>> live from Mountain View, California. It's the queue covering definite create twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Hi. Welcome to the Qi of Lisa Martin. John Barrier. Day two of our coverage on the Cube. Cisco Definite create twenty nineteen. Very excited to welcome to the Cube, one of this year's definite creator awards way. Have Andhra Alert Digital automation practice manager from Dimension Data under It's wonderful to have you join us. >> Hi. Thanks for having me. >> So, congratulations. This is breaking news for everybody, including you. You had just won the Definite Creator Award. Tell us about now you're feeling since you just got that news. >> Well, in the same time, I feel excited. I feel honored and I feel so humble. It's a bigger word to win. And I'm very proud that I can bring this. There's a way back home to my my company. >> Did they tell you this is only the second year that they've given out these awards? Did it tell you some of the criteria? Because obviously you were selected and were surprised. Just learned up today. Pretty cool surprise to happen. Did they give you in context about who they're looking for you, Like your activity in the definite community and things like that. It's a little bit about that >> exactly. So they're looking for the people who are having a great impact and more great advocates of definite outside of the Siskel world. So when they're going to clients and where they're going to the developer community in the different countries so they're looking for advocates, they're also looking for people who are great contributors to the network. So if you have some very nice code examples and you're posting them on the Codex and so they had a couple of pretty is that they're following. >> And how long have you been an active member of the definite community? >> I'm quite the veteran. I've been there since the very beginning of the definite. So I before even the release, I already got reviewed the information that something in this direction we'LL come. And then I was there from the very beginning, The journey continued with being there at the first definite express event being now, for example, here definite create a last year, I've organized the first different express event at the partner so together in my company with the mission. Later, we're organized the first definite expressive end in the front foot where we have invited clients but also a lot of people from our engineering teams. So quite the fantastic journeys. And now with with definite and I'm happy >> that time there since so early what's been the >> reaction so far too definite growth and change? What's the biggest surprise or notable change with definite community? >> There are a couple of things were changing. So inside the company, for example, with the adoption of definite and with people going very often on definitely have seen a different style of learning. So engineers now have a different way of how do I approach learning? Where do I go if I need to find something and another change is related to how people interact with each other? Because, yeah, you know, like the network engineer was there, he was doing very cool. His staff, maybe sometimes he was also sharing, but definite the entire opened. This is now standard, so people are sharing between them. Colleagues are also taking on in even internal social media like yammer and the posting. Hey, look, I've done this cool stuff and it's only like a lot of it. It's also thanks to definite, because it brought a little bit a new style of things. >> And they bring definite create, which is gonna cloud native kind of mindset. How has that gone over with network engineers being coding? Python machine learning, Iraqi new things are coming. >> So they're all on the transformation path, and our company's doing a lot of activities in this direction. We've had, For example, last year, our, um Wei have ah, very good advocate for coding on the mission leader. His name is Anthony Shaw. He had last year an entire initiative running learned to code on. So we had colleagues from all over the company independently of the department you work from, which started to code, right? So we had way had them learning how to code. And then this is basically the very bay a fundament on you can refuse. Start afterwards with learning pets in the definite. So it's quite a transformation. And I would say that it's a nice joining Toby. And >> how have you guys? The gentleman that you just mentioned on yourself is, as you described a veteran of the definite community. How have you guys may be influenced to mention data to really fully embrace Death Net and the path >> I think that are, too, too big ways in which this has been done. So on one hand, Anthony show with his very successful initiative, this has brought the transformation from the learning side. And on the other hand, by starting to have skills, we have brought out the news through our clients. And so this has impacted the business. And when the business is impacting and when you show a business value by using automation by using the net or program ability, then the entire company is aware. And this is how afterwards way started to okay. We really embraced >> the challenge, really sort of changing the culture of dimension data in a good way. >> Yes, I wouldn't say it's It's totally changing, but we see that way are very easily adapting to the new way. Talk about >> the automation peace. What do you do in your day to day job? Take us through a day in the life of what you're doing with the cool things you do. Struggles, challenges, opportunities. What's the fun stuff? What's the not so fun stuff that software's automating away. >> Okay, very nice. So on one hand, on the day to day basis, we analyzed with our clients what they're doing, and we are coming with suggestions where they could be faster. And also we're coming with suggestions where they could reduce errors and someone. So basically, we go. We talkto our clients. We're coming back with the problems they have with prepare for them a solution, then afterwards. The solution. It's mainly based on using AP eyes. Scrapie eyes are also amongst our favorite. Once we are presenting the solution than the clients are saying, Yes, it's something I would like to have in my network or no, it's something I don't want. Then, once the clients are happy with the solution that we're proposing them, then we start developing were developing in the Angel methodology, so very close touch with the client failed fast and improved and have a very inter way of doing things afterwards. Once the project is done, you know, we continue improving what we have with the customer with the clients and continuing are joining from there. This is part of what a day in a software engineering department looks like or like in a native ox engineering department looks on top of this. We need all the time to take care of best practices. How do we called? We need to take care of being security compliance, like working in Europe. You know, we have a lot of rules regulations that we need to respect, and we are of some of these rules and tradition. We have very proud that they are there and they're there to protect us and to protect the data which somethings belongs to us. So this is also a topic that way are working on day today. Afterwards were also working a lot and improving our skills. We're having a weekly making learn, for example, where someone is waiting to take someone else's. Presenting the technical topic. So it's it's an entire process and these are all the people that were running on the day today. >> You know, one of the big trends wass going back ten years, Dev Ups Infrastructure is code Great great great trend now Net Dev ups you mentioned that term is about Dev ops applied networking. That's a big theme of definite definite creators. Programmable networks. What does that mean to you? People say Net devil. >> It means a lot. It's very close to my heart. It's also the topic of my presentation later. Today. I have a speaker's not a tech talk in another works A lot of people might think. OK, it's just network continuous. We're writing something. One script in the network. Well, it's not just that. It's a lot of components. It's also about the culture. It's about the people. It's about the process. You're involving. It's about what tools you're using me. The entire net evolves is really close to my heart because it's an entire mindset, which is which needs >> to learn about it. What they where should they go to learn about? Net Dev ops. Sorry, Where should people go to learn about Do Net? De Bob's what it is. >> It's a very, very good entry point. It's the definite right. You have there a lot off learning labs you have the sandbox is yours. Have tracks can go from there and of course you can. You go online, you have a lot of courses. You have a lot of bloggers. You have a lot of you for answers. Were posting about what's what's going on and what you should adapt in your network. Uh, then, yes, you can also use some books. There are also some nice books there, of course, and tow the attention because by the time a book is released, maybe that information could be different. Created, you know, like it runs quite fast. Definitely, definitely. One of the sexual >> organ is your personal question. What's the coolest thing that's going on here? A definite create or within the industry that you're excited about? >> Um, machine learning and artificial intelligence is definitely something that I want Teo to keep an eye on it where I'm running a couple of small tests. It will definitely change the way we see the world. And it'LL also define what our kids will further learn because now you see, like we, we are used to a certain way of learning, which is their since maybe two hundred years, this will have, like motion learning and artificial intelligence. We have such a big impact on everything with you that it will maybe be overwhelming. So it's a very interesting point that I'm following here. The difference Creator. Very nice talks, >> and you've got to get the data to get the machine learning any data? Murat, He's got great wireless WiFi sixes here. I ot looking good. A lot of activity. >> Yes, it is indeed a lot of activity, and I'd like to believe that data is somehow. Then you go though the new petroleo s o having a handle, the data and something that valuable indeed. >> How you found if we look at you know that the participants that air here, we've got, you know, developers, infrastructure, folks who were moving towards adopting De Bob's kind of connecting them with the app developers. How have you seen people change? Job roles change as, uh, these other folks are adopting develops. Especially now that you're talking about bringing in the network. That's how Have you seen roles change and how has your job in particular changed and advance and evolved with practice of Net Dev >> ops. So I was starting the first part of your question. Rolls have indeed changed a lot. And this also I can see in the moment when we try to recruit because there is no profile out there that say okay, I want to recruit another bobs. You will not find on the market native ops of already built as a professor, you need thio recruit people when you see the potential and try to bring thiss new colleagues into the Net evolves journey. So this is one part on how Rosa revolving and then very direct to myself on my career has evolved. I think it's very linked to how the entire definite community has evolved. I've started five years ago the mission it and it was my first. A big job in Germany on my career has evolved in a very rapid way. So I went from technology associate system Engineer is an engineer leading a team off softer with leather box engineers. And now I'm since a couple of weeks speaking for the Europe region, a dimension data to advocate and to create a strategy for Ned a box a za practice. >> So what would you recommend to the younger generation gets your saying that we can't hire for someone that has no develops experience. What are some of the skills, maybe even some of the softer skills, like being a good collaborator, being a good communicator, that you would recommend that the younger generation really fine tune in addition to their technology expertise that you think this is going to make someone really gets this this role and can help really transform it. >> So I think outside of all the technical skills so they can acquire in terms of OK, programming, networking and someone, there are two big soft skills that they should have. And in my opinion, it's something very important, something I'm looking at, every person I'm interviewing, thiss to our curiosity. You need to be curious about what's out there. If you're not serious, you cannot evolve. And the second one is learning ability. Even if you don't know something, you still you say Okay, I don't know when, but I will Girl go and learn about it, you know, like wear learning every day, something like what was there five years ago and what is there to years ago? It's different to what we have now. So learn ability and curious. It's yours, too. Two main topics for me >> Fantastic. Well, under again, Congratulations on winning. The definite Freedom Warrior is here twenty nineteen. It's been a pleasure talking to you, well, producing more great things that you do in the definite community in the next year. Thank you very much. Thanks for having our pleasure for John Ferrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching us live on the cubes. Saturday of coverage. Francisco Definite. Create twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE. Covering Accelerate 19. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE live from Fortinet Accelerate 2019. I'm Lisa Martin with Peter Burris. You can hear all the folks behind us on the show floor. There's about 4000 people here in Orlando from 40 different countries. We're pleased to welcome to theCUBE for the first time, Warren Small, the Senior Vice President of Transformation and Security at Dimension Data. Warren, thank you so much for joining Peter and me on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me guys, it's a great pleasure. >> Lots of energy behind us, let's go ahead and start out so our viewers get a view of Dimension Data, who you guys are, what you do, where you're headquartered. >> Absolutely, so first and foremost, thank you again, for having me. Dimension Data, we're a part of NTT, headquartered out of London. Today we're a global organization with presence in every major country. As an organization, we have have eight billion dollars in revenue, and employ about 30,000 people. I'm from group security, I'm responsible for transforming our business to be more solutions and outcome focused. To help our clients with their digital aspirations. >> You're a general partner in the operational technology space with Fortinet. Tell us a little bit about the history of your partnership. >> Yeah, fantastic, that's a new focus area for us, absolutely, but Dimension Data has been a longtime partner with Fortinet across the entire security portfolio. We've made a significant investment today in being very intentional around partnering with Fortinet for operational technology because we believe fabric approach has a good ecosystem, as articulated by Ken and Patrice this morning, around the partners they've sought to help clients address this operational technology risk. >> One of the things, I think it was Ken talked about this morning, is this notion of how the edge is going to be distinguished by different levels of trust. A little bit of background, at Wikibon, we talk about how digital transformation is the process by which a business institutionalizes and operational it's the role in data as an asset plays in it's business. So we talk about data zones having a zone of data proximate to whatever event is going to take place. Ken talked about almost a zone of trust proximate to where an event's going to take place in OT. You're talking to an enormous number of customers about outcomes and in trying to match technology to those outcomes. How does that notion of trust being one of the primary determinants design elements for thinking about OT? >> I think incredible question, thank you so much. I think there two ways to answer the question. We have a philosophy around being secure by design, and by nature, being secure by design, there's inherent trust, because we understand the clients' business outcome. Today, we're faced with an incredible amount of innovation. I think we all want innovation, everything that we do. One of the things I keep talking to my family about is how easy my job has become through innovation. Whether that's booking an airline ticket and downloading a ticket but now we talk about the credibility of the airline. We talk about the credibility of the airline industry. We talk about the credibility of the transportation industry. It's not just the tickets. So when we're talking about the service, we're talking about the integrity of the airline. It's all those pixels that are integrated. You know, nobody talks to you today about an OT outage when your bags are delayed. Nobody's talking to you today about an airline delay because there's been some water leak. An IOT sensor has detected the water leak and now they're trying to get emergency services to come in, investigate the problem. I think that's the challenge you're faced with. Inherent in the secure by design being a philosophy with all business stakeholders, business now have an appreciation that security is no longer that fear factor. It's now an enabler of the business outcome that we want to deliver to our clients who are crying out for services. >> I might even say it's part of the brand, right? >> Small: Absolutely. >> You go back to systems theory and you talk about a competent interface And a competent interface is performance, it's trustworthy, it behaves as designed, it's monitorable, it's all those other things and in many respects as we move to a digital business, the fundamental tenant of competency is tied into how well the network retains a security profile so that the business can take on new options but serve customers the way it's expected to. >> Small: Absolutely. I like telling my colleagues is when we see some of our clients that are either in the oil and gas industry or critical infrastructure, when you go a plant, they always talk about fatalities. They always talk about how many incidents they have, it's that real. In cyber-security today, in this digital attacks, you don't see it but once you automate a system or you automate part of a plant, there could be some fatalities. I read an article recently about how you can manipulate data that says to a patient that they aren't really sick. I'm a bit torn, because if I go to a doctor, I want to be told if something wrong with me. Maybe I don't want to know, but in reality, I do want to know so I can take action. That's the challenge we're faced with today is that it's uncertainty of manipulation. This is uncertainty today because as we connect these two worlds to create better efficiencies or to provide a better service to the patient all of a sudden is it creating more risks. There are many stories I could share with you that told to me or either our clients share with us of the real life problems if an IOT device is not protected and at most times there's a device that's connected that nobody knows about. >> How do you lead that conversation about security away from fear and more to this is how we could help you stop being reactive and actually be proactive? >> Today, as a team, we talk about innovation. Today we talk about what if. We talk about the value of the way I do my job today. I'm collaborating, the other day I did a count of just a number of apps that I use to make a phone call to have a meeting with somebody. I probably have about seven and you could count the same. Whether it's vendor X or OEM Y but I have an innate level of trust that that vendor, that OEM, that's provided the application to me is trustworthy. I download it and I get on with my meeting. It's very much the same the way I communicate and collaborate with my peers, whether it's internally or externally. I no longer live with the fear that someone may steal my data because I know there's a process in place and we put mechanisms in place to make sure that critical data cannot be shared. Much the same with other aspects of technology. If we have the conversation of the value that can be derived if there is integrity. I look around me and it was interesting. I got into the elevator here and it's a pretty old elevator, right? But there's a level of trust that it was certified and that it is certified, and it's validated, that it works. That's the only trust I have, because for those that know me, I'm pretty scared of elevators. Claustrophobic, right? >> Using you as a proxy for a lot of users because Dimension Data is deep into a number of global 500 companies, global 2000 companies. Do you think executives really understand that crucial relationship between their digital business, their brand, and the role that security networking, specifically security, and secure networking will impact their brand and their business? >> I think they're starting to appreciate the impact. I think it's much in the face now. The numerous attacks that are out there. In fact, I was saying to some of my colleagues and some of my peers, on Friday morning, I was in a conference call and it was the first time I was meeting an individual and about three months before that I had spoken to his CIO, the employee's CIO, and I'd spoken to him about his challenges and I was articulating the value of his brand because they make critical components of motor vehicles. And we were talking about what if there's a malfunction. So, it then got down to this individual, and we had a conversation, and I said to him it's interesting what you shared with me, because it almost sounded like I was having a conversation with you, but you were talking to me, so that your CIO asked you to take this action. It wasn't, it's just become a business problem that's been discussed at the boardroom level. I think if you live in the US, like myself, I've now become a user of this thing called Amazon. My wife's a more frequent user myself, but we rely that a parcel is delivered at a certain time. And we rely on the fact that if Amazon tells us it's going to be shipped and you will receive it, my nine year old, he wants to have his Pokemon cards arrive on Friday, not on Saturday. So, we have to rely that there's integrity in what they are sharing with us, and that they have to rely that their partners have integrity in their systems, and they have to start demonstrating that these are secure systems. These are secure manufacturing plants. These are secure supply chain plants. >> What does that C-suite, and I'm glad you brought that question up, Peter, because I'm always curious, this can't be a conversation anymore at the network security level. >> Or just at the network security level. >> Exactly, it's so pervasive, right? From a C-suite's perspective, what are the outcomes that that CIO has to deliver back to the business. You mentioned healthcare a minute ago, and obviously that's an industry that affects every single person, whether the data is true or not, it affects all of us, but that CIO has to deliver outcomes, whether it's a hospital, or an E-commerce spender like an Amazon, has to deliver to me what their customers need. How is Dimension Data and Fortinet helping that CIO meet her or his business level objectives so the business is competitive, successful, et cetera? >> Absolutely. So a little bit about Dimension Data. We go to market with practices, so we have a digital business solutions practice, and we partner very heavily with our digital business solution's practice. We work with clients around ideation. We work with clients around how they're going to transform their business, so when we talk about smart healthcare, what does that really mean to a user? From a pharmaceutical perspective, from a hospital perspective, how does that really help? We put a number of use cases where we demonstrate to clients what's the value of providing better service to someone when they are first impacted or first injured? If we can diagnose, we can detect, and we can communicate back to be it the hospital or healthcare provider, that's the service that has high integrity. I'm going to subscribe to a healthcare provider or a healthcare practitioner that subscribes to a smart healthcare philosophy. I'm a traveling father, I'm a traveling husband, but the value for me is knowing that I'm always connected, and the services I subscribe to by providers have integrity, and that my wife doesn't have to provide the details on a continuous basis to multiple providers. I had a very emotional conversation once to an individual who shared the impact of sharing data on multiple instances with multiple providers. It wasn't that they had to share, but it was the delayed cause by having to share the information on multiple instances, and then the associated risk. I always talk about I gave you the example about sharing. We talk about, I tell my 13 year old, I say to him, what don't you want me to know about you so be cautious what you share. >> One quick question for you. We're talking increasingly about critical infrastructure, essential infrastructure. We're having more conversations in theCUBE, but it's not broadly diffusing into the general population. A lot of that, one of the reasons for that, is that people believe it's going to be unbelievably expensive. But it seems to me, and this is what I'm testing, that an investment in updating critical infrastructure so that you got better security, you got more network ability, you're using technology more appropriately, will also have the benefit that you can increase the optimization of the resources that are associated with that infrastructure. When you work with clients, do you see that kind of ameliorating trade off where yes we have to invest in these things, but there is a derivative benefit that we're going to increase the optimization of them? >> Absolutely. I'll answer that in a number of different ways. But the first one is efficiency and that's what everybody is driving towards. Can we get greater efficiency by integrating these two worlds? But as you said, what they don't realize is you can't just connect these two worlds without making sure that they are capable of being integrated and that's the first stance we take with a number of clients irrespective of the industry that they're in is what do you know and what do you think you know? Because if you have an understanding and you have a design of what needs to be enabled, what needs to be remediated, and what needs to be changed, you can move a lot faster, and you know who to engage in terms of partnerships. You know, I was talking about that example earlier. It was absolutely a case where the client knew immediately, if we connect these two worlds the devices that facilitate the connection need to be replaced. Another example was a client was implementing a software defined network for all their plants. What they didn't realize was the technology would not enable that software defined networking. So without a plan which we've been extremely intentional in building what we call a cyber-security advisory for operational technology networks is to help our clients with their design and that plan and methodology to go and execute. >> Last question in about 30 seconds, no pressure. Lot of growth, lot of potential in the market that Ken Xie, Patrice Perche talked about this morning during the keynote. What excites you about this momentum that their business growth is carrying into 2019? >> I think a number of ways to answer but 30 seconds, what I'm grateful for is how Ken Xie and Patrice articulated it. It's all about education. If we have the right people, we can move faster. Second is that there's immense value in the integration of their fabric network. We see a lot of value in the client conversations that we have today is what do we have that we can leverage? How can we make it better as opposed to replace? That'll give us the ability. Patrice mentioned a stat of 50% of organizations have unfilled roles and I think sometimes it may be greater because it depends on who we're measuring, right? And in what roles in these organizations. But the potential for us is incredible as a manage security service provider and a platform organization that we have the teamwork in Fortinet that allows us to co-invest in the platform that we are building to deliver better outcomes to our clients. >> Warren, it's been a pleasure to have you on theCUBE with me this afternoon. We're looking forward to hearing more great news from Dimension Data and Fortinet over the next year and years to come! >> Thank you so much, lovely to be here. >> Our pleasure. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE. (tech music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's theCUBE... covering Accelerate '19. (electronic music) Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are at Fortinet Accelerate 2019 in Orlando, Florida. I'm Lisa Martin with Peter Burris. We've been here all day talking with Fortinet executives, with partners, really understanding the evolution of cybersecurity and how they are helping customers to combat those challenges to be successful. We're pleased to welcome back to theCUBE alumni John Bove, the VP of North America's channel for Fortinet. John welcome back to the program. >> Thanks for having me, great to see you both again. >> Likewise, so, so much going on today, some news coming out. The keynote this morning started with a lot of electricity around Fortinet's industry leadership, product leadership, there was a lot of growth numbers shared >> John: Yup >> There's also a lot of people here about close to four thousand. >> John: Close to four thousand people, yup. >> And you saying that a good percentage of that is partners, forty countries represented. What are some of the things from your perspective, that you've observed today, in terms of the reaction from the channel to all of this news coming out. >> Yeah so first off, the heritage of this event really was a partner conference going back to its infancy and you know as Fortinet continues to grow and our customer profile continues to you know, move up market, we've now invited customers. So it's really great the synergy that we have. We've got a number of partners with their customers coming to meetings and meeting with executives, and so it's just really fantastic. You know relative to the announcements about the partner program, we've seen really positive feedback. I think the program was introduced about a decade ago and it really was time for a refresh, and so, what we've done is, we want to bring a program to our partner community that, allows them to engage with us in how they see fit, and then we want to build the go to market that's a little bit more in tune with the market that exists here, as we're moving into the year 2020 and beyond. So we're really assimilating a reseller, MMSP and Cloud as types of partner go to markets, and organizing that all underneath the Fortinet partner program umbrella. We'll also be introducing a consultancy track because we want to insure that the assets within the network security expert program are available to those consultants that are working with customers on their journey to the Cloud, for instance, or through this digital transformation. And then finally we're introducing what we're calling a competency focus. So as Fortinet continues to grow as a company there's a number of competencies that we feel if we enable partners appropriately they're going to be able to benefit from. They're going to build a stronger business around the Fortinet Security Fabric. So, we're going to focus on SD-WAN, we're going to focus on Fabric, we're going to focus on Data Center, operational technologies and then S.A.C., because we do think, you know, S.A.C. operations, is an area, that cybersecurity and the number of tool sets are introduced, it's an area that we need to grow into as a company as well. >> Lots going on. >> Lot's going on, yes. >> So as you consider some of the challenges that your partners face, we talked a little bit about this with Patrice, partners, throughout the industry are hurting as they try to transition from a more traditional hardware to whatever's going to be the steady state, >> John: That's right >> with the Cloud and the Edge having such an impact. Education is crucial. You not just get your customers educated about how cybersecurity works, but your partners need to be increasingly educated so they can find those opportunities, niches, stay in business, help you engage, how's that playing out? >> My number one initiative as the channel leader is to drive partner competency and preference. And so, going back to competency, if we can build partner competencies, they're going to build a healthier, more margin rich business around the Security Fabric, which then, selfishly, is going to lead them to delivering more preference around Fortinet. But there's no doubt, it's a changing dynamics. Business models are changing on the fly. We're seeing evolution of VAR to MSP, and MSP to MSSP, and we are laser focused on capitalizing that. Our FortiSIEM technology for instance is, I really view as a Beachhead technology for us to go capitalize that MSP market in the mid-market. I think that the evolution of consumption to more of a consumption model away from a transactional acquisition, also lends itself to new and innovative programs that need to be delivered. In fact with our North American distributors, in the past six months, we've introduced hardware as a service, to reduce, you know, to position things as an operational expense, which may be more in tune with how customers are purchasing today, and we've introduced FortiSIEM for MSSP. The evolution of VAR to a service provider can be very capital intensive, and so one of the things that we've done with our hardware as a service and FortiSIEM for MSSP, we've really tried to reduce the cost of the entry point, and drive more day one margin opportunity for those partners. >> Let me build on that if I may Lisa, so Ken and Mike have done a pretty phenomenal job of steering Fortinet into the future and anticipating some of the big changes that have occurred. You guys have therefore pretty decent visibility into how things are going to play out, and are now large enough that your actually participating in making the future that >> Right >> Everybody else is thinking about. When you introduce a product, I mean, it takes a period of time for your partners to get educated, to up-skill, to really set themselves up to succeed in this dynamic world. Are you introducing educational regimens, competency tests, providing advice and council about the new competencies they're going to need, in anticipation to some of these, some of the roadmap of the, to the future that you see? >> Yeah, so two things I'll touch on there is you know, the NSC program has been wildly successful program for ... >> Peter: No what does NSE stand for? >> Network Security Expert so it's a training course where for a partner and you've got new team members coming on board, the NSE113 really enables them of how to position, you know, Fortinet, and what the challenges are in a network in a cybersecurity environment today. With the elements four through eight being more technical. We've seen over 200,000 certifications being adopted globally, so, I think, part of the visionary capabilities that Michael and Ken have, is they've incorporated the education piece of it, and so carrying that along, and so as we do introduce new products, it's built into the NSE modules. I'll point to one of the most successful things we did in 2018 was called Fast Tracks, and so we've basically taken the NSE content and put it into consumable two hour, hands on, technical labs for our partners and customers. We had a goal in 2018 to hit about a thousand people going through the Fast Track program, we hit over eight thousand people. So, we know that there is a thirst for knowledge out there and the company's done a really good job, through the NSE program, the Network Security Expert Program, through out Network Security Academy Program, and through our Fast Tracks to drive that necessary enablement. >> Peter: That's very exciting. >> Yeah I know absolutely, I mean, it's a fantastic time to be at Fortinet, its a fantastic time to be a Fortinet partner, and I think with the announcements that we made today, we're really trying to set our partners up for success, and help them build a all encompassing business around the Security Fabric. It's a very noisy industry out there. There's a lot of point based solutions that, that lack the integration and really you need an integrated set of solutions in this, you know, expanding digital footprint that customers are faced with. >> So when we talk about education and I'm glad that you guys brought that up, that was a big topic, it was a pillar that Ken talked about, that Patrice talked about as well, it was one of the core pillars that was talked about at the World Economic Forum that was just a couple of months ago. So as we talk about education and educating your partners, I'd like to kind of flip that and ask how are your partners educating you on, these are the trends and concerns and the issues that we're seeing in the market today, to help influence the direction of Fortinet's technology? >> Yup, you know it's funny that you say that, I've been in partner meetings all day today, and it's great I get to spend, I don't think I've ever been this popular and definitely not in high school or college, but in spending time with partners and understanding their challenges it's good to see that our focus on the competency and preference and providing consumption modeling, fits to exactly the challenges that they're faced with, because VARS will tell you that the transition from being a reseller to an MSP can be very, very expensive. And so, with FortiSIEM for MSSP and the as of service offerings, we're reducing that. And so, there are , they're resonating to that. But the other thing is, for the mid-market customer, the Security Fabric alleviates the need for the Cyber skills gap, right? We can't hire fast enough, and so, by depending upon the broad integrated and automated posture that this Fortinet Security Fabric allows, it really allows partners and customers to overcome some of the challenges, just from a head count standpoint. And I think that the NSE program also does a very good job of filling that gap as well. >> So the partner used to mean, these are the, for that group of customers, who our direct sales organization can't make money on, we will give them to partners, or the very, very large, for a very, very large company that's owned by Accenture or owned by Dimension Data, or something like that, >> Yup >> We'll work with them and deliver it. And that kind of middle was kind of lost. But even today, that Loewen, that idea of segmenting purely on the basis of how big they are, is problematic because there's a lot of small companies happening because of this digital transformation they're going to very rapidly grow into some very, very big footprints. >> Absolutely >> So how is that line between what Fortinet does, what the partner does, what the customer does, to achieve these outcomes, starting to shift? >> We're going to be introducing an ecosystem based approach. It's called Partner to Partner Connect, and it is to actually do that very thing. For those partners that may be in the mid-market, that need those expertise, we're going to allow partners to create almost a marketplace of service offerings so they can fill their gaps and they can build meaningful practices, leveraging what Fortinet is doing, but also leveraging somewhat some of our other partners are doing. We're seeing this immediately done with our distribution partners, in North America, and we're going to be introducing the Partner to Partner Connect later this year, and accessible through our Partner Portal. >> And those competencies that are associated with the NSE and the education, then become part of those Partner to Partner brands >> John: Absolutely >> Which makes it easy for those partners to be more trustworthy of whatever accommodations they put together to serve customers. >> Yup, I'll give you an example. So, we're also going to be announcing tomorrow afternoon in our North America breakout session, a Cloud Channel Initiative, and so our goal with this Cloud Channel Initiative, is to allow partners to build meaningful security and networking businesses in the public Cloud. We're going to utilize blueprints for reference architectures, we're going to align with education and certification, and then we're going to guide them through enablement to go to market. That's one of the things also we released this week was the NSE7 for public and private Cloud. So again, as we introduce new technologies and we introduce new opportunities, we're also aligning that to education as well, so the partners can be self service, because the better job a partner does is developing that competency , then the more services rich they're going to be able to deliver to the end customer themselves. >> What are some of your expectations in terms of FY19, I know this is a 20% year on your growth that Fortinet as a company achieved last year, I imagine a good amount of that was driven and influenced by the channel, but as this momentum continues to grow, as we saw this morning, and we've heard throughout this show today, what are some of your expectations about growing the number of partners in the programs that you talked about, like by the end of this year? >> Yes, we recognize, you know, first of all we appreciate our partners so much, and we want to ensure that we are enabling their business we're absolute in active recruitment mode. You know, we're currently going through recruitment and reactivation campaigns with partners that we want or maybe have done business with us before. We see we're coming off of a quarter in which we set a record for the most deal registrations and so that's really the metric in which we look for partner impact. They bring us an opportunity, we give them additional margin and we protect them. So, Q1, fiscal Q1 for us, was our largest deal registration quarter we've ever had. And in 2018 we saw a 52% increase in closed opportunities through our deal registration program. So the impact of the North American Channel is absolutely being felt and we're really excited about the new partner program and what it's going to allow us to do as we expand more into the MSP market, more into the Cloud market, and then hopefully go enable that whole consultancy layer that's out there as well, to help customers on their journey. >> So in terms of your session tomorrow, 'Transforming Your Profitability with Fortinet's Tailor Made Programs,' you mentioned some of the new announcements, what are like the top three take aways that attendees from that session are going to walk away with? >> Well it's going to be, we want to drive partner initiated revenue, we want to do that through competency development, through Widespace account penetration, and through meaningful investments that allow our partners to scale their business. >> Lisa: Lot of momentum, John thank you so much for visiting with Peter and me on theCUBE this afternoon, we can't wait to hear what great news you have next year. >> I look forward to it, thank you both. >> Excellent, our pleasure. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're live here in Barcelona, Spain, for Cisco Live! Europe 2019 Cube coverage. Three days, we're in day two of three days of coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host, with Stu Miniman as well as Dave Vellante's been on interview. Our next guest, Saurav Prasad, Principal Engineer and Technical Marketing at Cisco as part of the Cisco DNA Center Platform. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. >> So you guys are having a DNA take, and we're in the DevNet zone all week. This has been a real revitalization within Cisco DevNet, Cloud Native, Cisco coming together. The DNA center has been a part of this from day one. >> Yes. >> What is the DNA center these days, what's happening? >> Okay, so, let me take you a bit back in time, right. So, back in October 2017 is when we first launched the Cisco DNA center. Since then we have added a lot more application, work flows in the DNA center. And last year in May or June of last year, 2018, is when we launched the DNA Center Platform. And this protocol, FCS, some time during October of 2018. So, we now have the DNA Center Platform, which essentially is an open platform which lets our developers, our partners, our ISVs build applications on top of DNA Center which will let them talk to the network. And the way they do it is using our APIs, our SDKs, and then we have a lot of other modules, which help them interact with the network via the DNA Center. Now the benefit of this is not really with respect to APIs or SDKs, it's more about we give them a very easy way to talk to the network. Instead of talking to 10,000 network devices, they talk to one DNA Center. So, that's the, you know, idea behind the DNA Center Platform. >> Well why not expand a little bit when we've been talking about platforms in general for many years now, and it's one thing to say you're a platform, but the proof is, who's actually building on it. What can they do on it? So, you've got the platform, FCS, first customer ship, it's available, it's launching. What can you tell us about, you know, real customers, what they're doing, give us a little bit of the spectrum as to what we see out there. >> That's right. So before we FCS'ed our platform in October, we actually relied on early field trials for almost three to four months. And in then in that time we were actually working with our 15 top partners. And this was across the world, right. So they were actually using the platform to build some integrations from their side which was beneficial for them, right, so these are partners like Dimension Data, Accenture, WWT, and I'm just naming a few of them. These are all listed on our DNA center portal, on DevNet. But, then, we were working them and we were actually looking for feedback on whether it was useful and we found that it was really, really useful for them to build some good applications, good work flows, good integrations, and that helps them drive their own business with their customers. >> So, what's the mission of the DNA center? What is the purpose? Why do you guys exist? >> So, the DNA center is built to provide you intent based networking. So instead of you having to go to each and every network device and provision things on the network devices, you now go to the DNA center and say "Here is my intent!" An example for an intent would be, "I want to prioritize Cisco job or traffic". It should be high priority. Now that means there is a lot of network devices that I need to provision quality of service. I need to make sure I have the right cue instructors in place. And guess what, we have so many devices, each one of them might have some different CLIs, different architectures, we now give them one single place where you provide the intent and not worry about the device level details. And I am just giving you one example. There could be a lot more where, for example I'm getting the telemetry back from a network. Each and every device is saying I am having some issues but they might all be the same issue here. What DNA center does is takes all of those issue provides you an insight into what really is happening in the network, so that's our idea of DNA Center. >> Saurav, come on, who doesn't want to use this? Everyone who's gone out and provisioned a device knows how much a hassle it is. I mean think about the manual labor involved. Just going out and doing all of this stuff so it's an action center, basically. You take action, one spot, window into the network policy, whatever it takes. It's driven by, and now applications can come in as well. Am I getting that right. >> That's right. So the greatest work says, again this is what we do with platform is, different partners, different customers, might have some different workflows. So within the DNA center we have decided, here is how the workflow should look like. So if I want to do an upgrade of a network device, here are the steps I might follow. But when you use the API's, you can almost define your own workflows. So this allows you the flexibility of building your own workflows. That's one example. Other is, say for example, I need some feedback from a different system, not the network maybe some other IT system. I need to get some information from them and based on that, I need to configure something on the network. You cannot do that automatically. There has to be an application in between which talks to both of these systems, one of them being the Cisco DNA Center. Now this allows you to do that. If I have the API's, if I have the event framework, I can do all of that. That's the benefit of using these. >> What's the alternative if someone doesn't use the DNA Center 'cause this is a no brainer. You've got, I get the device piece, that's just a nice window. Now the platform allows applications to integrate and be programmable with the network. Why wouldn't someone use this, it's a no brainer. >> If you don't use this, what you do is you go to each of your thousand network devices talk to each one of them and take care of all of the device level details and do it. It's doable, people have been doing it for years now but now we are making it slightly more easier to make it faster. >> Well, it comes to, we have been talking for years the need for scale and if you don't have good automation if you don't have tools to be able to help you there, you're not going to be able to reach the scale that you need for your business, explain why this is important. >> For example, what we are seeing is and we have been talking about digital networks for some time now. What really is a digital network, that's a key point to understand here. What we are seeing is there was a time 10 years back when you had to roll out a new service network admins, network architects had six months to provision that. Nowadays they don't have that. >> Six hours >> They probably have six hours, that's right. In order for you to do all of that so fast, you really cannot go into each device and talk about it. You have to abstract some of that and that's what the DNA Center provides and using our API's we are now adding a new level on top of it, which really makes it much more easier for you to scale. Again, not just scale, also integrate with other IDSM systems, other IBM systems, other reporting systems. So this is all happening automatically, instead of you having to manually touch each of these systems. >> Talk about the plug and play process. How does that fit in with DNA Center, compatible, not compatible? >> So plug and play is an application or workflow within DNA Cneter. When I look at plug and play, every network device in Cisco has a plug and play agent running. I'm going to get into a bit of a technical detail here, but they have a plug and play agent running and so when this device comes up, say for day zero onboarding, you open up the box, take out the device power it up, the agent fires up. What it looks for is the plug and play server. The Cisco DNA center is the Plug and Play server. So now I am allowing you to onboard new devices. You could roll out a new site with 25 network devices, 100 network devices in a matter of minutes. >> So all of the configuration gets pushed down from the DNA Center? >> Exactly! So you build your own profile in DNA Center and attach the templates or the configurations. You say here is a serial number and when this device comes in, I push in all the configuration, I provision a new software image on it, so your device or your site is up and running. >> Great for campus, great for remote sites. >> Exactly, so you really don't have to send a network admin on every remote site to do that. >> Will it take policy so if I set policy up in the DNA Center, will it automatically take that down through? >> Yes, yes, yeah. Once a device is onboarded, it gets added to the Cisco DNA Center and once I do that, now I can throw in policies any kind of provisions. >> I don't mean to get in the weeds, sorry Stu, go ahead. >> What's great about a platform, you've talked about some of the partners. My understanding, not just some of the integrated partners like WWT that you mentioned but even some of the technology partners like IBM have services that plug into this environment. We've seen in platforms, where you can, one of the other dimensions is the customers and what are they asking for and how are there feedback there. Is there anything in the DNA Center platform that if one customer is asking for something that more customers are going to get value of that. I think back to the day of Salesforce. When Salesforce gets something, we add a new feature and that's something that can roll out, we can learn from all the customers, you get that fly wheel of development in a platform. >> What we are doing here is we are actually working very closely with Cisco DevNet on that. They have a partner ecosystem exchange. What's happening is a lot of this channeled partners technology partners, ISV's, when they build something they go into the ecosystem exchange and they can post it there. So its not just useful for them, there are other partners, other customers that can use it. They have a data repository of all the core, sample core and again, not everybody shares it to the extent what we would like because there's a lot of intellectual property which they have built and they might want to monetize on it but that is the whole idea behind the ecosystem exchange where I am allowing partners to share what they have built and this could be used by others. >> Saurav, talk about the success, what's the uptake? It must be well received, obviously we see a lot of action her in the DevNet zone. Give us some color commentary on what the momentum has been, who's using it, how? >> From our side, I'm from the business unit which is actually building this product. The way we judge whether this product is getting traction is what is the amount of feature requests I am getting? So, we are getting a ton of feature requests with respect to new API's that we want to expose. With respect to new documentation that we have to build. I mean, what we don't want is we release a product and we got no feedback. >> So what's the fee for requests? Backlog big or what's going on? >> Oh yeah, so for example when we launched we had a limited set of API's available. Now since then, with every release, now we have a release almost every month, where we are adding newer API's and newer functionality, we are actually adding more and more API's and again there is much more to add but that's the process and-- >> Just keep jamming and taking it in, backlog it, get it out there, iterating quickly? >> Exactly, and again, the one point to add here is we are not really just exposing an API, we are exposing an intent API so it's got slightly different. So instead of, say for example, I want to provision a wireless network, that is probably a 10 step process even within the DNA Center. What we want to give you is a single API which will do all of that and all of that heavy lifting will be done by the Cisco DNA Center platform. So, we will internally call the 10 separate API's. So for a developer who is building this, he or she may not be a network expert, they might not be an expert into how the network works so all they have to do is call one single API and all of the details or all the heavy lifting will be done by the platform, so they don't really have to worry about some of those details. >> So this is where the automation will get done on behalf of the customer. They'll come in, deploy DNA Center understand what's going on and that's where they do all of their work. Figure out what to do, get it done there. What's been the biggest use case so far? >> So, a lot of use cases. Like, we have a partner who is actually building a mobile app so we have a DNA Center which is sitting on prem in their own data center, they can go and look at the browser, open up the Cisco DNA Center console and look at the various workflows or see what's happening in the network. They might see there is a router which has crashed. Or an application which is having some application performance issue but what we want to see, is also, send us even send remotely and now their network admins could be walking in a grocery store, for example and the mobile, that alert shows up. Guess what, that is application is having an issue lets do the debugging so we will provide you all of that details within our API's, which can then show up in the application externally. >> So DNA Center platform has a takeover going on in the DevNet zone. We see classrooms, we've seen labs, give us a little bit of the flavor of the solutions for the next hour as well as at the show in general. >> In general here at the Cisco DevNet zone, we have a Cisco DNA Center takeover going on right now. We have workshops, we have sandbox labs, we have learning labs. You can go to any one of them and try it out. That is not only for this hour, that is there for throughout the show, but for this hour, we have a tech talk going on from one of our distinguished sales engineers Adam Rattford, he is talking all about DNA Center Platform in deep dive, showing live examples. We have some demo systems up and running here where you can actually see how we are able to generate events, how we are able to send events to external systems, so all of that is going on. Plus, we have all of our experts. A lot of our experts from the engineering team are here on the show right now on the show floor so if there are any questions around DNA Center Platform they will be more than willing to help. >> The brain trust is here. >> My understanding, I mean, when I have talked to people the DevNet group has labs running all the time. And that's what's great, I have talked to customers that say, I need to be able to play with this and here's something that's online, it's in the cloud I just do with it whenever so. >> Just to add to that, of course for our customers, our partners, our developers who want to try this out, they are more than welcome to come and join us in the Cisco DevNet zone here. Even if you are not at Cisco live, these sandbox lives are live online and we have I think around five or six of them and we are adding more to it. You can go anytime, try our API's on that sandbox. You don't really need to have your own environment. Now of course when you go production with it you will but just for trying out or building some applications, you can do it on the sandbox. >> Saurav, thanks so much for taking the time sharing some technical insight, went a little bit deep on the plug and play but appreciate your time coming on theCUBE, thanks for coming on and congratulations. DNA Center, the Cisco DNA Center Platform, the official name, really an oasis, a place to go in and configure the networks no brainer as far as I am concerned, check it out. theCUBE's bringing you the DNA of the show here, which is all the action, coverage, I'm John Furrier, Stu Minimin. Stay with us more here live in Barcelona and we will be back after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're here live at theCUBE in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE with Stu Miniman. It's our third day of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Our next two guests are from NetApp. Russell Fishman, Director of Product Management, and Keith Barto, Director of Product Management, both directors of product management. One was the former CEO of Immersive, now with NetApp for a few years. Guys, great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us, John. Thank you. >> We saw you guys in Barcelona, obviously. The NetApp story just keeps on getting better. Also, you have core customer base. Cisco's going under transformation. You guys have been transforming ever since I started seeing NetApp arrive on the scene in the 90s. Every year there's always a new innovation. But now, more than ever, you're hearing even Cisco Bellwether in the routing networking business putting up old way network, hey there's a firewall. There's some devices in there. To a completely new, obviously, cloud made in the modern era really things are changing. So what's your reaction to that? Obviously, you guys are a part of that story. You have a relationship with Cisco. What's your reaction to that? And talk about your relationship with Cisco. >> So we obviously have a huge relationship with Cisco. And most folks will know about our FlexPods, I think that's probably the most famous way that we collaborate with these guys. We just came off the back of an amazing year, five straight quarters of double-digit, year-on-year growth, killing in the market. Obviously, we have to brag a little bit, right, come on. >> It's theCUBE, come on! >> It's theCUBE, we gotta be a little bit excited about it. So we're really excited about that, it just really talks to the strength of the relationship, right? So there's a very strong relationship there, and it's been there with FlexPod for eight years, and there's been a lot of transformation, exactly to your point John, a lot of transformation during that time, a lot of focus on the clouds. So one of the questions I always get asked, is why is converged infrastructure still relevant in a cloud-first world? And it is not obvious answer, now clearly our customers think that it is, and so do our partners. But it is not obvious why that is. NetApp has gone through, you talked about transformation, NetApp has gone through this massive transformation, huge focus on clouds, I mean, we have these cloud-first, cloud-native, focus around our data management platforms. We talk about a concept called the data fabric, I don't know if you've heard of the data fabric before. >> Yeah. >> And the data fabric really talks to how, our vision for how enterprises want to manage that new digital currency that is data across all the silos that they want to leverage, right? We've been able to bring some of that goodness into FlexPod, and that's why we're still relevant now. >> Yeah, so Keith, I think back to when converging infrastructure was built as about simplification, we were gonna take all these boxes and put it down to a box and that was the new unit of measurement. Well, Russell was just talking about we've got multi-cloud, when I think of NetApp now, it's always been a software company, but now software in that multi-cloud world, help connect the dots for us, as to management of converged infrastructure into that whole multi-cloud story. >> Yeah, we were very privileged to be acquired by NetApp last March, and my company Immersive, a lot of us came actually out of Cisco. So I was one of the original FlexPod architects from Cisco and had the privilege of helping to build the network, the storage that we brought into FlexPod, and a lot of our customers and our retailers kept on saying, "How do we know we put it together properly? "How are we following the best practices from the CVDs, "from the NVAs, from the TRs?" And so we took those rules and those analytics and we put them into platform, into a SaaS-based platform, and we were able to analyze that, coming from our customers' FlexPods, from within their deployments, from within their multi-data centers, and bring that into our service, run those analytics, prove those best practices, show the deficiencies, get our resellers out there to help our customers, 'cause FlexPod is a meet in the channel play, and we relied heavily on our resellers to make it a success. >> What was the driver for that product? When you started that company and that happened, what was the main motivation behind that? Was it analytics, was it insight, what was some of the things that you guys were building in, was it operational data? >> The real reason was people kept on asking, "How do I know?" Because it's a reference architecture, not a product, "How do I know I did it right?" Because it's really important, we're gonna run our key business applications on this platform, right? My SAP, my Oracle, my Sequel, my SharePoint, my Outlook. I gotta make sure this stuff is really gonna work properly, and it's going to grow in scale with the business. So I need to make sure that those redundant links are there. I need to make sure that when I do VMWare upgrade, or a Microsoft upgrade, that the firmware is alignment with the best practices in the interoperability matrix, so we wanted to make that as easy as possible, so that from a single dashboard, you can see all of those things, you can diagnose it quickly, you can get those email alerts and notifications, and because you end up with disparate operation teams, the server team, the network team, the storage team, the hypervisor team, sometimes they don't always talk effectively with each other, and from one single dashboard, we're now able to show everybody where things are today, and then, one of my favorites, when there is a problem, you call either Services or Support, and you say, "Hey it's not working," and they say, "What did you change?" And you say, "I didn't change anything." We have that historical-- >> Finger pointing kicks in, it was his fault! >> Yeah we have the historical snapshot and trending, so we can go back and look at where things were and do a comparison to where they are today, and it allows us to have a much faster mean time to resolution. >> And what do you guys call that product now within Cisco? What's it... >> It's now called Converged Systems Advisor in NetApp. >> Awesome, so what's next for convergers. Obviously, people, both cloud growth, we're seeing the on-premise, Wikibon has reported, the true private cloud numbers, which basically say there's a lot of on-premise activity going on, that's gonna look like cloud, it's gonna operate like cloud, so they need to have that. There's migration going on, but it's not a lift and shift, to cloud, there's gonna be, obviously, the hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. So, cloud folks still buy hardware, too. You gotta still run stuff, networks aren't going away, storage isn't going away, so what's next for the converged infrastructure play with FlexPod? How do you guys manage that roadmap? >> So, we just announced some things coming into, jointly with Cisco, coming into Cisco Live. One of those things we announced was something called Managed Private Cloud on FlexPods, or actually no, FlexPod Managed Private Cloud, sorry, I switch it around. And FlexPod Managed Private Cloud, it really talks to exactly what you're talking about, John, which is... What we find, cloud has fundamentally changed customers' expectations of what they want on-prem. They recognize the need on-prem, we live in a hybrid world. Those of us that've been in the industry long enough, and have a couple of gray hairs, know that there are very few transitions that are really absolute in the business. A lot of people pronounce that it's gonna be this way or that way, and the reality is, it's something in between. And that's fine because cloud is just another tool in the toolbox, and you don't want to hit every nail with the same hammer, you want to find the right tool for the right job. So what we've done is we've taken some of that cloud goodness, which really means not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure, all right. Worrying about the applications, being more application-focused, more business-value-focused, more line-of-business-focused. And being able to deliver that in a way that people can consume it on-premise. So it really feels like a FlexPod delivered like a cloud, but from a management day-to-day perspective, you don't have to do it-- >> So, it's flexible. >> It's flexible-- >> FlexPod. >> But it's done for you, so it's your little piece of cloud, sitting on-prem, and you don't have to manage it or run it day-to-day. >> Let's talk about what you just said about the whole transformation, people say a certain way, basically you're kind of saying, a lot of press, and a lot of analysts say, "Oh, you've got to do this digital transformation." Customers will take a pragmatic approach, but you guys at NetApp have been talking for a long time, I've been following it, non-disruptive operations. >> Yes. >> So what you see in the cloud if people wanna take those first three steps, but they don't want to have to overhaul anything, containers have proved to be great resource there, Kubernetes is showing a great way to have life cycle management on the app side of infrastructure. How does your customers, and Cisco customers, maintain that non-disruptive operational playbook, because Cisco guys are gonna start changing, moving up the stack too-- >> Absolutely. >> Doesn't mean storage is gonna go away, but they don't want to disrupt anything, your thoughts? >> And it doesn't mean any of it goes away, that's the funny thing, we talk about where we want to focus, but it's as much about not having to worry about the things that we had to worry about that are just there in the future, right? So it's kind of like if you went back 200 years, going to get fresh water was a big hassle, now it isn't, it's delivered to you, right? I know it sounds like a crazy analogy, but the reality is is that we shouldn't have to worry about the basics of on-premise, private cloud, it should just be automatic, it should be simple to execute, simple to manage, simple to order, simple to deploy, and then you focus on the value, so that's what we've been really focused on. >> Keith, when I listen to my friends in the networking space management's still a challenge. The punchline is usually, they hear single pane of glass, and they said that's spelled P-A-I-N. >> I've heard that one too. >> Talk a little bit about how your solutions tie into some of the broader tools out there. >> Well, we first looked at the compute layer and said, because of the extensibility of USC Manager and the API integration, we're able to take advantage of that, and be able to pull that data out, and XOS, right? We're able to do that exact same thing, and the background that we had at Cisco, and knowing those products really well, we were able to gather all the specific data we need to look at those best practices. And it's a complex architecture, but it's a very elegant architecture, because of the high availability, it can provide the performance, the non-disruptive operations that you were bringing up, John. We want to make sure that we're able to keep those things in line, so as we bring our next release of CSA out, we're going to be adding Enterprise Fibre Channel, so the new MDS switches, we're gonna be bringing our relationship with VMWare in our engine to be able to ingest the configuration of VMWare in. We're also bringing back our partner-centric reseller portal so when customer is running Converged Systems Advisor, they can share it to their reseller, and the reseller's going to be able to provide managed services, support services, and professional services to expand, to repair, to augment those existing FlexPods in their customers' environments. So we're really excited to be able to bring that solution back to our resellers-- >> What's that going to do, what's the impact of that, because I almost imagine that's going to enable them to want to be tightly integrated but also get data from their customers. What do you guys see as the value for the partners to take advantage of that? >> Well, I just met with a partner at our booth, just a few moments ago, and walked them through the solution they had never seen it before. It takes a reseller a week, or even multiple weeks, depending on the size of the FlexPod, to actually go through the configuration of the servers, the network, the storage, the hypervisors, and correlate that into a deliverable to their customer. We can do that in sub-10 minutes, sub-15 minutes. >> So faster time to the customer value. >> Faster time to customer value, faster time to resolution if there is a problem, and then again, they're running in their key business applications on this platform, we've been doing it for eight years, we want to continue to expand upon the value the FlexPod can offer. >> But I wanted to add just a couple of things to what you were saying. We talked about FlexPod really being a channel play. That's important to us in product management, not so important to our customers. What it really means to our customers is they tend to have a very close relationship with their partners. Their partners are the ones that are really enabling FlexPod for them. What we're doing with Converged Systems Advisor, is we are creating such a close relationship at a technical level, technology level, between the customer and the partner, that the partner's there to help them on a daily basis. Where there is a problem, it's almost like the telematics in your car, right? All the cars now, they're phoning back home, they're telling where there's something wrong, you get this letter or an email, you need a service, you need... This is exactly what we're achieving with the Converged System Advisor-- >> When you call support, what don't you want to hear? What's your model number, what's your serial number, what's your contract ID? Wouldn't it be great if everybody's singing off the same sheet of music? >> Well, you bring a great point there. There was so much discussion, well, converged infrastructure a public lot, those are gonna be really simple, and they're gonna be homogenous, and they're all gonna be great, but yeah, you're smiling and laughing because the reality is you're never gonna find two customers that have the same environment, no matter what you're talking about. >> No. >> So I need the tooling, I need the data and the analytics, to help get through that. I shouldn't have to spend half an hour on level one support. >> And that's all-- >> I shouldn't have to go through multiple forms the same time. >> Yes, and you're right Stu, that's always been, that's always been the mantra for FlexPod since the word dot. We don't get to an 11 billion dollar install base unless you're doing something right, and the word, the reason the word flex is in there, it's a dichotomy, whenever you go into these sorts of discussions, do you make it really fixed, right? Which is almost like, I call it like straight jacket, right. But you know what you get, right? Or do you make it flexible, right? And the flexibility really addresses the business need as opposed to the technology need. So the product guys love it when it's fixed, the customers love it when it's flexible. >> Yeah, you're talking about basically, changes... You want changes to be rolling with the... Technology rolling with the changes. >> Yes. >> Not be stuck in the straight jacket, or we'll also say tailor-made suit, but things change, you wanna... Fashion changes, so this is a real big issue, and talk about support, I think the ideal outcome is not to even call support, with analytics and push notifications and AI, you can almost see what DevNet's doing here, around how developer are getting involved with DevOps and network DevOps. Coders can come in and use the analytics, if tightly integrated in, so that you get the notifications, or they know exactly your environment. Is that, how far along are you guys on that path, because analytics play a big role, you've got the command center there, the Converged Systems Advisor, implies advising, resolution, prescription, what's the vision? >> So Immersive was a Cisco solution partner at the very beginning, so we were a part of this group right behind us, and it was exciting to be a part of that, to attend Cisco Live and be a part of DevNet, and we expanded upon, as you mentioned, the API, integrations of all these platforms, and when cluster data ONTAP came out for NetApp, we did the exact same thing, right? So we get integrated with NetApp, and very easily able to bring all that data in. Now, massaging that data is the hard part, right? Understanding what is noise and what is the real goodness, so you have to find those best practices, look at the hard work that our teams have done around validated designs between Cisco and NetApp, and look at the best practices that come from those particular pieces of hardware. And then once that intelligence is built, correlating that in the cloud service is really where the magic happens. So our teams are back there talking with the network experts the storage experts, the compute networks, the virtualization experts, and so when we have that data, and now you can decision-eer, right? You can start advising your resellers. So we bring up the rules dashboard, and then we do have alerting that we can send to ticketing systems to the remedies, the ServiceNows-- >> It's interesting, I'd love to get the product perspective on this, and across the bigger picture, because the trend we're seeing, certainly on theCUBE, over the past few years, and most recently this year, is the move from device, hardware, to system. So the systems approach really becomes more of a holistic view where, you're looking at the holistic view of multiple things happening. >> Yes. >> It's not just, this is the box, here's where the rack is, command line interface, you guys taking that same approach, can you just add some color on NetApp's vision on looking at holistically, 'cause that's really where software shines. >> No, no, and that's absolutely, so we have a way of seeing FlexPod as a, we call it a converged system, and for that exact reason. So what CSA is able to do is look at anything that happens within that converged system and the context of the overall system, and that really is the key, right? When you understand things in context it means so much more. Just think about when you listen to someone talk, a word taken out of context means nothing, right? So when we listen to that infrastructure, what it tells us is understood in context. And what it will ultimately do, and I think you were kind of hinting at this, John, the vision here is that there will be self-healing infrastructures, self-healing converged systems, just like the cloud, right? So we are continuously monitoring the configuration, the availability, and other aspects of your converged system and we are able to take action to make sure it stays on the rails. >> We saw you guys at the RSA event, you guys had a small little party we went to, and we were riffing, having fun with some of the NetApp folks, and the big trend in cloud is server-less. So the joke was, is this storage-less solution coming? To your point about this, if you think about it, it's just storage somewhere. This is kind of a joke, but it's also kind of nuanced. This is elastic-- >> No, no! It's absolutely true, if you look at NetApp's strategy, if you look at our cloud strategy, we're the first third-party branded services part of the AGI core services, we're not in the marketplace, we're actually part of AGI core. It's NetApp cloud volumes for AGI, and a customer doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes but let's be clear, we're talking about software-defined storage here, right? >> And cloud-ified, too, as well, talk about cloud operations. >> Yeah, still at the end of the day, for us, our intellectual property is not really tied to hardware, we obviously use that as a way to get our intellectual property in the hands of our customers. But we're not tied to a-- >> You guys made a good bet on cloud, I remember talking before Kurian took over, you guys were kicking the tires on Amazon years ago. >> Yes, yes, yes, that's right. >> So it's not like a Johnny-come-lately to the cloud, you guys have been deep in the core. >> Absolutely. >> To end this segment, I wanted to get your thoughts, because you guys are here at Cisco Live, what should the audience understand that couldn't make it out here as the top story at Cisco Live, and what is your role with Cisco here, what's the big story, top line, high-order bit, NetApp, Cisco story. >> So I'll go first, and I'll let my friend here go second. We were really excited coming into Cisco Live, right. We had this pretty big announcement last week, there were a few different aspects to it, but I'll talk about two of them. A new focus between Cisco and NetApp on verticals around FlexPod, and what that really means is that we're focused on very specific verticals, including healthcare, but there'll be others that come down the line. We announced a new solution base on Epic PHR. We announced some lead customers, including the Mercy Technology Services, which is part of the Mercy Hospital group. So that was super exciting, I think what it does is it just demonstrates that our focus is on the outcomes, as opposed to the actual infrastructure, the infrastructure is the way to deliver that. So we're very excited about that at Cisco. The second thing that we announced was, I said, mentioned this Managed Private Cloud, we actually announced it with four of our major joint partners, Dimension Data, ProAct, Microland, and oh my Lord, ePlus, yes of course. That was super exciting as well, and what it does is it captures the imagination, and it's always very fun when you're standing at a booth, and people say, "Oh, I've known FlexPod, "I've seen you guys around." But there's always something new to talk about. >> The relevance is more than ever. >> Absolutely. >> Keith, what wave is NetApp riding right now, if you look at the Cisco action going on, what they're going through, what should people know about the big wave that you guys are taking advantage of right now? >> I think the big wave is absolutely gotta be what we're doing with the hyperscalers. We by far have taken the industry by storm, when you think about what we've done with Microsoft, what we're doing with Google, you know, sorry? >> And Amazon. >> And Amazon, thank you. >> Small companies. >> Yeah, just small hyperscalers, right? It's amazing what we can do with cloud ONTAP, across those vendors, and when we look at what our customers have done with FlexPod, and their relationship with Cisco and NetApp, and our ability to work together to help customers get their data from their core data centers to cloud, back, to their customers, and for us to be able to use analytics the way we do on FlexPod, I think there's a real opportunity-- >> And riding the scale wave too, scaling is huge. Everyone's talking about large-scale, talking about hyperscale as that is the largest scale you can see. >> Well, and our ability to control where the data lives, right? Because you want to be able to hold control of your data, and being able to use familiar tools like what you're already using in your own data center and in your own converged infrastructures, being able to use that ONTAP operating system to be able to control that experience is gonna be very important. >> Guys, thanks for coming in for the NetApp update, great news, great alignment with Cisco. It's a large-scale world, and certainly, the world is changing, storage is gonna be a critical part of it, server, storage, infrastructure, cloud operations on-premise, and in the cloud. TheCUBE, bringing you live coverage. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, stay with us for more day three of three days of coverage here in Orlando, Florida, for Cisco Live, we'll be right back. (electronic music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partnership. (upbeat music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back live here in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Cisco Live. Gonna go throughout the events, extract them. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Stu Miniman. Three days of live coverage, our next guest is Sachin Gupta, Senior Vice President and Product Management, Cisco, 20 plus year career, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> So we love the product execs, because you've got visibility into the customers but also into the engineering roadmap, which now, as Chuck the CEO laid out, is in a new modern era. >> Exactly. >> So you guys are busy (laughs), right? >> Yeah. >> What does that mean? I mean, what do you guys think about, what do you talk about in the product teams, to go modern with cloud, obviously a lot going on. You got cyber-ops go-- really heavily on with the routers right now, and all the core products. You gotta maintain that. >> Right. >> But yet build out a future path. >> Yeah. >> What are you guys working on? What's the core story? >> I mean this has been pretty significant, I mean we had to reinvent the entire network. And, the motivation behind this is, for many many years, our customers could go in, manually operate these networks, go box by box, they're putting command line in, they're deciding the configuration of each element, setting it up this way, and they provide connectivity, some basic security, some experience this way. And what's happening now is, it's just a sheer volume and scale of things that they're having to deal with. I mean everybody comes in with four mobile devices, there's all these things that are connecting. We talk about 26 billion things connected to the network in 2020. It's mind boggling. And then at the same time, the applications are moving to the cloud, which means your threats surface has expanded. We needed to do things fundamentally differently. And so we reinvented the entire stack, and we're serious about that. The ASICS, the platforms, that they're built on, the operating system, modular, programmable, API driven, the controller system on top. Everything had to be redone from scratch. >> One of the exciting things in following Cisco over the years, Stu and I have been following you guys from really the beginning, you go back, say 15 years ago. The big debate in Cisco is, should we move up the stack, and how should we move the stack? But now, the time, it's almost a perfect path, 'cause you got software defined data center, completely going full throttle, really relevant, lot of stuff going on at the root level of the networks, so networking's not going away anytime soon, and as the things I mentioned, security's obviously a big concern, and then now you got Kubernetes and Diane Greene from Google Cloud saying, "Hey this Kubernetes and containers and service meshes, feels a lot like some of the kind of coolness of networking." So the network engineers now have a kind of a path, if you will, to take their core competence, and drive more value around that. Talk about what that actually means. >> Yeah, so there's a couple of things, interesting things that you mentioned. First of all the data center moving to a software defined path. So we've applied a lot of learning from that. And so we've taken the fabric approach, the automation approach, and brought that to the campus with DNA Center, right. Basically Software-Defined Access and DNA Center. And DNA Center actually is built on a Kubernetes model, so in a cloud type of platform, to allow it to scale out with service offers. So we've actually taken both examples applied it. What does it mean from a network engineer point of view? Instead of repeating mundane tasks again and again, now they can automate network wide. The entire network operates as a single system. I can define a policy, and say "I need this user group, I need these doctors, to have access to these medical records. I want this telepresence application to get high priority." Specify intent, let that system automatically apply that everywhere. And then take data and analytics out of that infrastructure, to ensure that the intent was delivered as expected. It's a very powerful-- They can sort of instead of be boxed by box network engineers, now they're system wide looking at the entire network as a whole system. >> Yeah, Sachin, wondering if you can give us a little bit of insight here. You talked about customers not being box by box. Well, from the product side, you know, you spent a lot of your career helping define the catalyst boxes, and we watched the generations of catalyst switches over the years. Cisco transforming from being measured in boxes and ports, to being a software company. How do you, on the inside, measure that transformation? You talked about things like, the DNA Center and the like, but, what's that been like on the inside, and how do you measure internally that balance between software and kind of the hardware world? >> We measure it through customer success through that software. So how many customers were actually able to get a DNA Center - it's an appliance that has software embedded in it - and get value through the network. And I think one thing I'll tell you is, we found that while, reinvention of the network sounds scary, or "Hey, how do I even start reinventing my entire network, as a customer how do I start?" That you can take DNA Center, take the network that you have, and start sending data from DNA Center, as from your network, sorry, from your access points, from your switches, your routers, your identity product. Send it to DNA Center, and start getting immediate value. Immediate value. So what was the experience for this user at this time, how do I pinpoint where the issue is and go fix it? And so we find that, for these customers, yes the switches, the, all the new products we brought out are important because they're programmable, they have rich capabilities, rich data streaming. But, at the same time a lot of the products they have through a software model they can now get network wide assurance. They can troubleshoot, get automated remediation steps that Cisco recommends. And now the new announcement, if we go there is, how do we expose all of this through an API layer? >> Yeah, it's interesting, 'cause if you think back 10, 15 years ago, doing a network upgrade, oh my God, that was a scary thing for customers. You're thinking forklift, am I doing some major build out, I start up my core, I build out to the edge, it's generation shifting. What we hear from the DevNet team here is you gotta meet them where they are, add value, and then you can make change along the way, almost like we do with applications, slowly pulling things apart. >> Absolutely right, and one of the immediate values is assurance, analytics for assurance. Helping you troubleshoot better. But other piece of value that customers love and that we get great feedback, is you know, racking and stacking a switch sometimes, like in a branch site, they would pay more to get it stacked than the switch itself. Because imagine you know you've got a remote side, you don't have a highly trained person flying somebody out, getting them, installing it, spending a few days there, costs a lot of money. And now we're seeing we can automate onboarding your product, we can automate software upgrades for those products, using DNA Center with intent-based networking. So you start there. Then you start transforming it for policy based automation, some of the more advanced security capabilities that the system provides. >> Yeah, we hear day zero a lot, when some of those use cases, and then you see the shift happening with software as a holistic view. Wanna explore that with you for a second. Because if you think about the system, which I totally agree with by the way, it's awesome. Then you got the DNA Center. A lot of people like, understand it, and people are now moving to that, now trying to understand it. Share the mental model, on how people should think architecturally around DNA Center. Is it an abstraction layer, is it just a set of API's? What are you enabling with the API's? What's actually gonna be the result from that architecture? So, how should I think about it, architecturally, and then what are some of the enabling things that could come as a result? >> Let me explain this a little bit, maybe with two examples, right? On, an example of how it works, an example of where we think we can take this. So how it works is, before the API's on the switch would mean that, you can say, "Hey, how much memory do you have left," you know, "Let me copy an image to you," "Let me reboot the switch to upgrade it," "Let me check if it works." And that's the level you were operating at. When we say DNA Center is a platform and has API's, now you have an intent that you could express which says, "Take all the switches of this type, on this site, and upgrade all of them." Right, and now you have to go through all those steps behind the scenes and that's the abstraction that it provides. So those are intent-based API's. So what's exciting first of all is, look, with that, I can extend, integrate it with IT services, I can integrate it with ServiceNow for example, IP address management schemes, cross network domains. I can support third party, I could do all those things. What's exciting for me is, I'm gonna pull out my device, right? You think about it, this thing has a phone, it has a camera, accelerometer, all sorts of things. But the way it's exposed through the app developer, is through very simple API's and through an app store. We are-- >> So you're essentially enabling. >> We're unleashing innovation on that network. By taking away the need to understanding the depths of networking for the developer that sits on top. >> So it's really on top, a holistic view. So, you're taking away steps it takes to get something done. >> Right. >> And integrating other things. Is that-- on the app side. >> Yeah, from the app side now, I mean, you look at DevNet, and the capabilities that DevNet brings to the table, and now, of the app developer, our systems integrator can invoke powerful network technology without understanding the depths of networking. 'Cause what they're looking for is, you know what I'll give you an example, I'll talk about doctors and medical records. If you need to onboard a group of contractors to help out for six months and have secure access, you can now define that in an application layer, at an identity layer, and automate that completely through DNA Center, without understanding exactly what the network will need to do, in a highly sophisticated way, across all those boxes to make it happen. >> So is DNA Center a net new capability for your customers? >> It is. DNA Center's been around since last August. So less than a year. It is a new controller built for the enterprise. And so yes, many many customers are using it. But for a lot of customers, it's a net new powerful piece of technology. >> I gotta ask you a personal question. You've been in Cisco for a long time, you've seen waves come, and new waves emerging. Why has DevNet been so successful? And you got DevNet Create with the cloud native side kinda coming together, bringing those two worlds together. I mean timing's everything, right? In life, right? So is it timing, is it just-- What is the, I mean the success is pretty significant. 500 thousand developers, you know you guys have. And that's a great developer program. That's robust. >> Yeah. >> So it's on its way to continuing to rise. Why is it so successful? >> I'll give you my honest example. I think you know, networking, people have thought, is sort of big, you know, big boxes, is sort of what networking is. And we always tell people, that even when you think about switches, the majority of our engineering investment is in software. So my network engineers, yes they're plugging in a switch, but the majority of their life is operating the software on that infrastructure. And so by the very nature of networking and network engineers, they're actually very comfortable with software. They're very comfortable with scripting and those kinds of capabilities. Now you enter DevNet. DevNet says, "I am now going to give you a easy way, sandbox way, learning and enablement, for you to learn the API's not just on the network, on the collapse systems, on the security systems, in the data center, and be much more powerful at how quickly you can move. You're much more agile." So I think it was a pretty natural evolution for the network engineer. Now, the last piece of the puzzle was the network. And now with DNA Center, we provide the same sort of API abstraction for the network itself. And I mean, look, so far, network engineers are loving it. I was talking to Paul, who's at Presidio, who's a network engineer. He's actually one of the DevNet Creator award winners. And, loves it. He's a network practitioner, and now can solve problems for his business as a partner and his customers, could never do before. >> Great point. I mean we interviewed Paul, great guy. But you just said something I think is really interesting. The people in the community, the network engineers, they've been solving problems. That's what they do. >> That's what they do! And with software! >> And so now you add scripting to your point, this is not new things, it's not foreign, but the networks are core. >> Yes. >> They're not learning Python to get a career change. They're extending their capability. >> That's exactly right. They're not doing Python just to do Python. They're using Python, they're using the API's, they're using the DNA Center platform to become more powerful as a network engineer. For networking, to solve business problems. >> Yeah, I think the timing, combined with just where cloud is, where you guys are with the programmability, it really is, right, again, timing's everything. >> It's exciting. I think-- >> So, one of the things we've been looking at with Cisco is, Cisco's moving up the stack. And I think, we want you to help connect the dots for us. Intent-based networking really is one of the ways that networking people are building applications. I think in the key note, they walked through some specific examples. What kind of things are people building with intent-based networks that they couldn't do before? >> I think, you know, so some of the app examples that sit on top, right? So, I'll give you simple examples, and some other interesting things. Accenture, for example, is doing automated software updates, much more intelligent software updates, based on you know business information, like who, how many people will get impacted with the update, tying it to the service process with ServiceNow. That's an Accenture use case. World Wide Tech has taken DNA Center, made it mobile. So instead of consuming it on your laptop like this, you can now consume network status, client status, health, on your mobile device. You've got, Dimension Data, that's actually doing SSID leasing. So in your sites as a customer, if you need to create temporary network connectivity, for certain types of users, you can deliver that automatically. Right, so you've got examples of all kinds that are leveraging the power of the network, without actually have to understand all the nitty gritty details behind it. And as a developer or a systems integrator, providing tremendous more value to our customers. >> It's interesting too, one of things that World Wide Technology said here when we interviewed them on the first day yesterday, was, in the old model, there was dislocated capabilities. They'd go talk about business outcomes, essentially what the intent was on the business side, and then, "Great we're done. Now let's shake hands with Cisco." Cisco would come in, and the networking guys would come in, "Okay, here's what you can do." So now, those are coming together. >> Yes. >> Which shrinks the accela--, the time frame, on the execution. So, to actually put it together, that is really kind of DevOps-like. I mean, this is integration, this is kind of like-- >> Right. >> This is a big trend. >> It's a big trend, because now the network has an ability through DNA Center, to take that business outcome, you described it as an intent, translate that into what the network understands, activate it, and then provide the data analytics and assurance, back to the application. And so, you're absolutely right. Before, you'd have to go manually, take that business outcome, and figure out now, how do I, you know, make this happen, through a network that did not operate as a single system. >> Yeah. >> And now the worlds are coming together, and our partners and our customers can move much much more quickly. >> Well you guys are doing a great job, we really think that the clear path to the stack, where the stack is integrating with networking, is colliding - in a good way - you've still got the hard core, software defined, networking in the data center and the networks. So it's awesome. I wanna get your thoughts on, as an industry participant, also Cisco executive, for the folks that couldn't make Cisco live this year, what's the biggest story? I mean we heard a lot of things. If you had to boil it down, what's the most important development happening this year at Cisco live? >> I think the big announcement is DNA Center platform. Where, it is an open API system which supports third party infrastructure, and has that API layer, accelerating innovation through our partners. But what I will tell you, is, that the important message I'd like to deliver, is they can start on this network reinvention today. It is not about a rip and replace of the gear that they have. They can add the software capabilities of DNA Center on the infrastructure they have. And get immediate out the gate benefit, with things like network assurance, DNA assurance. And so I really encourage everybody to look at this and say, "Yes, you know what? Maybe I'll get to the last step later." Start now. You're gonna see immediate value. >> And there's not a lot of-- there's really no disruption. >> And there's no disruption in that. >> They can put their toe in the water, or jump all-- full throttle. >> Exactly. And once you like the controller approach, you can see how it integrates with API's, with everything else in your IT processes, you can then take more steps, like software defined access, policy based automation. Which are more intrusive, and but provide tremendous value. But there's a way to start that's not intrusive. >> Well we're super excited to see how DNA Center continues to accelerate, we love what's going on in DevNet, DevNet Create, you're seeing the cloud growth happen, you're seeing all kinds of new modern era things that we've never seen before. So congratulations. >> DNA Center platform, multiplied by DevNet, right? It's exponential growth. >> Yeah, so it's a great wave. People's jobs will become easier, again, automation for the right reasons, accelerating new value creation opportunities. This is theCUBE. Here in Orlando. Bringing you all the action at Cisco Live. Extracting the signal of noise. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman. Stay with us, we've got more. Here on day two of three days of coverage. Stay with us. (music)