try and move them into a cloud-native scenario, which is a real challenge. >> Gary, pretend that I'm a friend of yours and I come to you and say "hey Gary, you know, "I'm new to this whole intent-based networking thing, what is it?", how would you describe it? What's your definition of, what is intent based networking really mean? >> There's two parts of it: one is to identify somewhere to capture what the definition of your applications and services are, and what that means, and the infrastructure that lies underneath. Say cloud centers one part of it, other organizations may have other models, but it's rather than working two traditional high level design, low level design, and we see your requirements analysis, now capturing that intent in somewhere that's both software consumable and can be software defined. You can use software to push intent in there, and you can consume it through software. And the next major bit of the puzzle is to provide that freedom to the infrastructure layers underneath so they get to decide how they implement that intent. And that's what gives you this multi-cloud freedom, you know, how we're implemented in our public cloud can be different to how we're implemented in the private cloud. The tools, the processes, the infrastructure, the software, can be different, but the outcome that's delivered is the same. >> Yeah it's interesting to show, you mentioned SDN earlier, we see a lot of activity on software defined data center, architectural things, and again, it's challenging because not everything looks the same, but it's super important. But then we hear things like Google Cloud on stage, and we hear Kubernetes, we hear ISTIO, which is a service mesh, so you start to see up the stack, the applications taking, kind of, almost a network services-like mindset. I mean, micro services are basically, have the same feel as networking, but it's more up higher in the stacks. So you've got some really interesting dynamics. You've got the SDN thing going on, and then you've got in the middle of the stack, towards the application, these cool Micro services with cloud native. This is an opportunity for network engineers. I mean, how would you describe to the audience out there the opportunity for a network engineer, or someone who's in the network game, to take advantage of that, this new trend that's coming very fast? >> It's a different model of networking. And again, the good thing about containers is they do provide this very application-centric focus. Networking is now about providing a service for the application sit on there. And Container Frameworks make that very obvious. So I'd say network engineer, it's a good place to understand that model and that ecosystem. And then see how that can be applied to what we've done in virtualization. And as SDN comes along in a more traditional private cloud infrastructure, on top of the data center infrastructure we have today, take some of those models that we learned from things like Container Frameworks and how do we apply them to virtualization. >> That's a great point about the virtualization, it's almost a roadmap to how to understand the impact and interplay between the networks. It really is. Okay final question for you is, you know, Cisco Live this year seems to be different, what's the vibe of the show, what's your, if you had to, for someone who didn't come here that's watching, say "hey, I missed it this year, "heard there's a lot of action, DevNet's got 500,000 developers", what's different about this year for Cisco Live, what's the most important story? Can you share your opinion on what's happening? >> I guess for us, being the definite village, it is about the definite zone. The buzz we're seeing, the people, the types of questions we get asked on the stand now, there's definitely a lot more interest in this development side of it. >> What's some of the questions you're getting? What are the hot topics if you stack ranked them? >> People just want to understand, you know, new trends in software, coding, you know, how can I apply my coding skills to coding the network, or where do I learn about that, and we get asked lots of questions as people pass the stands. >> Gary, thanks so much for coming on theCube, great to see you, thanks for coming on and sharing your commentary here. Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Alright, this is the live Cube cover day three here at Cisco live, I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, we're here breaking all the action down, we'll be back with more. Stay with us for day three coverage. We'll be right back after this short break. (upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting accelerating automation with definite brought to you by Cisco. >>Hello and welcome to the Cube. I'm John for a year host. We've got a great conversation virtual event, accelerating automation with definite Cisco. Definite. And of course, we got the Cisco Brain Trust here. Cube alumni Suzy we Vice President, senior Vice President GM and also CTO of Cisco. Definite and ecosystem Success C X, All that great stuff. Many Wadley Who's the director? Senior director of definite certifications. Eric Field, director of developer advocacy. Susie Mandy. Eric, Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Great to see you down. So >>we're not in >>person. We >>don't Can't be at the definite zone. We can't be on site doing definite created All the great stuff we've been doing in the past three years were virtual the cube Virtual. Thanks for coming on. Uh, Susie, I gotta ask you because you know, we've been talking years ago when you started this mission and just the succession had has been awesome. But definite create has brought on a whole nother connective tissue to the definite community. This is what this ties into the theme of accelerating automation with definite because you said to me, I think four years ago everything should be a service or X a s is it's called and automation plays a critical role. Um, could you please share your vision? Because this is really important. And still only 5 to 10% of the enterprises have containerized things. So there's a huge growth curve coming with developing and program ability. What's your What's your vision? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we know is that is, more and more businesses are coming online is I mean, they're all online, But is there growing into the cloud? Is their growing in new areas as we're dealing with security is everyone's dealing with the pandemic. There's so many things going on. But what happens is there's an infrastructure that all of this is built on and that infrastructure has networking. It has security. It has all of your compute and everything that's in there. And what matters is how can you take a business application and tie it to that infrastructure. How can you take, you know, customer data? How can you take business applications? How can you connect up the world securely and then be ableto really satisfy everything that businesses need. And in order to do that, you know, the whole new tool that we've always talked about is that the network is programmable, the infrastructure is programmable, and you don't need just acts writing on top. But now they get to use all of that power of the infrastructure to perform even better. And in order to get there, what you need to do is automate everything. You can't configure networks manually. You can't be manually figuring out policies, but you want to use that agile infrastructure in which you can really use automation. You can rise to a higher level business processes and tie all of that up and down the staff by leveraging automation. >>You remember a few years ago when definite create first started, I interviewed Todd Nightingale and we're talking about Muraki. You know, not to get in the weeds, but you know, switches and hubs and wireless. But if you look at what we were talking about, then this is kind of what's going on now. And we were just recently, I think our last physical event was Cisco um Europe in Barcelona before all the cove it hit and you had the massive cloud surgeon scale happening going on right when the pandemic hit. And even now, more than ever, the cloud scale the modern APS. The momentum hasn't stopped because there's more pressure now to continue addressing Mawr innovation at scale. Because the pressure to do that because >>the stay alive get >>your thoughts on, um, what's going on in your world? Because you were there in person. Now we're six months in scale is huge. >>We are, Yeah, absolutely. And what happened is as all of our customers as businesses around the world as we ourselves all dealt with, How do we run a business from home? You know, how do we keep people safe? How do we keep people at home and how do we work? And then it turns out, you know, business keeps rolling, but we've had to automate even more because >>you >>have to go home and then figure out how from home can I make sure that my I t infrastructure is automated out from home? Can I make sure that every employee is out there in working safely and securely? You know, things like call center workers, which had to go into physical locations and being kind of, you know, just, you know, blocked off rooms to really be secure with their company's information. They had to work from home. So we had to extend business applications to people's homes in countries like, you know, well around the world. But also in India, where it was actually not, you know, not they wouldn't let They didn't have rules toe let people work from home in these areas. So then what we had to do was automate everything and make sure that we could administer. You know, all of our customers could administer these systems from home, so that puts extra stress on automation. It puts extra stress on our customers digital transformation. And it just forced them toe, you know, automate digitally transform quicker. And they had to because you couldn't just go into a server room and tweak your servers. You have to figure out how to automate all of that. >>You know, one of them >>were still there, all in that environment today. >>You know, one of the hottest trends before the pandemic was observe ability, uh, kubernetes serve micro services. So those things again. All Dev ups. And you know, if you guys got some acquisitions, you thought about 1000 eyes. Um, you got a new one you just bought recently Port shift to raise the game in security, Cuban, All these micro services, So observe, ability, superhot. But then people go work at home, as you mentioned. How do you think? Observe, What do you observing? The network is under huge pressure. I mean, it's crashing on. People zooms and WebEx is and education, huge amount of network pressure. How are people adapting to this in the upside? How are you guys looking at the what's being programmed? What are some of the things that you're seeing with use cases around this program? Ability, challenge and observe ability, challenges? It's a huge deal. >>Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, going back to Todd Nightingale, right? You know, back when we talked to Todd before he had Muraki and he had designed this simplicity, this ease of use, this cloud managed, you know, doing everything from one central place. And now he has This goes entire enterprise and cloud business. So he is now applying that at that Bigger Attn. Bigger scale. Francisco and for our customers. And he is building in the observe ability and the dashboards and the automation of the A P. I s and all of it. But when we take a look at what our customers needed is again, they had to build it all in, um, they had to build in. And what happened was how your network was doing, how secure your infrastructure was, how well you could enable people toe work from home and how well you could reach customers. All of that used to be a nightie conversation. It became a CEO and a board level conversation. So all of a sudden CEOs were actually, you know, calling on the heads of I t and the CEO and saying, You know, how is our VPN connectivity? Is everybody working from home? How many people are, you know, connected and ableto work and watch their productivity? Eso All of a sudden, all these things that were really infrastructure I t stuff became a board level conversation and you know, once again, at first everybody was panicked and just figuring out how to get people working. But now what we've seen in all of our customers is that they're now building in automation, additional transformation and these architectures, and that gives them a chance to build in that observe ability. You know, looking for those events. The dashboards, you know? So it really has been fantastic to see what our customers are doing and what our partners air doing to really rise to that next level. >>Susan, I know you gotta go, but real quick, um, describe what? Accelerating automation with definite means. >>Well, you've been fault. You know, we've been working together on definite in the vision of the infrastructure program ability and everything for quite some time. And the thing that's really happened is yes, you need to automate, but yes, it takes people to do that. And you need the right skill sets in the program ability. So a networker can't be a networker. A networker has to be a network automation developer. And so it is about people. And it is about bringing infrastructure expertise together with software expertise and letting people run. Things are definite. Community has risen to this challenge. People have jumped in. They've gotten their certifications. We have thousands of people getting certified. You know, we have you know, Cisco getting certified. We have individuals. We have partners, you know, They're just really rising to the occasion. So accelerate accelerating automation while it is about going digital. It's also about people rising to the level of, you know, being able to put infrastructure and software expertise together to enable this next chapter of business applications of cloud directed businesses and cloud growth. So it actually is about people, Justus, much as it is about automation and technology. >>And we got definite create right around the corner virtual. Unfortunately, being personal will be virtual Susie. Thank you for your time. We're gonna dig into those people challenges with Mandy and Eric. Thank you for coming on. I know you got to go, but stay with us. We're gonna dig in with Mandy and Eric. Thanks. >>Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, John. Okay. >>Mandy, you heard Susie is about people, and one of the things that's close to your heart you've been driving is a senior director of definite certifications. Um is getting people leveled up? I mean, the demand for skills cybersecurity, network program, ability, automation, network design solution, architect cloud multi cloud design thes are new skills that are needed. Can you give us the update on what you're doing to help people get into the acceleration of automation game? >>Oh, yes, absolutely. The you know what we've been seeing is a lot of those business drivers that Susie was mentioning those air. What's accelerating? A lot of the technology changes, and that's creating new job roles or new needs on existing job roles where they need new skills. We are seeing, uh, customers, partners, people in our community really starting to look at, you know, things like Dev SEC ops engineer, network Automation engineer, network automation developer, which sues you mentioned and looking at how these fit into their organization, the problems that they solve in their organization. And then how do people build the skills to be able to take on these new job roles or add that job role to their current, um, scope and broaden out and take on new challenges? >>Eric, I want to go to you for a quick second on this, um uh, piece of getting the certifications. Um, first, before you get started, describe what your role is. Director of developer advocacy, because that's always changing and evolving what's the state of it now? Because with Cove and people are working at home, they have more time to contact, switch and get some certifications and that they can code more. What's your >>What's your role? Absolutely So it's interesting. It definitely is changing a lot. A lot of our historically a lot of focus for my team has been on those outward events. So going to the definite creates the Cisco lives and helping the community connect and help share technical information with them, doing hands on workshops and really getting people into. How do you really start solving these problems? Eso that's had to pivot quite a bit. Obviously, Sisco live us. We pivoted very quickly to a virtual event when when conditions changed and we're able to actually connect, as we found out with a much larger audience. So you know, as opposed to in person where you're bound by the parameters of you know how big the convention center is. We were actually able to reach a worldwide audience with are definite day that was kind of attached onto Sisco Live, and we got great feedback from the audience that now we're actually able to get that same enablement out to so many more people that otherwise might not have been able to make it. But to your broader question of you know what my team does. So that's one piece of it is is getting that information out to the community. So as part of that, there's a lot of other things we do as well. We were always helping out build new sandboxes, new learning labs, things like that that they can come and get whenever they're looking for it out on the definite site. And then my team also looks after communities such as the Cisco Learning Network, where there's there's a huge community that has historically been there to support people working on their Cisco certifications. We've seen a huge shift now in that group that all of the people that have been there for years are now looking at the definite certifications and helping other people that are trying to get on board with program ability. They're taking a lot of those same community enablement skills and propping up community with, you know, helping answer questions, helping provide content. They move now into the definite spaces well and are helping people with that sort of certifications. So it's great seeing the community come along and really see that >>I gotta ask you on the trends around automation. What skills and what developer patterns are you seeing with automation? Are Is there anything in particular? Obviously, network automation been around for a long time. Cisco's been leader in that. But as you move up, the staff has modern applications or building. Do you see any patterns or trends around what is accelerating automation? What people learning? >>Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned observe ability was big before Cove it and we actually really saw that amplified during co vid. So a lot of people have come to us looking for insights. How can I get that better observe ability now that we needed? Well, we're virtual eso. That's actually been a huge uptick, and we've seen a lot of people that weren't necessarily out looking for things before that air. Now, figuring out how can I do this at scale? I think one good example that Susie was talking about the VPN example, and we actually had a number of SCS in the Cisco community that had customers dealing with that very thing where they very quickly had to ramp up and one in particular actually wrote a bunch of automation to go out and measure all of the different parameters that I T departments might care about about their firewalls, things that you didn't normally look at. The old days you would size your firewalls based on, you know, assuming a certain number of people working from home. And when that number went to 100% things like licenses started coming into play where they need to make sure they had the right capacity in their platforms that they weren't necessarily designed for. So one of the essays actually wrote a bunch of code to go out, use them open source, tooling to monitor and alert on these things, and then published it so the whole community code could go out and get a copy of it. Try it out in their own environment. And we saw a lot of interest around that and trying to figure out Okay, now I could take that. I can adapt into what I need to see for my observe ability. >>That's great, Mandy, I want to get your thoughts on this, too, because as automation continues to scale. Um, it's gonna be a focus. People are at home. And you guys had a lot of content online for you. Recorded every session that in the definite zone learning is going on sometimes literally and non linearly. You've got the certifications, which is great. That's key. Great success there. People are interested. But what other learnings are you seeing? What are people, um, doing? What's the top top trends? >>Yeah. So what we're seeing is like you said, people are at home, they've got time, they want toe advance, their skill set. And just like any kind of learning, people want choice. They wanna be able to choose which matches their time that's available and their learning style. So we're seeing some people who want to dive into full online study groups with mentors leading them through a study plan. On we have two new expert lead study groups like that. We're also seeing whole teams at different companies who want to do an immersive learning experience together with projects and office hours and things like that. And we have a new offer that we've been putting together for people who want those kind of team experiences called Automation Boot Camp. And then we're also seeing individual who want to be able to, you know, dive into a topic, do a hands on lab, gets, um, skills, go to the rest of the day of do their work and then come back the next day. And so we have really modular, self driven hands on learning through the Definite Fundamentals course, which is available through DEV. Net. And then there's also people who are saying, I just want to use the technology. I like Thio experiment and then go, you know, read the instructions, read the manual, do the deeper learning. And so they're They're spending a lot of time in our definite sandbox, trying out different technologies. Cisco Technologies with open source technologies, getting hands on and building things, and three areas where we're seeing a lot of interest in specific technologies. One is around SD wan. There's a huge interest in people Skilling up there because of all the reasons that we've been talking about. Security is a focus area where people are dealing with new scale, new kinds of threats, having to deal with them in new ways and then automating their data center using infrastructure as code type principles. So those were three areas where we're seeing a lot of interest and you'll be hearing more about that at definite create. >>Awesome Eric and man, if you guys can wrap up the accelerated automated with definite package and virtual event here, um, and also t up definite create because definite create has been a very kind of grassroots, organically building momentum over the years. Again, it's super important because it's now the app world coming together with networking, you know, end to end program ability. And with everything is a service that you guys were doing everything with a piece. Um Onley can imagine the enablement that's gonna enable create Can >>you hear the >>memory real quick on accelerating automation with definite and TF definite create. Mandy will start with you. >>Yes, I'll go first, and then Eric can close this out. Um, so just like we've been talking about with you at every definite event over the past years, you know, Devon, it's bringing a p I s across our whole portfolio and up and down the stack and accelerating automation with definite. Suzy mentioned the people aspect of that the people Skilling up and how that transformed team transforms teams. And I think that it's all connected in how businesses are being pushed on their transformation because of current events. That's also a great opportunity for people to advance their careers and take advantage of some of that quickly changing landscape. And so would I think about accelerating automation with definite. It's about the definite community. It's about people getting those new skills and all the creativity and problem solving that will be unleashed by that community with those new skills. >>Eric, take us home. He accelerate automation. Definite and definite create a lot of developer action going on cloud native right now, your thoughts? >>Absolutely. I I think it's exciting. I mentioned the transition to virtual for definite day this year for Cisco Live, and we're seeing we're able to leverage it even further with create this year. So whereas it used to be, you know, confined by the walls that we were within for the event. Now we're actually able to do things like we're adding a start now track for people that I want to be there. They want to be a developer. Network automation developer, for instance, We've now got a track just for them where they could get started and start learning some of the skills they'll need, even if some of the other technical sessions were a little bit deeper than what they were ready for. Eso. I love that we're able to bring that together with the experience community that we usually do from across the industry, bringing us all kinds of innovative talks, talking about ways that they're leveraging technology, leveraging the cloud to do new and interesting things to solve their business challenges. So I'm really excited to bring that whole mixed together as well as getting some of our business units together to and talk straight from their engineering departments. What are they doing? What are they seeing? What are they thinking about when they're building new AP eyes into their platforms? What are the what problems are they hoping that customers will be able to solve with them? So I think together, seeing all of that and then bringing the community together from all of our usual channels. So, like I said, Cisco Learning Network, we've got a ton of community coming together, sharing their ideas and helping each other grow those skills. I see nothing but acceleration ahead of us for automation. >>Awesome. Thanks so much. God, man, can >>I add one had >>one more thing. >>Yeah, I was just going to say the other really exciting thing about create this year with the virtual nature of it is that it's happening in three regions. And, you know, we're so excited to see the people joining from all the different regions. And, uh, content and speakers and the region stepping upto have things personalized to their area to their community. And so that's a whole new experience for definite create that's going to be fantastic this year. >>You know, that's what God is going to close out and just put the final bow on that by saying that you guys have always been successful with great content focused on the people in the community. I think now, during with this virtual definite virtual definite create virtual the cube virtual, I think we're learning new things. People working in teams and groups on sharing content. We're gonna learn new things. We're gonna try new things, and ultimately people will rise up and will be resilient. I think when you have this kind of opportunity, it's really fun. And whoa, we'll ride the wave with you guys. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. The Cuban talk about your awesome accelerate automation and definitely looking forward to it. Thank you. >>Thank you so much. >>Happy to be here. >>Okay, I'm John for the Cube. Virtual here in Palo Alto studios doing the remote content amendment Virtual until we're face to face. Thank you so much for watching. And we'll see you at definite create. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting accelerating automation with definite brought to you by Cisco. >>Hello and welcome to the Cube. I'm John for a year host. We've got a great conversation virtual event, accelerating automation with definite Cisco. Definite. And of course, we got the Cisco Brain Trust here. Cube alumni Suzy we Vice President, senior Vice President GM and also CTO of Cisco. Definite and ecosystem Success C X, All that great stuff. Many Wadley Who's the director? Senior director of definite certifications. Eric Field, director of developer advocacy. Susie Mandy. Eric, Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Great to see you >>down. So we're not in person. We >>don't Can't be at the definite zone. We can't be on site doing definite created All the great stuff we've been doing in the past three years were virtual the cube Virtual. Thanks for coming on. Uh, Susie, I gotta ask you because you know, we've been talking years ago when you started this mission and just the succession had has been awesome. But definite create has brought on a whole nother connective tissue to the definite community. This is what this ties into the theme of accelerating automation with definite because you said to me, I think four years ago everything should be a service or X a s is it's called and automation plays a critical role. Um, could you please share your vision? Because this is really important. And still only 5 to 10% of the enterprises have containerized things. So there's a huge growth curve coming with developing and program ability. What's your What's your vision? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we know is that is, more and more businesses are coming online is I mean, they're all online, But is there growing into the cloud? Is their growing in new areas as we're dealing with security is everyone's dealing with the pandemic. There's so many things going on. But what happens is there's an infrastructure that all of this is built on and that infrastructure has networking. It has security. It has all of your compute and everything that's in there. And what matters is how can you take a business application and tie it to that infrastructure. How can you take, you know, customer data? How can you take business applications? How can you connect up the world securely and then be ableto really satisfy everything that businesses need. And in order to do that, you know, the whole new tool that we've always talked about is that the network is programmable, the infrastructure is programmable, and you don't need just acts writing on top. But now they get to use all of that power of the infrastructure to perform even better. And in order to get there, what you need to do is automate everything. You can't configure networks manually. You can't be manually figuring out policies, but you want to use that agile infrastructure in which you can really use automation. You can rise to a higher level business processes and tie all of that up and down the staff by leveraging automation. >>You remember a few years ago when definite create first started, I interviewed Todd Nightingale and we're talking about Muraki. You know, not to get in the weeds, but you know, switches and hubs and wireless. But if you look at what we were talking about, then this is kind of what's going on now. And we were just recently, I think our last physical event was Cisco um Europe in Barcelona before all the cove it hit and you had the massive cloud surgeon scale happening going on right when the pandemic hit. And even now, more than ever, the cloud scale the modern APS. The momentum hasn't stopped because there's more pressure now to continue addressing Mawr innovation at scale. Because the pressure to do that because >>the stay alive get >>your thoughts on, um, what's going on in your world? Because you were there in person. Now we're six months in scale is huge. >>We are, Yeah, absolutely. And what happened is as all of our customers as businesses around the world as we ourselves all dealt with, How do we run a business from home? You know, how do we keep people safe? How do we keep people at home and how do we work? And then it turns out, you know, business keeps rolling, but we've had to automate even more because >>you >>have to go home and then figure out how from home can I make sure that my I t infrastructure is automated out from home? Can I make sure that every employee is out there in working safely and securely? You know, things like call center workers, which had to go into physical locations and being kind of, you know, just, you know, blocked off rooms to really be secure with their company's information. They had to work from home. So we had to extend business applications to people's homes in countries like, you know, well around the world. But also in India, where it was actually not, you know, not they wouldn't let They didn't have rules toe let people work from home in these areas. So then what we had to do was automate everything and make sure that we could administer. You know, all of our customers could administer these systems from home, so that puts extra stress on automation. It puts extra stress on our customers digital transformation. And it just forced them toe, you know, automate digitally transform quicker. And they had to because you couldn't just go into a server room and tweak your servers. You have to figure out how to automate all of that. >>You know, one of them >>were still there, all in that environment today. >>You know, one of the hottest trends before the pandemic was observe ability, uh, kubernetes serve micro services. So those things again. All Dev ups. And you know, if you guys got some acquisitions, you thought about 1000 eyes. Um, you got a new one you just bought recently Port shift to raise the game in security, Cuban, All these micro services, So observe, ability, superhot. But then people go work at home, as you mentioned. How do you think? Observe, What do you observing? The network is under huge pressure. I mean, it's crashing on. People zooms and WebEx is and education, huge amount of network pressure. How are people adapting to this in the upside? How are you guys looking at the what's being programmed? What are some of the things that you're seeing with use cases around this program? Ability, challenge and observe ability, challenges? It's a huge deal. >>Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, going back to Todd Nightingale, right? You know, back when we talked to Todd before he had Muraki and he had designed this simplicity, this ease of use, this cloud managed, you know, doing everything from one central place. And now he has This goes entire enterprise and cloud business. So he is now applying that at that Bigger Attn. Bigger scale. Francisco and for our customers. And he is building in the observe ability and the dashboards and the automation of the A P. I s and all of it. But when we take a look at what our customers needed is again, they had to build it all in, um, they had to build in. And what happened was how your network was doing, how secure your infrastructure was, how well you could enable people toe work from home and how well you could reach customers. All of that used to be a nightie conversation. It became a CEO and a board level conversation. So all of a sudden CEOs were actually, you know, calling on the heads of I t and the CEO and saying, You know, how is our VPN connectivity? Is everybody working from home? How many people are, you know, connected and ableto work and watch their productivity? Eso All of a sudden, all these things that were really infrastructure I t stuff became a board level conversation and you know, once again, at first everybody was panicked and just figuring out how to get people working. But now what we've seen in all of our customers is that they're now building in automation, additional transformation and these architectures, and that gives them a chance to build in that observe ability. You know, looking for those events. The dashboards, you know? So it really has been fantastic to see what our customers are doing and what our partners air doing to really rise to that next level. >>Susan, I know you gotta go, but real quick, um, describe what? Accelerating automation with definite means. >>Well, you've been fault. You know, we've been working together on definite in the vision of the infrastructure program ability and everything for quite some time. And the thing that's really happened is yes, you need to automate, but yes, it takes people to do that. And you need the right skill sets in the program ability. So a networker can't be a networker. A networker has to be a network automation developer. And so it is about people. And it is about bringing infrastructure expertise together with software expertise and letting people run. Things are definite. Community has risen to this challenge. People have jumped in. They've gotten their certifications. We have thousands of people getting certified. You know, we have you know, Cisco getting certified. We have individuals. We have partners, you know, They're just really rising to the occasion. So accelerate accelerating automation while it is about going digital. It's also about people rising to the level of, you know, being able to put infrastructure and software expertise together to enable this next chapter of business applications of cloud directed businesses and cloud growth. So it actually is about people, Justus, much as it is about automation and technology. >>And we got definite create right around the corner virtual. Unfortunately, being personal will be virtual Susie. Thank you for your time. We're gonna dig into those people challenges with Mandy and Eric. Thank you for coming on. I know you got to go, but stay with us. We're gonna dig in with Mandy and Eric. Thanks. >>Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, John. Okay. >>Mandy, you heard Susie is about people, and one of the things that's close to your heart you've been driving is a senior director of definite certifications. Um is getting people leveled up? I mean, the demand for skills cybersecurity, network program, ability, automation, network design solution, architect cloud multi cloud design thes are new skills that are needed. Can you give us the update on what you're doing to help people get into the acceleration of automation game? >>Oh, yes, absolutely. The you know what we've been seeing is a lot of those business drivers that Susie was mentioning those air. What's accelerating? A lot of the technology changes, and that's creating new job roles or new needs on existing job roles where they need new skills. We are seeing, uh, customers, partners, people in our community really starting to look at, you know, things like Dev SEC ops engineer, network Automation engineer, network automation developer, which sues you mentioned and looking at how these fit into their organization, the problems that they solve in their organization. And then how do people build the skills to be able to take on these new job roles or add that job role to their current, um, scope and broaden out and take on new challenges? >>Eric, I want to go to you for a quick second on this, um uh, piece of getting the certifications. Um, first, before you get started, describe what your role is. Director of developer advocacy, because that's always changing and evolving what's the state of it now? Because with Cove and people are working at home, they have more time to contact, switch and get some certifications and that they can code more. What's your >>What's your role? Absolutely So it's interesting. It definitely is changing a lot. A lot of our historically a lot of focus for my team has been on those outward events. So going to the definite creates the Cisco lives and helping the community connect and help share technical information with them, doing hands on workshops and really getting people into. How do you really start solving these problems? Eso that's had to pivot quite a bit. Obviously, Sisco live us. We pivoted very quickly to a virtual event when when conditions changed and we're able to actually connect, as we found out with a much larger audience. So you know, as opposed to in person where you're bound by the parameters of you know how big the convention center is. We were actually able to reach a worldwide audience with are definite day that was kind of attached onto Sisco Live, and we got great feedback from the audience that now we're actually able to get that same enablement out to so many more people that otherwise might not have been able to make it. But to your broader question of you know what my team does. So that's one piece of it is is getting that information out to the community. So as part of that, there's a lot of other things we do as well. We were always helping out build new sandboxes, new learning labs, things like that that they can come and get whenever they're looking for it out on the definite site. And then my team also looks after communities such as the Cisco Learning Network, where there's there's a huge community that has historically been there to support people working on their Cisco certifications. We've seen a huge shift now in that group that all of the people that have been there for years are now looking at the definite certifications and helping other people that are trying to get on board with program ability. They're taking a lot of those same community enablement skills and propping up community with, you know, helping answer questions, helping provide content. They move now into the definite spaces well and are helping people with that sort of certifications. So it's great seeing the community come along and really see that >>I gotta ask you on the trends around automation. What skills and what developer patterns are you seeing with automation? Are Is there anything in particular? Obviously, network automation been around for a long time. Cisco's been leader in that. But as you move up, the staff has modern applications or building. Do you see any patterns or trends around what is accelerating automation? What people learning? >>Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned observe ability was big before Cove it and we actually really saw that amplified during co vid. So a lot of people have come to us looking for insights. How can I get that better observe ability now that we needed? Well, we're virtual eso. That's actually been a huge uptick, and we've seen a lot of people that weren't necessarily out looking for things before that air. Now, figuring out how can I do this at scale? I think one good example that Susie was talking about the VPN example, and we actually had a number of SCS in the Cisco community that had customers dealing with that very thing where they very quickly had to ramp up and one in particular actually wrote a bunch of automation to go out and measure all of the different parameters that I T departments might care about about their firewalls, things that you didn't normally look at. The old days you would size your firewalls based on, you know, assuming a certain number of people working from home. And when that number went to 100% things like licenses started coming into play where they need to make sure they had the right capacity in their platforms that they weren't necessarily designed for. So one of the essays actually wrote a bunch of code to go out, use them open source, tooling to monitor and alert on these things, and then published it so the whole community code could go out and get a copy of it. Try it out in their own environment. And we saw a lot of interest around that and >>trying >>to figure out Okay, now I could take that. I can adapt into what I need to see for my observe ability. >>That's great, Mandy, I want to get your thoughts on this, too, because as automation continues to scale. Um, it's gonna be a focus. People are at home. And you guys had a lot of content online for you. Recorded every session that in the definite zone learning is going on sometimes literally and non linearly. You've got the certifications, which is great. That's key. Great success there. People are interested. But what other learnings are you seeing? What are people, um, doing? What's the top top trends? >>Yeah. So what we're seeing is like you said, people are at home, they've got time, they want toe advance, their skill set. And just like any kind of learning, people want choice. They wanna be able to choose which matches their time that's available and their learning style. So we're seeing some people who want to dive into full online study groups with mentors leading them through a study plan. On we have two new expert lead study groups like that. We're also seeing whole teams at different companies who want to do an immersive learning experience together with projects and office hours and things like that. And we have a new offer that we've been putting together for people who want those kind of team experiences called Automation Boot Camp. And then we're also seeing individual who want to be able to, you know, dive into a topic, do a hands on lab, gets, um, skills, go to the rest of the day of do their work and then come back the next day. And so we have really modular, self driven hands on learning through the Definite Fundamentals course, which is available through DEV. Net. And then there's also people who are saying, I just want to use the technology. I like Thio experiment and then go, you know, read the instructions, read the manual, do the deeper learning. And so they're They're spending a lot of time in our definite sandbox, trying out different technologies. Cisco Technologies with open source technologies, getting hands on and building things, and three areas where we're seeing a lot of interest in specific technologies. One is around SD wan. There's a huge interest in people Skilling up there because of all the reasons that we've been talking about. Security is a focus area where people are dealing with new scale, new kinds of threats, having to deal with them in new ways and then automating their data center using infrastructure as code type principles. So those were three areas where we're seeing a lot of interest and you'll be hearing more about that at definite create. >>Awesome Eric and man, if you guys can wrap up the accelerated automated with definite package and virtual event here, um, and also t up definite create because definite create has been a very kind of grassroots, organically building momentum over the years. Again, it's super important because it's now the app world coming together with networking, you know, end to end program ability. And with everything is a service that you guys were doing everything with a piece. Um Onley can imagine the enablement that's gonna enable create Can >>you hear the >>memory real quick on accelerating automation with definite and TF definite create. Mandy will start with you. >>Yes, I'll go first, and then Eric can close this out. Um, so just like we've been talking about with you at every definite event over the past years, you know, Devon, it's bringing a p I s across our whole portfolio and up and down the stack and accelerating automation with definite. Suzy mentioned the people aspect of that the people Skilling up and how that transformed team transforms teams. And I think that it's all connected in how businesses are being pushed on their transformation because of current events. That's also a great opportunity for people to advance their careers and take advantage of some of that quickly changing landscape. And so would I think about accelerating automation with definite. It's about the definite community. It's about people getting those new skills and all the creativity and problem solving that will be unleashed by that community with those new skills. >>Eric, take us home. He accelerate automation. Definite and definite create a lot of developer action going on cloud native right now, your thoughts? >>Absolutely. I I think it's exciting. I mentioned the transition to virtual for definite day this year for Cisco Live, and we're seeing we're able to leverage it even further with create this year. So whereas it used to be, you know, confined by the walls that we were within for the event. Now we're actually able to do things like we're adding a start now track for people that I want to be there. They want to be a developer. Network automation developer, for instance, We've now got a track just for them where they could get started and start learning some of the skills they'll need, even if some of the other technical sessions were a little bit deeper than what they were ready for. Eso. I love that we're able to bring that together with the experience community that we usually do from across the industry, bringing us all kinds of innovative talks, talking about ways that they're leveraging technology, leveraging the cloud to do new and interesting things to solve their business challenges. So I'm really excited to bring that whole mixed together as well as getting some of our business units together to and talk straight from their engineering departments. What are they doing? What are they seeing? What are they thinking about when they're building new AP eyes into their platforms? What are the what problems are they hoping that customers will be able to solve with them? So I think together, seeing all of that and then bringing the community together from all of our usual channels. So, like I said, Cisco Learning Network, we've got a ton of community coming together, sharing their ideas and helping each other grow those skills. I see nothing but acceleration ahead of us for automation. >>Awesome. Thanks so much. God, man, can >>I add one had >>one more thing. >>Yeah, I was just going to say the other really exciting thing about create this year with the virtual nature of it is that it's happening in three regions. And, you know, we're so excited to see the people joining from all the different regions. And, uh, content and speakers and the region stepping upto have things personalized to their area to their community. And so that's a whole new experience for definite create that's going to be fantastic this year. >>You know, that's what God is going to close out and just put the final bow on that by saying that you guys have always been successful with great content focused on the people in the community. I think now, during with this virtual definite virtual definite create virtual the cube virtual, I think we're learning new things. People working in teams and groups on sharing content. We're gonna learn new things. We're gonna try new things, and ultimately people will rise up and will be resilient. I think when you have this kind of opportunity, it's really fun. And whoa, we'll ride the wave with you guys. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. The Cuban talk about your awesome accelerate automation and definitely looking forward to it. Thank you. >>Thank you so much. >>Happy to be here. >>Okay, I'm John for the Cube. Virtual here in Palo Alto studios doing the remote content amendment Virtual until we're face to face. Thank you so much for watching. And we'll see you at definite create. Thanks for watching.