(lively music) >> Narrator: Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to San Diego everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante I'm here with my co-host, Stu Miniman, day one of of our wall-to-wall coverage, three days of Cisco Live. We're here at the DevNet Zone, a lot of action going around us, CCIE's learning how to become programmers too. Gordon Thompson is here. He's the vice president of world wide sales, for Enterprise Networking good to see you again Gordon. Michael Beesley, he's the CTO for Cisco service provider business. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you for having us. >> So Gordon, we were in Barcelona in February, we talked a lot about some of the big trends here. We're going to focus today on 5G and Wi-Fi six since Barcelona you've been probably talking to a lot of customers what are you hearing from them, what are the big trends in the marketplace? >> Well I think it's interesting right? 'cause the first thing we talk about is well this massive bandwidth improvement and everyone says oh so what? I mean that's not interesting you know? But bandwidth doesn't change the game totally but I take everyone back to 4G right? When we moved from 3G to 4G and when we moved from 3G to 4G there was a social transformation around bandwidth and that was the mobile device right? The mobile device came along where we could do everything on that mobile device and that was a real social transformation the interesting thing was that Wi-Fi wasn't really linked to that social transformation you know I would go and speak to customers back in the day who would say bring your own device? Naw over my dead body we're never bringing you know bring your own device into the environment and what happened over time was organizations gradually recognized the importance of bring your own device and 4G and therefore high speed Wi-Fi what we see this time around is 5G comes along with this massive bandwidth improvement but at the same time organizations are realizing the importance of Wi-Fi 6 similar speeds and actually what I think we're going to see this time round is the business transformation leading the social transformation. The last time it was the public driving the change into the enterprise this time I think we're going to see the enterprise drive the change much faster than we thought. >> That's interesting 'cause obviously the killer app there that coincided with the social change with Facebook and Twitter and really a reemergence of LinkedIn you know as a key tool for business people but it was really the Twitter's and Facebook's that sort of drove that so what's the killer app this time around? (chuckles) >> Well do you know I think it's difficult to say here's the killer app just now 'cause when 4G came out we didn't know what the killer app was so I think it's hard for me to say here's the killer app but what I would say is you know you start to see things like virtual reality, augmented reality becoming a reality and business are all starting to now think about how can we use these technologies to get closer to our customers, to improve the productivity of our employees and how we can reduce cost and these sort of things ultimately businesses'll be very innovative around this and there'll be multiple different killer apps come along, for us to put our hands on our hearts today and say this is the killer app you know I think that's daft. >> You'd be starting a company if you knew. >> Yeah I would. (laughs) >> So Michael share with us what we need to know about 5G other than okay it's faster but from an architect standpoint what do we need to know? What's different and how's that going to affect the adoption? >> Yeah it's interesting obviously there's the speed gains but along with that there's the densification of the RAN that goes with 5G and for some customers for some service providers the opportunity to virtualize that RAN and to replace traditional integrated base band units with virtualized infrastructure on which you can run the infrastructural workloads that are needed in the Radio Access Network to be able to run that on compute rather than wall gardened integrated systems which opens up the opportunity to just distribute computing storage throughout that network infrastructure which obviously is used for infrastructure used for the RAN and used for the distribution of the mobile core in particular as we all embrace and certainly Cisco's embracing from an architecture point of view the separation of the control plane and the user plane for that mobile packet core. But once you have that infrastructure once you have that distributed compute that is much, much closer to the end user both consumer but more importantly the enterprise and user than it's ever been before, that opens up all kinds of opportunities for subsequent workloads to land on that infrastructure obviously caching is the most obvious one as we all consume more and more videos certainly we look at the analyst expectations for video and video growth by 2022 we expect about 81-82% of all traffic on the network to actually be video traffic so being able to put video caches at the edge is very important both from a quality of experience point of view and a pure cost point of view and then you've got the opportunity for the placement of all kinds of third party applications onto that edge compute infrastructure without 5G that edge compute infrastructure probably doesn't come about which marries up with the trends that we see in enterprise which is the continuing expansion into The Cloud continued growth of SAS services as well as their own private data centers and private Cloud which opens up that edge infrastructure to all of those application vendors that are serving enterprise to be able to position workloads at the edge of that network that can take advantage of the low latency and the enhanced bandwidth at those locations in the network. >> So Stu pivoting off of what Gordon said mobile plus 4G and then the social transformation it sounds like it's in this case it's edge 5G and a business transformation. >> Yeah well and Dave actually the word that I kept hearing jump out at me when Michael was going through that is enterprise because when I think about the 4G rollout was Cisco involved? Sure. Was Cisco like the first one you think of, of mobile, social and everything like that? Well you know there's a place that Cisco played but enterprise, enterprise, enterprise well Cisco's got a very strong position in that environment so is that how we should be thinking of it? And the other thing is what Gordon talked about that inside out that 5G plus Wi-Fi 6 that pieces together seems like a perfect place for Cisco to add its you know place in the market. >> Well certainly we're very excited about the opportunities with regards to the enterprise space in general and how we can enable, we can partner with our service provider customers to better serve and to better integrate with that enterprise environment, bringing together these two very powerful and innovative technologies, bringing together Wi-Fi 6 and 5G and certainly we're not the only ones that would observe that there was a study recently a few months ago, a study done of the CEO's of mobile network operators and according to that study 69% of those operators felt that their main monetization and their main way to drive revenue and profit off of 5G was actually orientated towards the enterprise. >> Yeah and look I'm very excited about number one so obviously we're known for being a Wi-Fi 6 player but we're also working very closely with the 5G players in the marketplace to make sure there's seamless handoff between 5G and Wi-Fi 6 you know? So the minute you check into the hotel when you come to San Diego what's the first thing you do? You put in your name and your room number. Those days are gone right? There's a seamless handover now from the 5G network to the Wi-Fi network to say this is exactly who you are, we know who you are and we'll onboard you seamlessly see? And we're working very closely with all of the handset providers to make sure that we integrate neatly there as well. So as we said at the start I think you know it will start this time round with the enterprise transformation it will lead the way the last time round the enterprises were dragged kicking and screaming into this world they're not getting dragged kicking and screaming into this world this time they're ready. >> Where does automation fit in this whole equation? What are your customers telling you? >> Well certainly it's a key area of focus and it's a key area of innovation for us I mean I would say that when we talk about a 5G network we do have a tendency to over abstract that that is a complicated set of technologies of which Cisco is the market leader in many obviously we don't do the macrocell radio's that is not part of our portfolio but we do all of the STN transport both in terms of equipment optical modules the optics themselves we do all of that, we're leading the industry with regards to the mobile packet core all of our routing assets and the full automation suite that you need to be able to deploy and manage a network that is an order of magnitude more dense than we've ever seen before, a network that has more equipment deployed further out than we've ever had before all in an environment where obviously our SP's, the service providers the global kind of comment they must find ways to make more money and to save money and the automation suite that we bring forward facilitates being able to manage and operate these very very large networks in a very cost effective way to the point that the operational costs and the total cost of ownership is significantly reduced but that automation also brings the agility to that network to the point that the service providers mobile network can more quickly address and more quickly activate services that those enterprise customers in particular, need. I mean an enterprise would not want to wait six months for a service activation more likely they want it activated in six minutes and you know the key to that is having a full suite of closed loop automation tools that enable that service creation. >> All right guys sorry we've got to leave it there we're in the speed zone at the DevNet Zone and the planes are backing up so thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE we appreciate it all right keep it right there everybody we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break you're watching theCUBE live from Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego be right back. (electronic jingle)

(music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCube. Covering Cisco Live Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and it's eco system partners. >> Welcome back everyone. Live here in Barcelona. It's theCubes coverage day two of three days of coverage. I'm John Furrier With Stu Miniman and Dave Vellante. Dave in this segment. Our next guest is Gordon Thompson, Vice President, Global Enterprise Network from Cisco Worldwide. Run a lot of countries here in Cisco. Knows the territory. Knows the lay of the land in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia. Now global. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you very much. Glad to be with you. >> You're on stage in the keynote. You say we're here in Barcelona. Lot of action in Europe. Europe's different than North America, but you start to see them leading the trends on how to handle these complex environments like highly regulated compliance. GDPR, we've been hearing about that. Security, cyber security. So a lot of trends in Europe are actually leading in some areas. That's impacting the network. Your thoughts on this show so far. How's it going? >> Yeah. I think, there's a fundamental phenomenal opportunity for our customer base and for Cisco at the moment in terms of where technology is going. It's mostly being driven by software innovation in the business. For many, many years we built world class hardware and a software operating system that did one thing. It provided connectivity. But it did one thing. Reliable, secure, performance based connectivity but it did one thing. The opportunity now, going back to your question is we're developing software that doesn't do one thing. It's software that does multiple different things. On top of that hardware that therefore helps solve some of the challenges around compliance and all of these sorts of things, but at the same time start to provide much deeper insight and analytics into what's going on in your environment and that then starts to let you say, hey, there's information here in the network that I've never been exposed to before, that I'm now exposed to and I can start to do something meaningful with that data. That's the opportunity, I think, for our customers is how they monetize that. How they use that information. Providing that information on a real time basis is going to be the critical thing. We see lots, it's a very competitive environment Amir, we see lots of business in Amir looking to see how they can use technology to drive differentiation for them in the market and they're beginning to realize that data is the key to being able to do that and they're now seeing how much data they've got on their network that if they can get exposure to they can start to use in a meaningful way. Really exciting. It's very innovative here. We're seeing customers starting to realize how important the network is. >> In your keynote, you made a bunch of people uncomfortable saying you have to change. >> Yeah. >> And then admitted I don't like it when people tell me I have to change, but you need to change. What do they have to change? >> They have to think about truly how they're architecting and designing their networks. As I said earlier, on Ciscos an organization's been phenomenally successful but we've really done one thing in 30 years, provide reliable, secure, connectivity. And over the last four years our innovation strategy has changed to say we're not just going to deliver connectivity, we're going to look at how we can deliver automation on top of the network. We're going to look at how we deliver security embedded in the network. We're going to look at how we take real time analytical insights off of the network. When you think differently about how you use a network you'll then start to think differently about the value the network can bring. I was making that comment 'cause I was wanting customers to think about the network no longer just being something that's going to deliver connectivity. It's something that will absolutely drive business transformation for them if they approach it with that thought process in mind. It was really a challenge to get people to think slightly differently. >> Yeah. Wake up a little bit and say, okay, what's going on here? And I want to get your thoughts on the trend because the tail winds, I think that Cisco's feeling right now is, in every major inflection point there's always complexity and abstraction layers of software always take away the complexities. Software check, big time trend. But cloud scale and horizontal scale now with the Enterprise, HyperFlex out to the edge, ACI Anywhere, so you start to see Cisco as one large scalable network with complexities that's being managed by software across domains. This seems to be a beautiful formula for what customers want which is secure networks. Do you see it that way? Is that a major wave you're riding? Is that what customers are saying? Because I think you're getting at something that's important which is I'm moving packets around, moving data around but I got to put my solution out in front of customers. The applications. How they access and engage. These are big picture items, but what's your thoughts on this? >> Okay. It's interesting, right. 'cause what we've created is, so we've created this software overlay network in various different areas. We've created a fabric. In the data center we've created an ACI fabric. In the Branch and the Campus we've created what we call software defined access fabric. And in the ONE we've created this software defined ONE fabric with our WHIPTAIL acquisition. Also with Meraki. The interesting thing is people have created these software fabrics to drive southbound automation onto the network to save money. To move more quickly. What we are saying to our customers is actually the value isn't just about driving southbound automation onto each of these fabrics, it's about how you take information from each of these fabrics, connect that information together holistically and then start to provide more value around behavioral analytics. To secure your environment more. Et cetera, et cetera. You're going to see individual fabrics, but then what Dave Goeckeler was talking about was how he connects these fabrics or domains together. Connecting them together is going to help us secure the environment even more effectively. It's also going to help us analyze what's going on more effectively as well. This is really the sweet spot, I think, for us to work more closely with our customers. >> Talk about security because I think this is a great point. I think if you guys can, well you have the fabrics now, product portfolio has broadened. It's filled in, but security still is hot. It's still number one. You guys are embedding that foundational into the network and lifting the data up to create insight. What are some of the actionable things that you're seeing enabled from, one the fabrics coming together and talk about the dynamic of security specifically because if you don't fix the security paradigm at the network level, it's a house of cards. Everything crashes. That's my opinion. Your thoughts. Do you agree with that? >> I hope that nothing crashes at entity, but the key thing, I think is, we like to say we put security in the network, whereas we looked at all of the other networking vendors applying security on top of the network. >> What's the difference? Explain the difference. >> In our own, one word each with two letters in them but a massive difference in terms of what they do. Ultimately the network can provide us with loads of contextual information around what's happening in the environment. It's about how you use that information in a real time basis to help make better security decisions. It's really taking the value of networking devices and passing that information from a network switch or a wireless controller to a security policy control capability is really where we start to see value come together. And it sees things that are important to us. For example, I met with a sales leader recently in a very large pharmaceutical company in Europe, and their problem was their salespeople were handing in their resignation but they were doing it the day after they'd taken all the intellectual property out of the company. They had gone and taken all of the customer data base. They'd put it on a stick. They put it in their pocket. And they went away. It happens every day. The challenge is the network should be able to see a behavioral change. If that was you or me we normally perform the same activities on the network every day. We don't really change what we do, but the minute we start to go to old servers to download information that we haven't downloaded in years, you know, that's a behavioral change. And the network should be able to identify that, pass that information to the network administrator and deal with it so we can stop that sort of data leakage from our organization. These are the sorts of things that I think are exciting. >> And Cisco's unique because of the scope of your portfolio or the technology? >> Well, a bit of both. Cisco's unique because of the scope of the technology, but it's also about the amount of information we take off the network. You know, people talked about in this software overlay world the network becoming, hardware becoming commoditized. Oh, Cisco, your hardwire is going to be commoditized. We'll move to white box. The reality is it's the power of our hardware, our ASIC Design that allows us to pull all of this information off the network. People are beginning to realize how important data is now. And now they're beginning to see actually hardware's really important. Although it's the software that does all the sexy stuff, hardware's really important. We're beginning to see customers recognize two things, the breadth of the portfolio, as we mentioned earlier on, but also the power of the hardware to allow the software to do everything it does. >> Gordon, I know you got to go. Thanks for coming on. One final question while you're here 'cause I know you have a unique perspective. Want to get it real quick. Quick soundbite here. Global is now a big part of everyone's plan. Global economy. You have good experience globally with Cisco and also here in Amir, how should companies think about global networking? What's your insight into how people should start thinking about global architectures, global clouds, global networks? Your thoughts. >> I think every organization is looking to build out these capabilities. There's absolutely no doubt they are, but I think the way to approach it nowadays with all of the software capabilities we have, is to build bit by bit, right? To build your networks in different islands and then look to how you join those islands together. I think, ultimately, that's how most organizations are looking to move forward. From our point of view, I think, we'll look to connect those islands or fabrics together with the power of data. Ultimately, I think, we've always said data is the new oil, but I think, truly in the networking industry now, data is the new oil and it's truly how organizations will differentiate themselves in the future. >> Gordon, thank you for spending the time on the Cube. I know you got to hard stop. Appreciate it. >> No problem. >> Thank you for your precious time. It's the Cube live coverage from Barcelona. I'm John Furrier with Dave Elante. More live coverage. Stay with us after this short break. (techno music)