>> Narrator: Live, from San Diego, California, it's The Cube, covering Cisco Live, US, 2019. Brought to you by Cisco, and it's Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to San Diego, everybody, you're watching The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Volante. I'm here with my co-host Stu Miniman, we're covering day two here of Cisco Live, 2019. Anand Oswal is here, he's the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Networking Engineering at Cisco, and John Apostolopoulos. The Italians and the Greeks, we have a lot in common. He is the VP and CTO of Enterprise Networking at Cisco. Gentlemen, welcome to The Cube. How did I do? >> You did awesome. >> Dave: Not too bad, right? Thank you. (chuckles) All right. Anand, let's start with you. You guys have had a bunch of news lately. You're really kind of re-thinking access to the network. >> Anand: Yeah. >> Can you explain what's behind that, to our audience? >> Yeah. If you think about it, the network is running more and more critical infrastructure. At the same time, it's increasing modern scale and complexity. What we expect, is that you always need wireless on. The workspace is on the move. You're working here, in your office, in the cafe, in the soccer field, everywhere. You want an uninterrupted, unplugged experience. For that, it's wireless first, it's cloud-driven, and it's data-optimized. So, we had to rethink how we do access. It's not just about your laptops and your phones on the wireless network, in the enterprise it's digital management systems. IOD devices, everything's connected wirelessly. And we need to rethink the access, on that part. >> So John, this obviously ties in to, you know, you hear all the buzz about 5G and WIFI 6. Can you explain the connection and, you know, what do we need to know about that? >> Okay, so 5G and WIFI 6 are two new wireless technologies, which are coming about now, and they're really awesome. So, WIFI 6 is the new version of WIFI. It's available today, and it's going to be available predominantely indoors. As we use WIFI indoors, in high-density environments, where we need a large database per square meter. And the new WIFI 6, the coverage indoors. 5G is going to be used predominately outdoors, in the cellular frequency. Replacing conventional 4G or LTE, and it'll provide you the broad coverage as you roam around, outdoors. And what happens though, is we need both. You need great coverage indoors, which WIFI 6 can provide, and you need great coverage outdoors, which 5G will provide. >> So, the 4G explosion kind of coincided with mobile-- >> Anand: Yep. >> Obviously, and that caused a huge social change-- >> Anand: Yep. >> And of course, social media took off. What should we expect with 5G, is it, you know, I know adoption is going to take a while, we'll talk about that, but it feels like it's more, sort of, B-to-B driven, but maybe not. Can you, sort of, give us your thoughts there. >> Well think about it, if you see WIFI 6 and 5G have actually been on some similar fundamental technology building blocks. You know, you've all been at a ball game. Or the Warriors game, like a few weeks ago, when they were winning. And, after a great play, you're trying to send that message, a video to your kid or something, and the WIFI is slow, latency. With WIFI 6, you won't have that problem. 'Cause WIFI 6 has four times the latency, sorry, four times the throughput and capacity as existing WIFI. Lower latency. And also, the battery life. You know, people say that batteries are the most important thing today, like in the Maslow Hierarchy Chart-- >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Three times the battery life, for WIFI 6 endpoints. So, you're going to see a lot of use cases where you have inter-working with WIFI 6 and 5G. WIFI 6 for indoors, and 5G for outdoor, and there'll be some small overlap, but the whole idea is that, how do you ensure that these two disparate access networks are talking to each other? Exchanging security, policy, and there is some visibility. >> Okay, so, well, first of all, you're a Warriors fan, right? >> Anand: Yeah, I am. >> Awesome, we want to see this series keep going. >> Game six, baby! >> That was really exciting. Now of course, I'm a Bruins fan, so we're on the plane the other night, and the JetBlue TV shut down, you know, so I immediately went to the mobile. >> Yeah. >> But it was a terrible experience, I was going crazy. Texting my friends, what's happening? >> Anand: Yeah. >> You're saying that won't happen-- >> Anand: Yeah. >> With 5G and WIFI 6? >> Anand: Yeah. Exactly. >> Oh, awesome. >> So, John, help connect for us, Enterprise Networking. We've been talking about the new re-architectures, you know, there's ACI, there's now intent-based networking, how does this play into the 5G and WIFI 6 discussion that we're having today? >> Okay, so one of the things that really matters to our customers, and to everybody, basically, is that they want the sort of end-to-end capability. They have some devices, they want to talk through applications, they want access to data, they want to talk with other people, or to IoT things. So you need this sort of end-to-end capability, wherever the ends are. So one of the things we've been working on for a number of years now, is first of all intent-based networking, which we announced two and a half years ago. And then, multi-domain, where we try to connect across the different domains. Okay, across campus, and WAN, and data center, all the way to the cloud, and across the service finder network. And to add security, as foundational across all of these. This is something that Dave Goeckeler and Chuck Robbins talked about at their keynote yesterday. And this is a huge area for us, 'cause we're going to make this single-orchestrated capability for our customers, to connect end-to-end, no matter where the end devices are. >> All right, so Anand, I have to believe that it's not the poor, you know, administrator, saying, oh my God, I have all these pieces and I need to manage them. (laughing) Is this where machine learning and AI come in to help me with all these disparate systems? >> Absolutely. Our goal is very simple. Any user, on any device, should have access to any application. Whether it's sitting in a data center, in a cloud, or multiple clouds. Or any network. You want that securely and seamlessly. You also want to make sure that the whole network is orchestrated, automated, and you have the right visibilities. Visibilities for ID, and visibility for business insights. Talk of AI and ML, what's happening is that as the network is growing in complexity and scale, the number of alerts are growing up the wazoo. So you are not able to figure it out. That's where the power of AI and machine learning comes. Think about it. In the industrial revolution, the industrial revolution made sure that you don't have the limitations of what humans can do, right? You had machines. And now, we want to make sure that businesses can benefit in the digital revolution. You're not limited by what I can pass through the logs and scrolls. I want to automate everything. And that's the power of AI and machine learning. >> Are there use cases where you would want some human augmentation, where you don't necessarily want the machine taking over for you, or do you see this as a fully-automated type of scenario? >> Yeah, so what happens is, first of all, visibility is really, really important. The operator of a network wants to have visibility, and they want end-to-end across all these domains. So the first thing we do is we apply a lot of machine learning, to take that immense amount of data, as Anand mentioned, and to translate it into pieces of information, to insights into what's happening. So then we can share to the user and they can have visibility in terms of what's happening and how well it's happening, are they anomalies, or is there a security threat, so forth. And then, we can provide them additional feedback. Hey, this is ananomaly, this could be a problem. This is the root cause of the problem, and we believe these are the solutions for it. What do you want to do? Do you want to actuate one of these solutions? And then they get to choose. >> And if you think about the other way, our goal is really to take the bits and bites of data in the network, convert that data into information. That information into insights. That insights that lead to outcomes. Now, you want to also make sure that you can augment the power of AI and machine learning on those insights, so you can drill down exactly what's happening. So, for example, you want to first baseline your network. What's normal for your environment? And when you have deviations. That's anomalies. Then you narrow down exactly what the problem is. And then you want to automate the remediation of that problem. That's the power of AI and ML. >> When you guys, as engineers, when you think about, you know, applying machine intelligence, there's a lot of innovation going on there. Do you home-grow that? Do you open source it? Do you, you know, borrow? Explain the philosophy there, in terms of from a development standpoint. >> Yeah. From a development point of view it's a combination of all the other aspects. We will not reinvent what already exists, but there's always a lot of secret sauce that you need to apply, because everything flows to the network, right? If everything flows to the network, Cisco has a lot of information. It's not just a data lake. We're a data source as well. So taking this disparate source of information, normalizing it, harmonizing it, creating a language, applying the algorithm of AI and machine learning. For example, we do the model learning and training in the cloud. We do inference in the cloud, and you push the rules down. So it's a combination of all of the aspects we talked about. >> Right, and you use whatever cloud tooling is available. >> Yes. >> But it sounds like from a Cisco engineering standpoint, it's how you apply the machine intelligence, for the benefit of your customers and those outcomes-- >> Anand: Yeah. >> Versus us thinking of Cisco as this new AI company, right? >> Anand: Yeah. >> That's not the latter, it's the former, is that fair? >> So one of the things that's really important is as you know, Cisco's been making, we've been designing our A6 for many years, with really, really rich telemetry. And as you know, data is key to doing good machine learning and stuff. So we've been designing the A6, to do do real time at wire speed telemetry. And also to do various sorts of algorithmic work on the A6 to figure out, hey, what is the real data you want to send up? And then we've optimized the OS, IOS XE, to be able to perform various algorithms there, and also to host containers where you can do more machine learning at the switch, at the router, even in the future, maybe, at the AP. And then with DNA center, we've been able to gather all of the data together, in a single data lake, where we can perform machine learner on top. >> That's a very important point John mentioned, because you want layer one to layer some of the analytics. And that's why the Catalyst 9120 access point we launched has the Cisco RF ASIC, that provides things like clean air for spectrum, we've also got the analytics from layer one level, all the way to layer seven. >> Yeah, I really like the line actually, from Chuck Robbins yesterday, he said, the network sees everything and Cisco wants to you know, give you that visibility. Can you walk us through some of the new pieces, what people, either things that, they might not have been aware of, or new announcements this week. >> So, as part of the Cisco AI network analytics, we announced three things. The first thing is automated baselining. What that really means is that, what's normal for your environment, right? Because what's normal for your own environment might not be the same for my environment. Once I understand what that normal baseline is, then, as I have deviations, I can do anomaly detection. I can correlate and aggregate issues. I can really bring down apply AI and machine learning and narrow down the issues that are most critical for you to look at right now. Once I narrow down the exact issue, I go on to the next thing, and that is what we call machine reasoning. And machine reasoning is all about automating the workflow of all you need to do to debug and fix a problem. You want the network to become smarter and smarter, the more you use it. And all of this is done through model learning and training in the cloud, inference in the cloud, and pushing it down, the rules as we have devices online, on plan. >> So do you see the day, if you think about the roadmap for machine intelligence, do you see the day where the machine will actually do the remediation of that workflow? >> Absolutely. That's where we need to get to. >> When you talk about the automated baselining, I mean there's obviously a security, you know, use case there. Maybe talk about that a little bit, and are there others? Really, it depends on your objective, right? If my objective is to drive more efficiency-- >> Yeah. >> Lower costs, I presume a baseline is where you start, right? So... >> When I say, baseline, what I mean really is like, say if I tell you that on this laptop, to connect to the WIFI network, it took you three seconds. And I ask you is that good or bad? You'll say, I don't know. (laughs) >> What's the baseline for the environment? >> Dave: Yeah. >> What's normal? And next time, if you take eight seconds, and your baseline is three, something is wrong. But, what is wrong? Is it a laptop issue? Is it a version on there, on your device? Is it an application issue? A network issue? An RF issue? I don't know. That's where AI machine learning will determine exactly what the problem is. And then you use machine reasoning to fix the problem. >> Sorry, this is probably a stupid question, but, how much data do you actually need, and how much time do you need, to actually do a good job in that type of use case? >> Well, what happens is you need the right data, okay? And you're not sure where the right data is. (chuckles) >> So originally what we'd do, a lot of our expertise, that Cisco has for 20 years, is figuring out what the right data is. And also, with a lot of the machine learning we've done, as well as machine reasoning, where we put together templates and so forth, we've basically gathered the right data, for the customer, and we refined that over time. So over time, like, this venue here, the way this venue's network, what it is, how it operates and so forth, varies with time, and we need to refine that over time, keep it up to date, and so forth. >> And when we talk about data, we're talking about tons of metadata here, right? I mean, do you ever see the day where there'd be more metadata than data? (laughs) >> Yeah-- >> Rhetorical question. (laughs) >> All right, so-- >> It's true though, it's true. >> Right? (laughing) >> We're here in the DevNet zone, lots of people learning about building infrastructures, code, tell us how the developer angle fits into what we've been discussing here. >> Oh, yes. So what happens is, as part of intent-based networking, a key part's the automation, right? And another key part's the assurance. Well, it's what DevNet's trying to do right now, by working with engineering, with us, and various partners, other customers, is they're putting together, what are the key use cases that people have, and what is code that can help them get that done? And what they're also doing, is they're trying to, they're looking through the code, they're improving it, they're trying to instill best practice and stuff, so it's a reasonably good code, that people can use and start building off of. So we think this can be very valuable for our customers to help move into this more advanced automation, and so forth. >> So, architecture matters, we sort of touched upon it, but I want you to talk more about multi domain architecture. We heard Chuck Robbins, you know, talk about it. What is it, why is it such a big deal, and how does it give Cisco a competitive advantage? >> Think about it, I mean, multi domain architecture's nothing but all the components of a modern enterprise network behind the scenes. From giving access to a user or device, to access to an application, and everything in between. Now traditionally, each of these domains, like an access domain, the WAN domain, can have hundreds of thousands of network nodes and devices. Each of these are configured, generally manually, the the CLI. Multi domain architecture's all about stitching these various domains into one cohesive, data-driven, automated, programmable network. So, your campus, your branch, your WAN, your data center and cloud, with security as an integral part of it, if at all. >> So, it's really a customer view of an architecture, isn't it. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Okay. It's good, I like that answer. I thought you were going to come out with a bunch of Cisco-- >> Anand: No. >> Mumbo-jumbo and secret sauce-- >> No. >> But it really is, you guys thinking about, okay, how would our customers need to architect their network? >> Exactly. Because if you think about it, it's all about a customer use case. For example, like, we talked earlier, today we are working everywhere. Like, on the poolside, in the cafe, in the office, and always on the go. You're accessing your business-critical applications, whether that's Webex, salesforce.com, O365. At the same time, you're reading Facebook, and WhatsApp, and YouTube, and other applications. Cisco's SD-WAN domain will talk to Cisco's ACI domain, exchange SLAs and policies, so now you can prioritize that application that you want, which is business-critical. And place the right part, for the best experience for you. Because you want the best experience for that app, no matter where you are. >> Well, and the security implications too, I mean-- >> Anand: Absolutely. >> You're basically busting down the security silos-- >> Yeah. >> Dave: And sort of the intent here, right? >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> Great. All right, last thoughts on the show, San Diego, last year we were Orlando, we were in Barcelona earlier this year, your thoughts about that. >> I think it's been great so far. If you think about it, in the last two years we've filled out the entire portfolio for the new access network. On the Catalyst 9100 access points, with WIFI 6, the switches, next generation campus core, the wireless LAN controller, eyes for unified policy, DNA center for automation, analytics, DNA spaces for business insights, the whole access network has been reinvented, and it's a great time. >> Nice, strong summary, but John, we'll give you the last word. >> What happens here is also, everything Anand says, and we have 5000 engineers who've been doing this over multiple years, and we have a lot more in the pipe. So you're going to see more in six months from now, more in nine months, and so forth. It's a very exciting time. >> Excellent. Guys, it's clear you, like you say, completing the portfolio, positioning for the next wave of access, so congratulations on all the hard work, I know a lot goes into it >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much for coming on The Cube. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, keep right there, Dave Volante with Stu Miniman, Lisa Martin is also in the house. We'll be back with The Cube, Cisco Live 2019, from San Diego. (fast electronic music)

>> Live from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem. Barker's >> Welcome back to San Diego. Everybody watching the Cube, the leader and live check coverage. My name is David Locke. I'm here with my co host student in recovering Day to hear Sisqo live. 2019 on. On On. On on. Oswald is here. Excuse me. Sees the senior vice president of enterprise networking Engineering at Cisco. And John A postal, a polis. Italians in the Greeks. We have a lot in common. He is the VP and CTO of Enterprise Network. And get Sisko. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. How'd I do? Do you know it? Also, that you're bad, right? Thank you. All right, Good. Deal it out. Let's start with you. You guys have had a bunch of news lately. Uh, you're really kind of rethinking access to the network. Can you explain what's behind that to our audience? >> Yeah, even think about it. The network is getting has running more and more critical. Infrastructure at the same time is increasing. Bottom scale and complexity. What? We expected that you'll only be obvious. Violence on workspace is on the move. Are you? You're working here in your office, in the cafe, The sock off everywhere you want. An uninterrupted unplugged experience for that is violence. First, it's cloud driven and is dead optimist. So we had to rethink our way to access. It's not just about your laptops and your fool on the wireless network. In the end of the digital management systems, Coyote devices, everything is going to provide us with means reaching the access on that. But >> so, John, this obviously ties into, you know, you hear all the buzz about five g and WiFi. Six. Can you explain the connection? And you know what? We need to know about that. >> Okay, it's so fine. Five. Jean WiFi 62 new wireless technologies coming about now, and they're really awesome. So y fi six is the new version. WiFi. It's available today, and it's going to be available for down predominately indoors as wi WiFi indoors and high density environments where you need a large number. Large data bait for square meter una WiFi. Once again, the new WiFi six fight in the coverage indoors uh, five is going to be used predominately outdoors in the cellular frequency. Replacing conventional for Geo lt will provide you The broad coverage is your roam around outdoors. And what happens, though, is we need both. You need great coverage indoors, which wife Isis can provide, and you need great coverage outdoors. Which five year cried >> for G explosion kind of coincided with mobile yet obviously, and that caused a huge social change. And, of course, social media took off. What should we expect with five G? Is it? You know, I know adoption is gonna take a while. I'll talk about that, but it feels like it's more sort of be to be driven, but but maybe not. Can you >> see why 5 65 gr actually billions Some similar fundamental technology building blocks? You know you will be in the ball game for the Warriors game like a few weeks ago when they were winning on DH. After a bit of time to send that message. Video your kid something on the WiFi slow laden Z with WiFi, 61 have a problem. The WiFi six has four times the late in C 14. The throughput and capacity has existing y find Lowell Agency and also the battery life. You know, people say that that is the most important thing today. Like in the mass Maharaj three times the battery life for WiFi, 16 points. So you're gonna see a lot of use cases where you have inter walking within 556 and five g WiFi six foot indoors and find you for outdoor and some small overlap. But the whole idea is how do you ensure that these two disparate access networks are talking to each other explaining security policy and it is invisibility. >> Okay, so first what? Your warriors fan, right? Yeah. Awesome way. Want to see the Siri's keep going, baby? That was really exciting. Because I'm a Bruins fan, sir, on the plane the other night and in the JetBlue TV. Shut down, you know, So I immediately went to the mobile, But it was terrible experience, and I was going crazy checks in my friends. What's happening? You say that won't happen? Yeah, with five Julia and WiFi sexy. Exactly. Awesome. >> So, John, help connect for us. Enterprise. Not working. We've been talking about the new re architectures. You know, there's a c I there now intent based networking. How does this play into the five G and WiFi six discussion that we're having today? >> So one of the things that really matters to our customers and for everybody, basically, they want these sort of entering capability. They had some device is they want to talk to applications. They want access to data. We want to talk with other people or try ot things. So you need this sort of end twin capability wherever the ends are. So one of the things I've been working on a number of years now it's first all intent Basin that working, which we announced two and 1/2 years ago. And then multi domain, we try to connect across the different domains. Okay, well across campus and when, and data center all the way to the cloud and across the Service Fighter network and trad security has foundational across all of these. This was something that David Buckler and Chuck Robbins talked about at their keynote yesterday, and this is a huge area for us because we're going to make this single orchestrated capability crop customers to connect and to and no matter where the end of ices are >> alright so sewn on I have to believe that it's not the port, you know, administrator saying, Oh my God, I have all these signs of them. Is this where machine learning in A I come in to help me with all these disparate system absolutely are going very simple. Any user on any device had access to any application. Sitting in a data center in a cloud of multiple clouds over any network, you want that securely and seamlessly. You also wanna have nature. Its whole network is orchestrator automated, and you're the right visibility's recipes for idea on with the business insights on the eye. An ML. What's happening is there for the next book is going in complexity and skill. The number of alerts are growing up, so you are not able to figure it out. That's where the power of a I and machine learning comes. Think about it in the industry revolution, the Industrial Revolution made sure that you are. You don't have limitations or what humans can do right, like machines. And now we want to make sure businesses can benefit in the digital revolution, you know, in limited by what I can pass through all the logs and scrolls on ornament. Everything and that's the power of air and machine learning >> are there use cases where you would want some human augmentation. We don't necessarily want the machine taking over for you or Or Do you see this as a fully automated type of scenario? >> Yeah, so what happens is first ball visibility is really, really important. The operator of an effort wants the visibility and they want entwined across all these domains. So the first thing we do is we apply a lot of machine learning to get to take that immense amount of data is an unmentioned and to translate it into piece of information to insights into what's happening so that we could share to the user. And they can have visibility in terms of what's happened, how well it's happening. Are they anomalies? Are is this security threat so forth? And then we can find them additional feedback. Hate. This is anomaly. This could be a problem. This is the root cause of the problem, and we believe these are the solutions for what do you want to do? You wantto Do you want actuate one of these solutions and then they get to choose. >> And if you think of any other way, our goal is really take the bits and bytes of data on a network. Convert that data into information that information into insights that inside that lead to outcomes. Now you want. Also make sure that you can augment the power of a machine. Learning on those insights, you can build on exactly what's happening. For example, you want first baseline, your network, what's normal for your environment and when you have deviations and that anomalies. Then, you know, I don't know exactly what the problem is. Anyone automated the mediation of the problem. That's the power of A and women you >> When you guys as engineers, when you think about, you know, applying machine intelligence, there's a lot of, you know, innovation going on there. Do you home grow that? Do you open source it? Do you borrow? Explain the philosophy there in terms of it. From a development standpoint, >> development point of it is a combination of off all the aspects, like we will not green when they leave it all the exists. But it's always a lot of secrets are that you need to apply because everything flows through the network, right? If everything first netbooks, this quarter of information is not just a data link, their data source as well. So taking this district's also information. Normalizing it, harmonizing it, getting a pretty language. Applying the Alberta and machine learning, for example. We do that model, model learning and training in the clouds. Way to infants in the cloud, and you pushed the rules down. There's a combination, all of all, of that >> right, and you use whatever cloud tooling is available. But it sounds like it's really from an interest from a Cisco engineering standpoint. It's how you apply the machine intelligence for the benefit of your customers and those outcomes versus us. Thinking of Sisko is this new way I company right. That's not the ladder. It's the former. Is that >> fair? One of the things that's really important is that, as you know, Cisco has been making, uh, we've been designing a six for many years with really, really rich telemetry and, as you know, Data's key to doing good machine learning and stuff. So I've been designing the A six to do really time at wire speed telemetry and also to do various sorts of algorithmic work on the A six. Figure out. Hey, what is the real data you want to send up? And then we have optimized the OS Iowa sexy to be able to perform various algorithms there and also post containers where you could do more more machine learning at the switch at the router, even in the future, maybe at the A P and then with DNA Center way, have been able to gather all the data together in a single data life where we could form a machine learning on top. >> That's important, Point John mentioned, because you want Leo want layers and analytics. And that's why the cattle's 91 191 20 access point we launch has Cisco are basic that provides things like cleaning for spectrum were also the analytic from layer one level are literally a seven. I really like the line, actually from Chuck Robbins, yesterday said. The network sees everything, and Cisco wants to give you that visibility. Can you walk us through some of the new pieces? What, what what people, Either things that they might not have been aware of our new announcements this week as part of the Sisko, a network analytics, announced three things. First thing is automated based lining. What it really means. Is that what's normal for your environment, right? Because what's normal for your own environment may not be the same for my environment. Once I understand what that normal baseline is, then, as I have deviations I canto anomaly detection, I can call it an aggregate issues I can really bring down. Apply here and machine learning and narrow down the issues that are most critical for you to look at right now. Once and Aragon exact issue. I wanted the next thing, and that is what we call machine. Reasoning on machine reasoning is all about ordering the workflow off what you need to do to debug and fix the problem. You want the network to become smarter and smarter, the more you use it on. All of this is done through model learning and putting in the clouds infants in the cloud and pushing it down the rules as way have devices on line on time. So, >> do you see the day? If you think about the roadmap for for machine intelligence, do you see the day where the machine will actually do the remediation of that workflow. >> Absolutely. That's what we need to get you >> when you talk about the automated base lining is obviously a security, you know, use case there. Uh, maybe talk about that a little bit. And are there others? It really depends on your objective, right? If my objective is to drive more efficiency, lower costs, I presume. A baseline is where you start, right? So >> when I say baseline what I mean really, like, say, if I tell you that from this laptop to connect on a WiFi network, it took you three seconds and ask, Is that good or bad? You know, I don't know what the baseline for his environment. What's normal next time? If you take eight seconds on your baseline street, something is wrong. But what is wrong isn't a laptop issue isn't a version on the on your device is an application issue on network issue and our issue I don't know. That's why I'm machine learning will do exactly what the problem is. And then you use machine reasoning to fix a problem. >> Sorry. This is probably a stupid question, but how much data do you actually need. And how much time do you need to actually do a good job in that? That type of use case? >> What happens is you need the right data, Okay? And you're not sure where the right data is originally, which we do a lot of our expertise. It's this grass for 20 years is figuring out what the right data is and also with a lot of machine learning. We've done as well as a machine reason where we put together templates and so forth. We've basically gathered the right made for the right cause for the customer. And we refined that over time. So over time, like this venue here, the way this venue network, what it is, how it operates and so forth varies with time. We need to weigh need to refine that over time, keep it up to date and so forth. >> And when we talk about data, we're talking about tons of metadata here, right? I mean, do you see the day where there'll be more metadata than data? Yeah, it's a rhetorical question. All right, so So it's true you were hearing >> the definite zone. Lots of people learning about a building infrastructure is code. Tell us how the developer angle fits into what we've been discussing. >> Here we ask. So what happens is is part of intent based on African key parts of automation, right? And another key parts. The assurance. Well, it's what Devon it's trying to do right now by working with engineering with us and various partners are customers is putting together one of the key use cases that people have and what is code that can help them get that done. And what they're also doing is trying to the looking through the code. They're improving it, trying to instill best practice and stuff. So it's recently good po'd people can use and start building off. So we think this could be very valuable for our customers to help move into this more advanced automation and so forth. >> So architecture matters. We've touched upon it. But I want you to talk more about multi domain architectures wear Chuck Robbins. You know, talk about it. What is it? Why is it such a big deal on DH? How does it give Sisko competitive advantage? >> Think about it. I mean, my dad go being architectures. Nothing but all the components of a modern enterprise that look behind the scenes from giving access to a user or device to access for application and everything in between. Traditionally, each of these domains, like an access domain, the land domain can have 100 thousands off network know that device is. Each of these are configured General Manual to see a live my domain architectures almost teaching these various domains into one cohesive, data driven, automated programmable network. Your campus, your branch, your ran. But he doesn't and cloud with security as an integral part of it if it all. >> So it's really a customer view of an architecture isn't? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that's good. I like that answer. I thought you're going to come out with a bunch of Cisco No mumbo jumbo in secret sauce. Now it really is you guys thinking about Okay, how would our customers need to architect there? >> But if you think about it, it's all about customer use case, for example, like we talked earlier today, we were walking everywhere on the bull's eye, in the cafe, in office and always on the goal. You're accessing your business school applications, whether it's webex salesforce dot com, 40 65. At the same time you're doing Facebook and what's happened. YouTube and other applications. Cisco has the van Domain will talk to Sisko. The domains action escalates and policies. So now you can cry tears the application that you want, which is business critical and fixing the night watchers but miss experience for you. But you want the best experience for that matter, where you are well >> on the security implications to I mean, you're basically busting down the security silos. Sort of the intent here, right? Right. Last thoughts on the show. San Diego last year. Orlando. We're in Barcelona earlier this year. >> I think it's been great so far. If you think about it in the last two years, we fill out the entire portfolio for the new access network when the cattle is 90. 100. Access points with WiFi six Switches Makes emission Campus core. Waterston, Controller Eyes for Unified Policy Data Center for Automation Analytics. Delia Spaces Business Insights Whole Access Network has been reinvented on It's a great time. >> Nice, strong summary, but John will give you the last word. >> What happens here is also everything about It says that we have 5,000 engineers have been doing this a couple years and we have a lot more in the pipe. So you're going to Seymour in six months from now Morn. Nine months and so forth. It's a very exciting time. >> Excellent. Guys. It is clear you like you say, completing the portfolio positioning for the next wave of of access. So congratulations on all the hard work I know a lot goes into it is Thank you very much for coming. All right, Keep it right there. David. Dante was stupid. And Lisa Martin is also in the house. We'll get back with the Cube. Sisqo live 2019 from San Diego.

(upbeat music) >> Live from Barcelona Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi everyone welcome back to the theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain for Cisco Live! Europe 2019. I'm John Furrier and my co-host Stu Miniman, Dave Vellante is out there as well co-hosting this week. Our next guest is John Apostolopoulos who's the VP and CTO for the Enterprise Networking Business, Unit Lab Director for the Innovation Labs. Here to talk with us about AI and some great innovations. John thanks for coming on theCUBE, great to see you. >> Thank you for inviting me, pleasure to be here. >> So, Cisco has some big announcements, the messages coming together certainly the bridge for the future, bridge for tomorrow, whatever the phrase is. You know, kind of looking at that new world connecting on premise, cloud, ACI anywhere, hyper-flex anywhere, lot of complexity, being mis-tracked the way with software, separate from the V-Comp from the hardware, lot of scale in the cloud and IoT and all around the edge. So software is a big part of this. >> Oh yes. >> So can't help but think, okay complexity, scale, you see Facebook using machine learning. Machine learning and AI operations now, a real conversation for Cisco. >> Yeah. >> Talk about what that is, how are you guys looking at AI, and machine learning in particular, it's been around for a while. What's your thoughts on Cisco's position and opportunity? >> Sure, yeah. Cisco's been investing or using AI for many, many years. What happens to Cisco, like most companies, we haven't really talked about the machine learning as a term because machine learning is a tool used to solve different problems. So you talk about, what are the customer problems we have? And then we saw, no matter how good our solution is, but we haven't really talked about the details about the how but, we've using at Cisco, like myself from past careers and so forth for many many years some machine learning. Security has been using it for multiple decades for example. >> And where's the use case for machine learnering, because it's one of things where there's different versions and flavors of machine learning. Machine learning we know powers AI and data feeds machine learning, so do you have all these dependencies and all these things going on, how do you...how should someone think about sorting through machine learning? >> Well machine learner itself that term is a very broad term, it's almost as big as computer science, right? So that's where a lot of the confusion comes in. But what happens is you can look up what types of problems we want to solve, and when you try to look at what types of problems we want to solve, some of them...for example some problems you can exploit the fact that the laws of physics that apply and if the laws of physics apply, you should use those laws. We can either figure out that if we drop this, this will fall at some speed by measuring it and using a machine learning or we have gravitational force and friction with the air and re-account for that and figure it out. So the many ways to solve these problems and we want to choose the best method for solving each one of them. >> And when the people think about Cisco, the first reaction isn't "Oh machine learning... innovator." What are you guys using machine learning for? Where has it been successful? What are you investing in? Where's the innovation? >> Sure sure, so there's a lot of problems here that come into play. If you look at...if you look at a customer problems, one example is all the digital disruption. We have on the order of a million devices, new devices coming on to the network every hour throughout the world. Now, what are those devices? How should you treat them? With machine learning we're able to identify what the devices are and then figure out what the network caches should be. For instance when IoT device you want to protect it, protect it from others. Another big topic is operations. As you know people spend, I think it was The Gardner identified that people spend about sixty-billion dollars per year on operations costs, why is it so much? Because most of the operations are manual, about 95% manual, which also means that these changes are slow and error-prone. What we do there is we basically use machine learning to do intelligent automation and we get a whole bunch of insights about what's happening and use that to drive intelligent automation. You may have heard about Assurance, which was announced at Cisco Live, one year ago at Barcelona and both in the campus with DNA Center we announced Cisco DNA Center Assurance and the data center went out, network and network analytic engine. And what both of these do is they look at what's happened to the network, they apply machine learning to identify patterns and from those patterns, identify, is there a problem, where's the problem? How can we...what's the root cause and then how can we solve that problem quickly? >> John, can you help us connect where this fits in a multi-cloud environment? Because what we've seen the past couple of years is when we talk about managing the network, a lot of what I might be in charge of managing, is really outside of my purview and therefore I could imagine something like ML is going to be critically important because I'm not going to be touching it but therefore I still need to have data about it and a lot of that needs to happen. >> Yeah, well one of the places ML helps with multi-cloud is the fact you need to figure out which...where to send your packets, and this comes with SD-WAN. So with SD-WAN we often have multiple paths available to us and let's say with the move to Office365, people are using the SaaS service and they want to have very good interactivity. One of the things we realized is that by carefully selecting which path we can use, at the branch and the campus too, we could get a 40% reduction in the latency. So that's a way we choose which colo or which region or which side of Office365 to send the packets to, to dramatically reduce latency. >> What's the role of data? Because when you think about it, you know, moving a packet from point A to point B, that's networking. Storage acts differently 'cause you store data data's got to come back out and be discovered. Now if you have this horizontal scalability for cloud, edge, core coming into the middle, get of the data 'cause machine learning needs the data, good data, not dirty data you need clean data. How do you see that evolving, how should customers then be thinking about preparing for either low-hanging use-cases. Just what's your thoughts and reaction to that? >> Yeah well the example you gave is a very interesting example. You described how you need to get data from one point to another, for instance, for my device to a data center with applications over the cloud. And you also mentioned how the many things between. What we care about, not necessarily the application data, we care about... You know we want to have the best network performance so your applications are working as well as possible. In that case we want to have an understanding of what's happening across a path so we want to pull to telemetry in all kinds of contexts to be able to understand, is there problem, where's the problem, what is it, and how to solve it. And that's what Assurance does. We pull this data from the access points the switches, from the routers, we pour, pull in all kinds of contextual information to get a rich understanding of the situation, and try to identify if there's a problem or not, and then how to solve it. >> Its the classic behavioral, contextual, paradigm of data but now you guys are looking at it from a network perspective and as the patterns changed the applications centric, programmability of the network, the traffic patterns are changing. Hence the announcements here but intent-based networking and hyper-flexed anywhere. This is now a new dynamic. Talk about the impact of that from an AI perspective. How are you guys getting out front on that? It's not just North, South, East, West, it's pretty much everywhere. The patterns are, could be application specific at any given point, on a certain segment of a network, I mean it's complex. >> Yeah, its complex. One of the really nice things about intent-based network and those, it fits in really nicely and that was by design, 'cause what happens with intent-based networking, as you know, a user expresses some intent if it's something they want to do. I want to securely onboard the SIoT device, and then it gets activated in the network, and then we use Assurance to see if it's doing the right thing. But what happens is that Assurance part, that's basically gathering visibility and insight in terms of what's happening. That's using machine learning to understand what's happening in the network across all these different parts that you mentioned. And then, what happens is we take those insights and then we make intelligent actions and that's part of the activation. So this...with intent based network in this feedback loop that we have directly ties with using the data for getting insights and then for activation, for intelligent actions. >> John, always want to get the update on the innovation lab, is there anything particular here at the show or, what's new that you can share? >> So we're looking at extending IBN to the cloud, to multi-cloud, to multiple devices so there's a lot of really fascinating work happening there. I believe you're going to be talking to one of my colleagues later, too, T.K. He's, I think, hopefully going to talk about some of the machine learning that's been done and that's already prioritized as you know in encrypted thread analytics. That's an example of where we use machine learning to identify if there's malware in encrypted traffic. Which is really a fascinating problem. >> That's a hard problem to solve. I'm looking forward to that conversation. >> So some members of Cisco, Dave McGrew, in particular, Cisco Fellow, started working on that problem four and a half years ago. Because of his work with other colleagues, he was able and they were able to come up with a solution. So it was a very complicated problem as you saw but through the use of machine learning and many years of investment, plus the fact that Cisco's access to Talos which has, they know the threats throughout the world. They're a list of data in terms of all kinds of threats that's massive. That's pretty powerful. >> The volume, that's where machine learning shines. I mean you see the amount of volume of data coming in, that's where it could do some heavy lifting. >> Exactly, that's one of Cisco's strengths. The fact that we have this massive view on all the threats throughout the world and we can bring it to bear. >> Network security foundation only just creates so much value for apps. Final question for you, for the folks watching, what's in you opinion the most important story here at Cicso Live Barcelona, that people should be paying attention to? >> I think how we are trying to extend across all these different domains and make it like one network for our customers. This is still a journey and it's going to take time but with intent based networking we can do that. We're going across campus, WAN, data center to multi-cloud. >> How hard is cross domain, just put it in perspective. Cross domains reversal and having visibility into these, from a latency, from a physics standpoint, how hard is it? >> It's quite hard, there's all kinds of technical challenges but there's even other sorts of challenges. This is WiFi, right? IEEE 802.11 defines the QoS standard for wireless and that's completely different than how the internet group ITEF defined it for wired. So even between wireless and wired, there's a lot of work that has to be done and Cisco's leading that effort. >> And having all that data. Great to have you on John, thanks for spending the time and demystifying machine learning and looking forward to this encrypted understanding with machine learning, that's a hard problem, looking forward to digging into that. Again, truly, the breakthroughs are happening with machine learning and adding values with application centric world. It's all about the data, it's theCUBE bringing you the data from Barcelona, I'm John with Stu Mini, stay with us for more coverage 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. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this theCube's coverage of Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando, Florida. We've got three days of programming we've been doing. We're heading towards the end, but still going strong. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest, John Apostolopousos, who's the vice president and CTO of Enterprise Networking and lab director of the Innovation's Lab with Cisco. It all rolls right off the tongue, right John. >> Yes, yes. >> But welcome to the program, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for joining me, it's a pleasure being here. >> Alright so you and I were rapping, we both have some background in networking in innovation labs. So, you know, it's one of the things I love to talk about, who doesn't love to talk about innovation. Tell us a little bit about your background and what are the innovation labs inside of Cisco? >> Okay, so I've been working in various areas of R and D and innovation for many years. And I joined Cisco about five years ago, both to be CTO and also to create a group, a lab, a group of people to help identify and try to solve problems of a strategic importance to Cisco's future. And by doing these, we believe that we can have a significant effect on our customers and bring great value to them and differentiation for Cisco. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. >> It's kind of a, you know what, one of the things I poked at, I worked in a CTO office at one of the big vendors for a few years, and it's like we need the place where people can play and learn and try and fail, it's okay. There's always a push from this, well it needs to lead to product that leads to revenue. How does that work inside of Cisco? >> So it actually works quite well because there's strong push from the top from Chuck Robbins, Dave Decker, from my boss, Scott Harrel, my junior colleagues, Robby Chandra and so forth, to identify these key problems, invest, try to solve them and so forth. Because they know if we can succeed, it's going to be huge revenues. >> Okay, yeah. John, the level we get a CTO on, there's no shortage of cool and interesting things to look at. What are some of the main areas that you and your team look at? >> Sure, so one of the things which actually I with Robby Chandra and other very talented colleagues across Cisco started about five years ago now, was looking at what are some of the key use cases that customers need to have addressed three to five years down the road? And what architectures do they need to solve it? And we started that work four or five years ago, that leads to what we call the digital network architecture DNA that we are hearing all about today. So that work actually started in December 2013, it would really ramp up in 2014 and 2015. And it takes so long because it takes a long time to figure out what are the real problems customers need to address and then how can you build the ASICs and the operating system and the software on top and the platforms and DNA center and now DNA center platform that's needed. And we have a whole bunch of additional things in the pipe. >> Yeah, so bring us back, because you know in technology three to five years, that's a really long time. >> That's a long time. >> So what were some of the original kind of customer needs that you saw and what was on target and what's changed in that time period? >> Sure, so some of the things the customer needs, is they need to be able to role out new services really fast, okay. Today it takes and it historically takes a long time to role out a new service. Let's say we want to have a tele-present system or let's say you want to bring a new IOT device on the network, and you want to segment it relative to all the other devices so there can't be any security threats. And you want to apply all the best practices for networking and security. Typically that's been really, really hard. It's been really hard because you have to figure out for the new application what network and security requirements do you need. Then how should that, how should the network be architected, how should each device in the network be programmed for QOS or anything else. And then go out and do it. Device by device typically. And then be able to look to say hey, is that actually working the way that I intended? Or is there a problem, if so, where's the problem. How can I fix it? How can I change it? Historically that process has taken a long time. Now what we've done is by taking a more wholeistic view, and with things like DNA center, we have a full understanding of what's happening end to end. So we can role out a new service, we can identify both the network policies that are required, the security policies, figure out what's needed in each element in the network, go out and employ it. Then look to see what's happening, verify if it's doing what's needed, and if not, make recommended fixes and so forth. So this is one of the major fundamental shifts that is occurring and it's something we're very excited about and our customers are also really excited, which is, because it brings them great value. It increases their speed. It increases their security, lowers their costs. It's pretty exciting stuff. >> Yeah, John, if I wind the clock back 10 or 15 years ago, intelligence in the network, using data and analytics in the network, we were talking about it back then. >> We were, we were. >> So tell me why it's different now. Why, you know, I know all the people that work on this, we're quite excited for the things that we can actually accomplish today. Not like we were just talking about it, we were building real solutions, but what's different today? >> It's different at every single level. For example, 10 years ago we did not really have ASICs to be programmable. Today with a lot of the ASICs we have with UADP, unified access data platform ASIC. As new protocols become important, we can go and change more for to support it. Our new Cat9ks actually we have x86's built in, so you have an x86, which you can have a containerized environment there, so third parties can take their applications in a container, deploy it and run it across switches. That was never possible before. So these are some of the major advances that happened that just makes it so much easier to deploy these. >> Yeah, well one of the things that we've been really interested to dig into is some of the new applications that aren't just running on the network but the network is involved in how we build those environments. So when I think about you know just the theme of the show, it's you know, imagine what we can do, and here in the dev net zone, it's customers talking about helping to build those applications. Talk a little bit about that. How does that tie in to some of these mega trends like machine learning, AI, you know, choose your favorite buzz word of choice there. >> Yeah, so what happens is now when you role out a new application, one of the key things you want is visibility and know how it's working. In the past you've had visibility at the server. You may have visibility in the client. You haven't had visibility end to end, and you often haven't had it real time. But now you can actually have end to end visibility and you can be able to automatically self optimize the network to be able to do what needs to be done. For example, here we have thousands of people just on this floor here, and you want to optimize which APs they're talking to and what paths they're taking through their networks. So that whatever they're doing, could it be a Face Time or anything else could be done with very high end to end quality. And all that you want to happen automatically. >> Yeah, the place I've actually been a little critical of Cisco is when we first started talking about IOT, it was like well everything needs a networking part of it. I'm like well a lot of these devices aren't going to have connectivity or have limited connectivity. Transport isn't, you know, the piece of it, but when I take that, when I look at solutions like NFV that are coming out, all of these coming together, this great new term we're talking about, edge computing. So what are you seeing, what's happening today, what are you looking at from a research standpoint? And, you know, where does the edge start? >> Yes, so the edge is a really fun topic. And it's something Cisco cares a lot about because it's often for many applications you have to run them at the edge, especially for IoT. For instance today, you mentioned IoT, you mentioned machine learning. Each of those applications, it's typically a lot of the process ended, the analytics for IoT, the machine learning AI for other sort of applications, that's usually done in the Cloud. However, many times you can't do it in the Cloud or you don't want to do it in the Cloud, because it's too expensive or you just can't get things to the Cloud. >> Yeah, if I'm driving an autonomous vehicle, I can't wait for it to do the round trip before I hit you know whatever that was. >> Yes, and that's a great point. Because what happens is there's a latency issue. There's also scalability. Scalability in the amount of data that's coming for a single IoT device or in a place like this you may have thousands of IoT devices. So it's huge scalability issues. Also reliability. You want your systems, your IOo applications, everything to work. And usually you're counted on being connected to Cloud, but in case you're not connected, in case something breaks down, a storm, a backhoe takes out your internet connection, you still want it to work. So for reliability, you also want to do things at the edge. Also for privacy. You see for privacy, what happens is you want to limit the information that you send to the Cloud. And if it's possible not to send anything, or just to summarize and send only a very small part of information. That could lead to major gains in privacy. So doing processing at the edge, especially with machine learning, AI, can lead to improvements in scalability, lower latency, improved reliability, lower costs, and improvements in privacy. So lots of gains by doing things at the edge of the network. >> Okay, and were does Cisco play in some of these edge solutions? >> Yes, first of all, Cisco has been building computer at the edge with ISRs for many years, okay. I view this as one of the hidden gems that Cisco has. Also we've been working on, what we call, fog commuting for many years. Actually I joined Cisco five years ago, but even before that, my colleagues realized that hey, for some IoT applications, you can't do it in the Cloud. You actually have to do it in the edge. And so they coined the term fog, which basically means taking a part of the Cloud, bringing it to the edge of the network, and a cloud on the ground is called fog, hence the term. And then we've been developing it ever since. And so this is what led to us including for example x86s and containerized frame works on switches and so forth so it makes it much easier for developers to deploy things at the edge of the network. >> Yeah, we just have to make sure enterprises don't choke on it because then it would just be smog. (laughter) >> Luckily we're working really hard on that, and also to make it very secure. Because that's another key component. High scalability, privacy, reliability, low costs, and security. >> Okay, so. >> And no smog. >> No smog. What are some of the things, you know, give us a little inside into the innovation labs, what are some of the things as you look out that maybe we're not yet talking about on the show floor here? >> Sure, for example, some of the major things upcoming is 802.11ax, it's the next generation of wifi. So it gives significant improvements in wifi performance. We've been working on that for a number of years. When I say we, it's myself and other colleagues throughout Cisco. And often colleagues and universities and standards organizations and other companies, wherever it makes sense, because we're trying to push the industry forward. So 802.11ax is a major effort we're working on. Also 5G cellular, you may have heard a lot about it because it's getting a huge amount of attention. And we're also trying to connect these two. Because, for example, in indoor environments like this, wifi is going to be, wifi is the best solution. On the other hand, as you take your mobile device and you go outside, you have 5G, or you will have 5G. As a concrete example, you're familiar with network segmentation, okay, this is incredibly powerful. It's very good for security, for giving the applications the bandwidth allegiance they need and so forth, so very, very powerful. DNA provides that capability within the campus branch, across wired and wireless. And that's what we're shipping today. What happens is with 5G as defined by 3GPP standards, when they come out, you're going to have something very similar, it'll be called network slices, instead of network segmentation. But exact same concept. And it'll be provided on service provider networks. And now what you can do is you can use DNA center to set up the policies in the network segment to go across the enterprise campus and also on the service provider network. So when you go outside with your mobile devices, wherever you are, you'll still have your network segment with your security, you QOS and so forth that they need for applications. >> John I'm just sitting here smiling because I worked in telecom back in the nineties. And there were the trucking companies that was like my phone was a walkie talkie, and then it was also a cell phone, which was pretty cool back in the nineties. When we talk about data, that's been the ultimate promise. It should be ubiquitous, 5G, working with the wireless has been an interesting thing to kind of dig into. So how long until, you know, that becomes reality? >> Well in the enterprise, indoors, campus branch, so forth, end up going to data center. We're working with our data center team very closely to build network segments across both. That's, in some cases it's already available today, in other cases it'll be coming in six months and so forth. With 5G, it depends on the deployment of 5G. And so that's 2020, 2021. But we're already working to make that possible. >> Alright, John, I want to give you the final word. I've worked on some of those projects when it's kind of years in the making, and something comes out the door and then that's what you have with the DNA solution. You know, tell us a little bit about the celebration, the pride, the excitement, that the team is seeing. >> Yeah, it's a lot, right now, it's a great time because as you mentioned, we started some of this work four years ago. We brought some of it out, SDA and DNA center, last summer. Assurance in January. IoT, DNA IoT recently. We just brought out the world's best AP with a 4800. So it's all these sequence of things that finally came out that we've been working on for years, so it's really an awesome feeling. And there's a lot more in the pipe. And so it's going to be a fun, fun future ahead. And our customers are going to get a lot of value. >> John Apostolopousos, really a pleasure. Thank you for joining. You're now a part of theCube alumni here where we always love talking about innovation, driving that pipeline to help customers through all of these new technologies. Stay with us, we got a couple more interviews left. Three days, wall to wall coverage here in Orlando, Florida. I'm Stu Miniman, and as always thank you for watching theCube. (techno sounds)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida. It's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Everyone, welcome back. It's theCUBE's exclusive coverage, here in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Stu, this is a wrap-up of the show. This is day three of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. And, I got to say, I'm surprised at how it's evolved, and the clarity of what's happening is coming into focus. We had a great kickoff, I thought, on day one. I thought we laid it out and kind of predicted and connected the dots on what was going to happen. But some kind of new white spaces were filled in. I want to get your thoughts on it. One, DevNet's success with the number of developers. Clearly a number success. But what's really interesting, after watching all the activity here at DevNet, talking to people in the hallways, is that DevNet is changing the face of Cisco. Because Cisco has an energy and an openness now, that's bringing the momentum and success and proven success of open store software to the networking layer, engaging and energizing the core base of the Cisco constituent, which is the customers, the network engineer, and allowing a path to cloud-native, a path to multi-cloud, and a path to innovation. I mean this is the story, in my opinion, at this event. There are some announcements, certainly, that tie into it, but the notion of what DevNet and DevNet Create are proving, besides being good execution by Susie Wee and the team, is that this is a tell sign that the programmable network is at a seminal moment where, like the iPhone was in 2007, that changed telephony, and created apps, the network is now programmable. New things are going to happen. This is, to me, the biggest story here at DevNet. >> Yeah, and John, in case somebody just listened to our wrap and hadn't heard the three days of coverage here, that number is 500,000. It was up, Chuck Robbins announced it on stage on day one here on Monday. 500,000 developers registered. By the way, Susie said we'd actually, we kept having to scrub the list and bring it down, so we had 300,000, it went down a little bit. She's like, "Are we still growing?" Now the momentum continues, so they're growing. But, you're right John, we've done two of these Cisco Lives. You and I did the Barcelona show and we did this show. And what's been crystallizing, what I learn and, in processing here that actually excites me, is I'm a networking guy, and so many waves that these technologies, remember it was like, "Oh ethernet fabrics are going to change everything", "SDN will totally revolutionize everything." I kind of looked and things and I was like, "You know, we're fixing networking problems, and how do I tie that to the business. Oh, I need to be more agile and I need to move faster." The punchline to what does it matter, this intent-based networking, which it's kind of a wonky term, but really we're building new applications, where the network is how we do that. It's built for microservices, it's this modern environment. And I have to have this DevNet ecosystem to enable it. Because it can't just be I manage my switch and I'm going and okay, I download software and I do some things over here. This is the career path for all of the people that, you know, the 25 years of CCIEs that we had, we've had this huge line next to us here, of everybody's getting their badges and they've got their area where they've got a little bit of special treatment of those CCIEs; there's an army of them and that's been Cisco's strength and can they take that army and get them ready for the new guerrilla warfare that is this modern application building and John, you know, how many times do people say, you know networking, they're just a bunch of plumbers, sitting down in there, wiring closet, they'll be left behind. >> Yeah, and this is the false narrative and that's absolutely the case. There definitely was a lull there. If you look at Cisco and what's going on in the networking world, we've talked. This is our ninth year with theCUBE, so you and I have pontificated and riffed many times about "the network's a bottleneck", and it's always the network, everything comes down to the network, which is why the network guys have always been the most powerful in companies. But here's what's happening here, the gestation period of SDN is an interesting dynamic. So here's what I think no one's yet reported. I think this is the real story. The SDN has been incubating and gestating now for what, four years, give or take, roughly? So SDN's embedded in at the network layer, the network's getting smarter. Then you've got the cloud scale happening, and you've got security issues in cyber, you've got cloud scale in the public cloud accelerating, the valuation of things, this costs this per minute. So, creating the economic kind of disruption. Then you have the Kubernetes on the scene, taking docker containers, making it a global container, it's not just docker, all containers generically as a key vehicle for wrapping around legacy. And it was Kubernetes, and now with Service Mesh on the horizon, there is a clear, visible path to the value creation. Combine that with the continuing explosion of open-source. Open-source has proven that the way to run things in the open is exactly how DevNet's doing it. So, all these things are elements that have just come together at a perfect time, and Cisco is taking advantage of it. And we were critical of Cisco at Barcelona by saying, they'd be crazy not to double down on this. I would quadruple down on it, it's proven. Not, "we own the network, you got to go through us", Blockchain, I sat in the blockchain session today. The central authority model in communities is flattening, this is the new normal. I think Cisco has lightning in a bottle here. Let's see what they do with it, Stu. I don't know what your reaction to that is, but they have an opportunity to make the network programmable, energize their base, it's just really exciting, I got to say. If I worked at Cisco, I would be all over the DevNet, the DevNet Create, get in the cloud scale, and ride that wave. >> Look, John, Cisco has been dominant in networking so long, that there's been so many waves hitting against it, said we were going to overtake Cisco. Open networking is one of those big waves. I've been to many conferences, I know a lot of the companies we've interviewed on theCUBE, many of the companies that are going to go take a chunk out of the monolith that was Cisco. Well, Cisco, you know, they're not deaf, they're listening-- >> They're disrupting themselves. >> They are disrupting themselves, and especially, you know, the line I heard for years was, you know, Cisco was the standard, it's like, oh, well, you know, they're dominating at the standards bodies and trying to push their way through. Well, they've got the customers. And they've got an ecosystem, and while they've invested in open source over the years, and we've talked to many of them, this DevNet activity has really pushed along, and is impressive. Doesn't mean that there aren't some pockets where other people are more advanced with the technology, you know, you can always have the debates as to who is more open than the others, which, you know, you and I have gone down many times, but it is impressive to see how Cisco is changing, what's here, the excitement has been palpable. And it's not just, you know, it's an infrastructure show, it's a networking show, when you and I interviewed Rowan Trollope at the Barcelona show, it's Cisco of the future is a software company, and they are making progress. If you give a little bit of a nudge as to, you know, what they didn't have, it's like, there weren't a ton of announcements, but the ones that they were, they were talking about the progress they've made, the DNA center-- >> Look, if you want to look for critiquing, I mean, you can look anywhere in anyone's life and find faults. There's plenty of things that Cisco's not advanced on, but time is on their side. They don't have to have big-doubt Istio version running on switches, that's coming down the road. They can work with Kubernetes, we saw some great demos in here. So I think time is a good friend for them right now, but they're doing all the right things, so again, it's an opportunity. The other thing I've noticed with the DevNet and the DevNet Create and all of our CUBE coverage, Stu, you know, I've been looking at theCUBE data, the SiliconANGLE, Wikibon data, and a new kind of persona personality is emerging, in, at least in our audience, that kind of is a tell sign to innovation. One, developers are kind of forming two lines of developers. Developers-- well, there's three. Classic developers, who just geek out and program. But two new personas. Business-oriented developers, who are being pulled to the front lines, who are dealing with issues like Capex, Opex, digital transformation. And we're seeing that, people who don't want to get an MBA, but they want to learn business. The other new category that I see developing here at DevNet is the entrepreneurial developer. This is the developer that has all the same attributes that someone starting a company would have. They're resourceful, they're looking at connecting the dots outside the box, they're using their creativity to identify using software to solve problems in the network. So, this is kind of interesting, because those are the ones that are going to jump on the grenades, take the chances, and they're inside the company. So this is going to be a wealth creation opportunity for the networking, because the networking is, right now, been waiting for the network to be scalable and programmable, we've been saying it for how many years. Your thoughts? >> Yeah, boy, John, you know, we lived through, I've said it many times on theCUBE. The decade of making networking work properly in a virtualized environment was kind of painful. When we look at containerization, what's happening to the cloud data space, I think networking understands the networking ecosystem, and especially Cisco, knows what they went through before, and they are attacking the space, and going at it hard to try and make sure that they, you know, get on this next wave, win some mine share, and you know, don't lose these customers. Because, John, something we've said many times is, right now, is probably the ripest time for customers to say, "You know, I've trusted and used this company for a really long time, but it's okay for me to try new things." And therefore, Cisco with its massive-- >> They got to try new things. >> Could be disrupted, if they don't try really hard. >> The customers have to try new things, Stu, that's definitely the case. Okay, let's get into some of the landscape issues. We saw a lot of startups come on, growing startups, so the question is will they be the M&A in the future of Cisco? But we had IBM on, we had NetApp on, Avi Networks, a lot of companies. We also saw Cohesity score a huge round of funding, 250 million dollars. We haven't seen a lot of venture-backed activity, here at the show, we've seen a lot of VC announcements, but you know, the big round for Cohesity crystallizes the competitive landscape. Your thoughts, you got the big players like IBM doing great with storage, Cloudify, NetApp with FlexPod, doing very well with the cloud. I mean, is the tide rising, where everyone's floating, and this is a lot of the competitive? And if so, is the scale attainable for the startups, or will they have to bought by the big players? Your thoughts. >> Well, John, to go back, we were just talking about DevNet, I actually feel like Cisco's pulling some of their ecosystem along. The storage-networking interactions isn't the most exciting thing in the world, and I spent ten years living in these environments. I mean, you know, storage-networking doesn't exactly get most people excited, but it is one of the fundamental things, it needs to make your environment work. Every time you did a bank transaction, or you know, bought a plane ticket, probably that was your storage and the networking underlied that, making that work. >> So what's your point, the ecosystem is going to grow, or? >> The ecosystem is following Cisco's lead, and getting involved in developer and cloud-native activity. So we're not just talking about boxes anymore. That wave towards software. NetApp, really nice story, as to how they fit into the multi-cloud environment. You know, they kind of rode down on the box trend, and as they really focused back on their core, which has always been software, they're making some strong moves there. You mentioned two of the vendors we had on, Cohesity and Avi Networks, both of them, part of their funding is from Cisco. So, you know, Cisco investing in some of the hot areas, you know, Cohesity, data protection-- >> Don't forget LiveAction was bought last Friday, their aperture in the market goes up, so we're seeing the partner network, really interesting dynamic. We're growing, we're going to see more people come in, what's your vision on this? >> No, the ecosystem's very dynamic. So, really good show floor here, you can feel the energy when you walk through this place and you go see what's happening. Big ecosystem, it showed. By the way, we didn't say it on the intro, but the number I heard was 26,000, which, this is a good size show. Bigger than a VN World, smaller than an AWS reinvent. But you know, really, much more, it's not-- >> It was my first time, it was my first show, at Cisco Live in North America. I got to say, I wasn't expecting the show floor to be that good. I mean, I was like, okay, Cisco, we have the vendors out there, partners, you know, a lot of people, you know, typical enterprise show. I was blown away, blown away by the energy of the future of creating value. I mean, the stories, it wasn't just people mailing it in. These real, compelling use cases of cloud scale. Not just selling boxes, Stu. >> Yeah, and John, you know, talk about community. You know, you and I both have a lot of networking DNA in our backgrounds. I love this community, it's people that, they love to collaborate, they love to share, they love to dig in. Lots of bloggers, there was a big podcasting going on. We brought some of those people on the program, and I loved, some of them are working for cool new startups. They're doing coding, they're doing developer activity. A section of this felt a lot like a KubeCon, or even, you know, some of the AWS and Google kind of mojo that we see at the cloud show. Which, I enjoyed Barcelona, but that was my critique, they're not as in that multi-cloud world. They were talking about it, but they're kind of stuck in this transition. It's not like they're fully there. Cisco still sells a lot of kit, and everybody makes money too. But we know this transition's going to take a long time. >> Chuck Robbins said at the keynote, that there'd be no cloud without networking. Networking and cloud people have a symbiotic relationship because networking people are inherently smart. You may argue, someone sitting at a desk, you know, doing networks, some of them have different personas inside that, but most of them are pretty smart, right. Networking people aren't dumbasses, generally speaking. The cloud people are innovating on the app side with the scale piece, also smart people, so when you get networking people with cloud, I just see a nice fit there, and I think, Kubernetes, and the Istio, and the service mesh, I think that's where it connects, because if you're a networking guy, using Ansible, using Python, you're going to naturally gravitate towards Kubernetes. It's the same concept. So, I'm watching that very closely, I think you and I have been talking about this at Linux Foundation, that's going to be the tell sign. If the network engineers can adopt the Kubernetes concept, and take the service mesh to the next level, that, to me, is going to be a tell sign. >> Yeah, and John, you know, we go to a lot of shows, we've got some really smart people who came on the program, we're a bit of intellectual snobs sometimes, and when we come on this program-- >> Speak for yourself, Stu. (laughs) >> No, I mean we love to talk to smart people. As I always say, John, if I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm in the wrong room. And I'm really excited, most of the time we're on theCUBE, we bring some really smart and interesting people on. >> Alright, let's wrap this up. Obviously the big story is DevNet. I think the community approach is great. Christine Heckart came on, she's the new senior executive, just started at Cisco. When we were at Barcelona, we saw her there. She saw DevNet, kind of a fresh eyes in Cisco, what impressed me about my observing her, on theCUBE and then watching her walk around was, she's fresh eyes. She's been in the industry, her eyes were lighting up. She sees DevNet, she understands. She came on and talked about network effects. Stu, our business is community-driven, theCUBE is very community-oriented with the content, we have network effects in our business. And I think she hit on something that I think is the next conversation point, is, the network effects is a technical and business dynamic and I think she's got her hands on a very successful narrative around where the value will go, and then when the engineering and the business come together to create value. I think DevNet has done the right thing with the open-source model, being welcoming, not elite. And I think that is worth noting. >> Yeah, and a lot of hard work went into reaching where we are with DevNet today. I love, we dug in with Susie, with Mandy. One of the interviews I did, John Apostolopoulos. You know, he's one of the ones in the labs inside of Cisco. So, it took, he walked me through, John, you know, the basically five years that led to this new DNA solution that we had. We of course had some great VIPs on the program, like Lynn Lucas, the CMO of Cohesity, Lee Howard, and of course, Zoginsash himself, Eric Herzog, who, both of those gentlemen, when you walked around this show, they are everywhere. They're plastered on the screen before the keynote, they're walking around and talking to them, so we love, as part of our community, to get to talk to those as well as, you know, all different aspects in our about 30 interviews we did this week. >> Well, we're looking forward to more coverage, Stu, I want to thank you for great coverage, thank the guys here, we're going to be going and covering Cisco like a blanket, we're going to hit all their events, Cisco Lives in Barcelona and the US. We'll continue, got a great thing going on here with the DevNet and the DevNet Create events, look for those. Check out thecube.net for theCUBE schedule. But I also want to put a shout-out for the sponsors, if it wasn't for sponsors, we wouldn't be able to bring the great crew here. Want to thank NetApp as the headline sponsor. NetApp's FlexPod, great stuff, check it out, those guys got a new mojo going on with cloud, and on premise really creating a software model. And also, Cisco, IBM, LiveAction, and Avi Networks. Thanks so much for that community support, that sends a signal that you're investing in the codevelopment of content, it's great stuff. >> And John, yeah, actually, Cohesity and Presidio helping round that up, John. One of the highlights of the show had to be the Ludacris party. >> Yep, Cohesity's new funding, great concert. >> 250 million dollars, it's a ludicrous round. >> (laughs) Stu Miniman with his own meme. Thanks for watching, we are here at Cisco Live, that's a wrap-up for the show here on day three, I'm John here with Stu Miniman, thanks for watching. (electronic music)