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

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

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. Presenting Accelerating Automation with DevNet. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host. We've got a great conversation and a virtual event, Accelerating Automation with DevNet , Cisco DevNet. And of course we got the Cisco brain trust here. Cube alumni, Susie Wee, Vice President, Senior Vice President, GM, and also CTO of Cisco DevNet and Ecosystem Success CX, all that great stuff. Mandy Whaley, who's the Director, Senior Director of DevNet Certifications, And Eric Thiel, Director of Developer Advocacy, Susie, Mandy, Eric, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to see you, John. >> So we're not in person >> It's great to be here. >> We don't, can't be at the DevNet Zone. We can't be on site doing DevNet Create, all the great stuff we've been doing over the past few years. We're virtual, theCUBE virtual. Thanks for coming on. Susie, I got to ask you because you know, we've been talking years ago when you started this mission and just the success you had has been awesome, but DevNet Create has brought on a whole nother connective tissue to the DevNet community. This ties into the theme of accelerating automation with DevNet, because you said to me, I think four years ago, everything should be a service or XaaS as it's called (Susie laughs) and automation plays a critical role. Could you please share your vision because this is really important and still only five to 10% of the enterprises have containerized things. So there's a huge growth curve coming with developing and programmability. What's your vision? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we know is that as more and more businesses are coming online as, well I mean, they're all online, but as they're growing into the cloud, as they're growing in new areas, as we're dealing with security, as everyone's dealing with the pandemic, there's so many things going on. But what happens is, there's an infrastructure that all of this is built on and that infrastructure has networking, it has security, it has all of your compute and everything that's in there. And what matters is how can you take a business application and tie it to that infrastructure? How can you take, you know, customer data? How can you take business applications? How can you connect up the world securely and then be able to, you know, really satisfy everything that businesses need? And in order to do that, you know, the whole new tool that we've always talked about is that the network is programmable. The infrastructure is programmable, and you don't need just apps riding on top, but now they get to use all of that power of the infrastructure to perform even better. And in order to get there, what you need to do is automate everything. You can't configure networks manually. You can't be manually figuring out policies, but you want to use that agile infrastructure in which you can really use automation, you can rise to higher level business processes and tie all of that up and down the stack by leveraging automation. >> You know, I remember a few years ago when DevNet Create first started, I interviewed Todd Nightingale, and we were talking about Meraki, you know, not to get in the weeds about you know, switches and hubs and wireless. But if you look at what we were talking about then, this is kind of what's going on now. And we were just recently, I think our last physical event was at Cisco Europe in Barcelona before all the COVID hit. And you had >> Susie: Yeah. >> The massive cloud surge and scale happening going on, right when the pandemic hit. And even now more than ever the cloud scale, the modern apps, the momentum hasn't stopped because there's more pressure now to continue addressing more innovation at scale because the pressure to do that, because the businesses need to stay alive. >> Absolutely, yeah. >> I just want to get your thoughts on what's going on in your world, because you were there in person. Now we're six months in, scale is huge. >> We are. Yeah, absolutely. And what happened is as all of our customers, as businesses around the world, as we ourselves all dealt with, how do we run a business from home? You know, how do we keep people safe? How do we keep people at home and how do we work? And then it turns out, you know, business keeps rolling, but we've had to automate even more because you have to go home and then figure out how from home can I make sure that my IT infrastructure is automated? How from home can I make sure that every employee is out there and working safely and securely? You know, things like call center workers, which had to go into physical locations and be in kind of, you know, just, you know, blocked off rooms to really be secure with their company's information. They had to work from home. So we had to extend business applications to people's homes in countries like, you know, well around the world, but also in India where it was actually not, you know, not, they didn't have rules to let people work from home in these areas. So then what we had to do was automate everything and make sure that we could administer, you know, all of our customers could administer these systems from home. So that put extra stress on automation. It put extra stress on our customer's digital transformation and it just forced them to, you know, automate digitally transform quicker. And they had to, because you couldn't just go into a server room and tweak your servers, you had to figure out how to automate all of that. And we're still in that environment today. >> You know one of the hottest trends before the pandemic was observability, Kubernetes microservices. So those things, again, all DevOps and, you know, you guys got some acquisitions, you've bought ThousandEyes, you got a new one. You just bought recently PortShift to raise the game in security, Kuber and all these microservices. So observability super hot, but then people go work at home as you mentioned. How do you (chuckles) >> Yeah What are you observing? The network is under a huge pressure. I mean, it's crashing on people's Zooms and Web Ex's and education, huge amount of network pressure. How are people adapting to this in the app side? How are you guys looking at the, what's being programmed? What are some of the things that you're seeing with use cases around this programmability challenge and observability challenge that's such a huge deal? >> Yeah, absolutely. And you know, going back to Todd Nightingale, right? You know, back when we talked to Todd before, he had Meraki and he had designed this simplicity, this ease of use, this cloud managed, you know, doing everything from one central place. And now he has Cisco's entire enterprise and cloud business. So he is now applying that at that bigger, at that bigger scale for Cisco and for our customers. And he is building in the observability and the dashboards and the automation and the APIs into all of it. But when we take a look at what our customers needed is again, they had to build it all in. They had to build in. And what happened was how your network was doing, how secure your infrastructure was, how well you could enable people to work from home and how well you could reach customers. All of that used to be an IT conversation. It became a CEO and a board-level conversation. So all of a sudden, CEOs were actually, you know, calling on the Heads of IT and the CIO and saying, you know, "How's our VPN connectivity? Is everybody working from home? How many people are connected and able to work and what's their productivity?" So all of a sudden, all these things that were really infrastructure IT stuff became a board level conversation and, you know, once again, at first everybody was panicked and just figuring out how to get people working, but now what we've seen in all of our customers is that they are now building in automation and digital transformation and these architectures, and that gives them a chance to build in that observability, you know, looking for those events, the dashboards, you know, so it really has been fantastic to see what our customers are doing and what our partners are doing to really rise to that next level. >> Susie, I know you got to go, but real quick, describe what accelerating automation with DevNet means. >> (giggles)Well, you've been, you know, we've been working together on DevNet and the vision of the infrastructure programmability and everything for quite some time and the thing that's really happened is yes, you need to automate, but yes, it takes people to do that and you need the right skill sets and the programmability. So a networker can't be a networker. A networker has to be a network automation developer. And so it is about people and it is about bringing infrastructure expertise together with software expertise and letting people run things. Our DevNet community has risen to this challenge. People have jumped in, they've gotten their certifications. We have thousands of people getting certified. You know, we have, you know, Cisco getting certified. We have individuals, we have partners, you know, they're just really rising to the occasion. So accelerating automation, while it is about going digital. It's also about people rising to the level of, you know, being able to put infrastructure and software expertise together to enable this next chapter of business applications, of, you know, cloud directed businesses and cloud growth. So it actually is about people, just as much as it is about automation and technology. >> And we got DevNet Create right around the corner, Virtual, unfortunately, won't be in person, but will be virtual. Susie, thank you for your time. We're going to dig into those people challenges with Mandy and Eric. Thank you for coming on. I know you've got to go, but stay with us. We're going to dig in with Mandy and Eric. Thanks. >> Thank you so much. Have fun. >> Thank you. >> Thanks John. >> Okay. Mandy, you heard Susie, it's about people. And one of the things that's close to your heart, you've been driving as Senior Director of DevNet Certifications, is getting people leveled up. I mean the demand for skills, cybersecurity, network programmability, automation, network design, solution architect, cloud, multi-cloud design. These are new skills that are needed. Can you give us the update on what you're doing to help people get into the acceleration of automation game? >> Oh yes, absolutely. You know, what we've been seeing is a lot of those business drivers, that Susie was mentioning. Those are what's accelerating a lot of the technology changes and that's creating new job roles or new needs on existing job roles where they need new skills. We are seeing customers, partners, people in our community really starting to look at, you know, things like DevSecOps engineer, network automation engineer, network automation developer, which Susie mentioned, and looking at how these fit into their organization, the problems that they solve in their organization. And then how do people build the skills to be able to take on these new job roles or add that job role to their current scope and broaden out and take on new challenges. >> Eric, I want to go to you for a quick second on this piece of getting the certifications. First, before we get started, describe what your role is as Director of Developer Advocacy, because that's always changing and evolving. What's the state of it now because with COVID people are working at home, they have more time to contact Switch, and get some certifications and yet they can code more. What's your role? >> Absolutely. So it's interesting. It definitely is changing a lot. A lot of our, historically a lot of focus for my team has been on those outward events. So going to the DevNet Creates, the Cisco Lives and helping the community connect and to help share technical information with them, doing hands on workshops and really getting people into how do you really start solving these problems? So that's had to pivot quite a bit. Obviously Cisco Live US, we pivoted very quickly to a virtual event when conditions changed. And we're able to actually connect as we found out with a much larger audience. So, you know, as opposed to in person where you're bound by the parameters of, you know, how big the convention center is, we were actually able to reach a worldwide audience with our DevNet Day that was kind of attached onto Cisco Live. And we got great feedback from the audience that now we were actually able to get that same enablement out to so many more people that otherwise might not have been able to make it, but to your broader question of, you know, what my team does. So that's one piece of it is getting that information out to the community. So as part of that, there's a lot of other things we do as well. We are always helping out build new sandboxes, new learning labs, things like that, that they can come and get whenever they're looking for it out on the DevNet site. And then my team also looks after communities, such as the Cisco Learning Network where there's a huge community that has historically been there to support people working on their Cisco certifications. We've seen a huge shift now in that group, that all of the people that have been there for years are now looking at the DevNet certifications and helping other people that are trying to get onboard with programmability. They're taking a lot of those same community enablement skills and propping up the community with helping you answer questions, helping provide content. They've moved now into the DevNet space as well, and are helping people with that set of certifications. So it's great seeing the community come along and really see that. >> I got to ask you on the trends around automation, what skills and what developer patterns are you seeing with automation? Is there anything in particular, obviously network automation has been around for a long time. Cisco has been leader in that, but as you move up the stack as modern applications are building, do you see any patterns or trends around what is accelerating automation? What are people learning? >> Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned observability was big before COVID and we actually really saw that amplified during COVID. So a lot of people have come to us looking for insights. How can I get that better observability now that we need it while we're virtual. So that's actually been a huge uptick and we've seen a lot of people that weren't necessarily out looking for things before that are now figuring out' how can I do this at scale? And I think one good example that Susie was talking about the VPN example. And we actually had a number of SEs in the Cisco community that had customers dealing with that very thing where they very quickly had to ramp up. And one in particular actually wrote a bunch of automation to go out and measure all of the different parameters that IT departments might care about, about their firewalls, things that you didn't normally look at in the old days. You would size your firewalls based on, you know, assuming a certain number of people working from home. And when that number went to 100%, things like licenses started coming into play, where they needed to make sure they have the right capacity in their platforms that they weren't necessarily designed for. So one of the SEs actually wrote a bunch of code to go out, use some open source tooling to monitor and alert on these things and then published it, so the whole community could go out and get a copy of it, try it out in their own environment. And we saw a lot of interest around that in trying to figure out, okay, now I can take that and I can adapt it to what I need to see for my observability. >> That's great. Mandy, I want to get your thoughts on this too, because as automation continues to scale, it's going to be a focus and people are at home and you guys had a lot of content online for you recorded every session in the DevNet Zone. Learning's going on, sometimes linearly and non linearly. You got the certifications, which is great. That's key, great success there. People are interested, but what other learnings are you seeing? What are people doing? What's the top top trends? >> Yeah. So what we're seeing is like you said, people are at home, they've got time. They want to advance their skillset. And just like any kind of learning, people want choice they want to be able to choose what matches their time that's available and their learning style. So we're seeing some people who want to dive into full online study groups with mentors leading them through a study plan. And we have two new expert-led study groups like that. We're also seeing whole teams at different companies who want to do an immersive learning experience together with projects and office hours and things like that. And we have a new offer that we've been putting together for people who want those kinds of team experiences called Automation Bootcamp. And then we're also seeing individuals who want to be able to, you know, dive into a topic, do a hands-on lab, get some skills, go to the rest of the day of do their work and then come back the next day. And so we have really modular self-driven hands-on learning through the DevNet Fundamentals course, which is available through DevNet. And then there's also people who are saying, "I just want to use the technology. "I like to experiment and then go, you know, "read the instructions, read the manual, "do the deeper learning." And so they're spending a lot of time in our DevNet sandbox, trying out different technologies, Cisco technologies with open source technologies, getting hands-on and building things. And three areas where we're seeing a lot of interest in specific technologies. One is around SD-WAN. There's a huge interest in people skilling up there because of all the reasons that we've been talking about. Security is a focus area where people are dealing with new scale, new kinds of threats, having to deal with them in new ways. and then automating their data center using infrastructure as code type principles. So those are three areas where we're seeing a lot of interest and you'll be hearing some more about that at DevNet Create. >> Awesome. Eric and Mandy, if you guys can wrap up this Accelerating Automation with DevNet package and virtual event here and also tee up DevNet Create because DevNet Create has been a very kind of grassroots, organically building momentum over the years. And again, it's super important cause it's now the app world coming together with networking, you know, end to end programmability and with everything as a service that you guys are doing, everything with APIs, I only can imagine the enablement that's going to create. >> Mandy: Yeah >> Can you share the summary real quick on Accelerating Automation with DevNet and tee up DevNet Create. Mandy, we'll start with you. >> Yes, I'll go first and then Eric can close this out. So just like we've been talking about with you at every DevNet event over the past years, you know, DevNet's bringing APIs across our whole portfolio, and up and down the stack and Accelerating Automation with DevNet , Susie mentioned the people aspect of that. The people skilling up and how that transforms teams, And I think that it's all connected in how businesses are being pushed on their transformation because of current events. That's also a great opportunity for people to advance their careers and take advantage of some of that quickly changing landscape. And so what I think about Accelerating Automation with DevNet, it's about the DevNet community. It's about people getting those new skills and all the creativity and problem solving that will be unleashed by that community with those new skills. >> Eric, take us home here, Accelerating Automation with DevNet and DevNet Create, a lot of developer action going on in Cloud Native right now, your thoughts. >> Absolutely. I think it's exciting. I mentioned the transition to virtual for DevNet Day this year, for Cisco Live and we're seeing, we're able to leverage it even further with Create this year. So, whereas it used to be, you know, confined by the walls that we were within for the event. Now we're actually able to do things like we're adding the Start Now track for people that want to be there. They want to be a developer, a network automation developer for instance, we've now got a track just for them where they can get started and start learning some of the skills they'll need, even if some of the other technical sessions were a little bit deeper than what they were ready for. So I love that we're able to bring that together with the experienced community that we usually do from across the industry bringing us all kinds of innovative talks, talking about ways that they're leveraging technology, leveraging the cloud to do new and interesting things to solve their business challenges. So I'm really excited to bring that whole mix together, as well as getting some of our business units together too and talk straight from their engineering departments. What are they doing? What are they seeing? What are they thinking about when they're building new APIs into their platforms? What problems are they hoping that customers will be able to solve with them? So I think together seeing all of that and then bringing the community together from all of our usual channels. So like I said, Cisco learning network, we've got a ton of community coming together, sharing their ideas and helping each other grow those skills. I see nothing but acceleration ahead of us for automation. >> Awesome. Thanks so much. >> I would >> Go ahead, Mandy. >> Can I add one more thing? >> Add one more thing. >> Yeah, I was just going to say the other really exciting thing about Create this year with the virtual nature of it is that it's happening in three regions and you know, we're so excited to see the people joining from all the different regions and content and speakers and the regions stepping up to have things personalized to their area, to their community. And so that's a whole new experience for DevNet Create that's going to be fantastic this year. >> Yeah, that's it. I was going to close out and just put the final bow on that by saying that you guys have always been successful with great content focused on the people in the community. I think now during, with this virtual DevNet, virtual DevNet create virtual theCUBE virtual, I think we're learning new things. People are working in teams and groups and sharing content, we're going to learn new things. We're going to try new things and ultimately people will rise up and will be resilient. And I think when you have this kind of opportunity, it's really fun. And we'll ride the wave with you guys. >> So thank you so much (Susie laughs) for taking the time to come on theCUBE and talk about your awesome Accelerating Automation and DevNet Create Looking forward to it, thank you. >> Thank you so much, >> All right, thanks a lot. >> Happy to be here. >> Okay, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE virtual here in Palo Alto studios doing the remote content and men, we stay virtual until we're face to face. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you at DevNet Create. Thanks for watching. (upbeat outro) >> Controller: Okay John, Here we go, John. Here we go. John, we're coming to you in five, four, three, two. >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host. We've got a great conversation and a virtual event, Accelerating Automation with DevNet, Cisco DevNet. And of course we got the Cisco brain trust here. Cube alumni, Susie Wee, Senior Vice President GM and also CTO at Cisco DevNet and Ecosystem Success CX, all that great stuff. Mandy Whaley, who's the Director, Senior Director of DevNet Certifications, and Eric Thiel, Director of Developer Advocacy. Susie, Mandy, Eric, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to see you, John. So we're not in person. >> It's great to be here >> We don't, can't be at the DevNet zone. We can't be on site doing DevNet Create, all the great stuff we've been doing over the past few years. We're virtual, theCUBE virtual. Thanks for coming on. Susie, I got to ask you because you know, we've been talking years ago when you started this mission and just the success you had has been awesome. But DevNet Create has brought on a whole nother connective tissue to the DevNet community. This ties into the theme of Accelerating Automation with DevNet, because you said to me, I think four years ago, everything should be a service or XaaS as it's called. And automation plays (Susie laughs) a critical role. Could you please share your vision because this is really important and still only five to 10% of the enterprises have containerized things. So there's a huge growth curve coming with developing and programmability. What's your vision? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we know is that as more and more businesses are coming online as ,well I mean, they're all online, but as they're growing into the cloud, as they're growing in new areas, as we're dealing with security, as everyone's dealing with the pandemic, there's so many things going on, but what happens is there's an infrastructure that all of this is built on and that infrastructure has networking. It has security. It has all of your compute and everything that's in there. And what matters is how can you take a business application and tie it to that infrastructure? How can you take, you know, customer data? How can you take business applications? How can you connect up the world securely and then be able to, you know, really satisfy everything that businesses need. And in order to do that, you know, the whole new tool that we've always talked about is that the network is programmable. The infrastructure is programmable and you don't need just apps riding on top, but now they get to use all of that power of the infrastructure to perform even better. And in order to get there, what you need to do is automate everything. You can't configure networks manually. You can't be manually figuring out policies, but you want to use that agile infrastructure in which you can really use automation. You can rise to higher level business processes and tie all of that up and down the stack by leveraging automation. >> You know, I remember a few years ago when DevNet Create first started, I interviewed Todd Nightingale and we were talking about Meraki, you know, not to get in the weeds, but you know, switches and hubs and wireless. But if you look at what we were talking about then, this is kind of what's going on now. And we were just recently, I think our last physical event was Cisco Europe in Barcelona before all the COVID hit. And you had this massive cloud surge and scale happening going on right when the pandemic hit. And even now more than ever, the cloud scale, the modern apps, the momentum hasn't stopped because there's more pressure now to continue addressing more innovation at scale because the pressure to do that because the businesses need >> Absolutely. >> to stay alive. I just want to get your thoughts on what's going on in your world, because you were there in person now we're six months in scale is huge. >> We are. Yeah, absolutely. And what happened is, as all of our customers, as businesses around the world, as we ourselves all dealt with, how do we run a business from home? You know, how do we keep people safe? How do we keep people at home and how do we work? And then it turns out, you know, business keeps rolling, but we've had to automate even more because you have to go home and then figure out how from home, can I make sure that my IT infrastructure is automated? How from home can I make sure that every employee is out there and working safely and securely, you know, things like call center workers, which had to go into physical locations and be in kind of, you know, just, you know, blocked off rooms to really be secure with their company's information. They had to work from home. So we had to extend business applications to people's homes in countries like, you know, well around the world, but also in India where it was actually not, you know, not, they wouldn't let, they didn't have rules to let people work from home in these areas. So then what we had to do was automate everything and make sure that we could administer, you know, all of our customers could administer these systems from home. So that put extra stress on automation. It put extra stress on our customer's digital transformation and it just forced them to, you know, automate, digitally transform quicker. And they had to, because you couldn't just go into a server room and tweak your servers, you had to figure out how to automate all of that. And we're still all in that environment today. >> You know one of the hottest trends before the pandemic was observability, Kubernetes microservices. So those things, again, all DevOps and you know, you guys got some acquisitions, you bought ThousandEyes, you got a new one. You just bought recently PortShift to raise the game in security, Kuber and all these microservices. So observability is super hot, but then people go work at home as you mentioned. How do you observe, what are you observing? The network is under a huge pressure. I mean, it's crashing on people's Zooms and Web Ex's and education, huge amount of network pressure. How are people adapting to this in the app side? How are you guys looking at the, what's being programmed? What are some of the things that you're seeing with use cases around this programmability challenge and observability challenges? It's a huge deal. >> Yeah, absolutely. And you know, going back to Todd Nightingale, right? You know, back when we talked to Todd before he had Meraki and he had designed this simplicity, this ease of use, this cloud managed, you know, doing everything from one central place. And now he has Cisco's entire enterprise and cloud business. So he is now applying that at that bigger scale for Cisco and for our customers and he is building in the observability and the dashboards and the automation and the APIs into all of it. But when we take a look at what our customers needed is again, they had to build it all in. They had to build in. And what happened was how your network was doing, how secure your infrastructure was, how well you could enable people to work from home and how well you could reach customers. All of that used to be an IT conversation. It became a CEO and a board level conversation. So all of a sudden CEOs were actually, you know, calling on the heads of IT and the CIO and saying, you know, how's our VPN connectivity? Is everybody working from home. How many people are you know, connected and able to work and what's their productivity? So all of a sudden, all these things that were really infrastructure IT stuff became a board level conversation. And, you know once again, at first everybody was panicked and just figuring out how to get people working. But now what we've seen in all of our customers is that they are now building in automation and digital transformation and these architectures, and that gives them a chance to build in that observability, you know, looking for those events, the dashboards, you know, so it really has been fantastic to see what our customers are doing and what our partners are doing to really rise to that next level. >> Susie, I know you got to go, but real quick, describe what Accelerating Automation with DevNet means. >> (laughs) Well, you know, we've been working together on DevNet in the vision of the infrastructure programmability and everything for quite some time. And the thing that's really happened is yes, you need to automate, but yes, it takes people to do that and you need the right skill sets and the programmability. So a networker can't be a networker. A networker has to be a network automation developer. And so it is about people and it is about bringing infrastructure expertise together with software expertise and letting people run things. Our DevNet community has risen to this challenge. People have jumped in, they've gotten their certifications. We have thousands of people getting certified. You know, we have, you know, Cisco getting certified. We have individuals, we have partners, you know, they're just really rising to the occasion. So accelerating automation, while it is about going digital, it's also about people rising to the level of, you know, being able to put infrastructure and software expertise together to enable this next chapter of business applications, of you know, cloud directed businesses and cloud growth. So it actually is about people just as much as it is about automation and technology. >> And we got DevNet Create right around the corner virtual, unfortunately won't be in person, but will be virtual. Susie, thank you for your time. We're going to dig into those people challenges with Mandy and Eric. Thank you for coming on. I know got to go, but stay with us. We're going to dig in with Mandy and Eric. Thanks. >> Thank you so much. Have fun. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, John. >> Okay, Mandy, you heard Susie, it's about people. And one of the things that's close to your heart you've been driving is, as senior director of DevNet Certifications is getting people leveled up. I mean the demand for skills, cybersecurity, network programmability, automation, network design, solution architect, cloud multicloud design. These are new skills that are needed. Can you give us the update on what you're doing to help people get into the acceleration of automation game? >> Oh yes, absolutely. You know, what we've been seeing is a lot of those business drivers that Susie was mentioning. Those are what's accelerating a lot of the technology changes and that's creating new job roles or new needs on existing job roles where they need new skills. We are seeing customers, partners, people in our community really starting to look at, you know, things like DevSecOps engineer, network automation engineer, network automation developer which Susie mentioned, and looking at how these fit into their organization, the problems that they solve in their organization. And then how do people build the skills to be able to take on these new job roles or add that job role to their current scope and broaden out and take on new challenges. And this is why we created the DevNet certification. Several years ago, our DevNet community, who's been some of those engineers who have been coming into that software and infrastructure side and meeting. They ask us to help create a more defined pathway to create resources, training, all the things they would need to take all those steps to go after those new jobs. >> Eric, I want to go to you for a quick second on this piece of getting the certifications. First, before we get started, describe what your role is as Director of Developer Advocacy, because that's always changing and evolving. What's the state of it now because with COVID people are working at home, they have more time to contact Switch, and get some certifications and yet they can code more. What's your role >> Absolutely. So it's interesting. It definitely is changing a lot. A lot of our, historically a lot of focus for my team has been on those outward events. So going to the DevNet Creates, the Cisco Lives and helping the community connect and to help share technical information with them, doing hands-on workshops and really getting people into how do you really start solving these problems? So that's had to pivot quite a bit. Obviously Cisco Live US, we pivoted very quickly to a virtual event when conditions changed and we were able to actually connect as we found out with a much larger audience. So, you know, as opposed to in-person where you're bound by the parameters of you know, how big the convention center is. We were actually able to reach a worldwide audience with our DevNet Day that was kind of attached onto Cisco Live. And we got great feedback from the audience that now we were actually able to get that same enablement out to so many more people that otherwise might not have been able to make it, but to your broader question of, you know, what my team does. So that's one piece of it is getting that information out to the community. So as part of that, there's a lot of other things we do as well. We were always helping out build new sandboxes new learning labs, things like that, that they can come and get whenever they're looking for it out on the DevNet site. And then my team also looks after communities such as the Cisco Learning Network where there's a huge community that has historically been there to support people working on their Cisco certifications. And we've seen a huge shift now in that group that all of the people that have been there for years are now looking at the DevNet certifications and helping other people that are trying to get on board with programmability, they're taking a lot of those same community enablement skills and propping up the community with, you know, helping answer questions, helping provide content. They've moved now into the DevNet space as well, and are helping people with that set of certifications. So it's great seeing the community come along and really see that. >> Yeah, I mean, it's awesome, and first of all, you guys done a great job. I'm always impressed when we were at physical events in the DevNet Zone, just the learning, the outreach. Again, very open, collaborative, inclusive, and also, you know, you had one-on-one classes and talks to full blown advanced, (sneezes)Had to sneeze there >> Yeah, and that's the point. >> (laughs)That was coming out, got to cut that out. I love prerecords. >> Absolutely. >> That's never happened to me to live by the way. I've never sneezed live on a thousand--. (Eric laughs) >> You're allergic to me. >> We'll pick up. >> It happens. >> So Eric, so I got to ask you on the trends around automation, what skills and what developer patterns are you seeing with automation? Is there anything in particular? Obviously network automation has been around for a long time. Cisco has been a leader in that, but as you move up the stack, as modern applications are building, do you see any patterns or trends around what is accelerating automation? What are people learning? >> Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned observability was big before COVID and we actually really saw that amplified during COVID. So a lot of people have come to us looking for insights. How can I get that better observability now that we need it while we're virtual. So that's actually been a huge uptick. And we've seen a lot of people that weren't necessarily out looking for things before that are now figuring out how can I do this at scale? And I think one good example that Susie was talking about the VPN example. And we actually had a number of SEs in the Cisco community that had customers dealing with that very thing where they very quickly had to ramp up. And one in particular actually wrote a bunch of automation to go out and measure all of the different parameters that IT departments might care about, about their firewalls, things that you didn't normally look at in the old days, you would size your firewalls based on, you know, assuming a certain number of people working from home. And when that number went to 100%, things like licensing started coming into play, where they needed to make sure they had the right capacity in their platforms that they weren't necessarily designed for. So one of the SEs actually wrote a bunch of code to go out, used some open source tooling to monitor and alert on these things and then published it, so the whole community could go out and get a copy of it, try it out in their own environment. And we saw a lot of interest around that in trying to figure out, okay, now I can take that and I can adapt it to what I need to see for my observability. >> That's huge and you know, you brought up this sharing concept. I mean, one of the things that's interesting is you've got more sharing going on. >> Controller: John, let's pause right here. Let's pause right here. I'm going to try and bring Eric and Mandy and everybody out. And then just start right from here to bring Eric and Mandy back in and close up. Stand by Eric just hold tight. >> All right, hold on >> Controller: just for one moment. Hold tight, we got Mandy back >> Controller: Standby. Standby. Standby. Standby, standby, standby. Hold hold hold.

>>live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the Cube covering Cisco Live 2020 right to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back to the Cisco Live 2020 show in Barcelona, Spain. It's the Cube's live coverage. Four days of action. I'm John Furrier with my co host, Dave Vellante. Stew Minimum is in the house. We've been really interview all the thought. Leads all the action here in the DEV. Net zone of Cisco. We're here with Susie Wee, who's the senior vice president, chief technology officer and general manager of Cisco's DEV. Net and C X ecosystem success. Susie, great to see you again, Thanks to you. With our third year we've been we've been watching the growth of definite explode and definite create a separate event for developers. Great to see you. >>Great to see you. Great to be here. >>So how does it feel to be on a wave of success? You've had quite an impact in the industry, and I think the biggest story that's going on in the industry is the role of developers. You guys have embraced that four years ago, brought it all together and really just been marching to the cadence of just humble training, education and programming, all the Cisco products enabling what it looks like to be the future of Cisco. >>Yeah, I mean, it's it's humbling, t So you know what's been really great? It's really all about our community. And, you know, I mean, you guys have jumped in, been with us on this journey. You've seen it like all around us in terms of how it's progressed. But what's interesting is that, you know, networkers the software developers, the Dev Ops pros that people who are coming into definite really progressing, they're getting to the next level. And then we have more and more new people coming in. And what happens is the technology keeps advancing right. So networking, security going toe intent based networking, multi domain. How do you integrate these things? Cognitive collaboration. I o t an edge, you know, edge computing. As all of this comes together, you get to a really interesting place. But what happens is we have to think about I t department networking departments like how do people use this to their advantage? Right. So there's actually users of people who install and run these things and how do they make that available and actually get a business advantage out of that infrastructure? That's what this is all about. >>And the big scene. Wendy on the opening keynote, kicked off before David came on. She had a slide that I thought encapsulate what I think the future of all business and you guys have been on and on and on, a reference that it was people in communities, business model and business operations almost like a three legged stool. You've been on this because your team Michael was on the Cube just now said people have been in their careers on Cisco. But Cisco is betting the business on the people, that ecosystem, it's developers. CC III is the certifications. This dynamic of the role of the people is critical, >>and they're driving >>the change >>it is. And you know what was tremendous about Cisco's business model and how Cisco was founded. So this was pre me, you know, and it's just the brilliance of the early folks is like Cisco made this router, you know? It was a little start up. It was like five people, right? And then it started flying off the shelf in the mid eighties in late eighties when the Internet started taking off, and then the way they scale that out was by growing the community, they didn't say We're going to hire people around the world to install these networks. We're gonna create a community of professionals who can go around and install these networks. And then we're going to create a partner ecosystem of partners who are going to build businesses around this, installing networks for customers. And so really, Cisco very early on, learn that we had to be very customer focused and build with an ecosystem of partners. And then we created Cisco Certification Program, and that started to take the people who are getting trained to do networking and give them certifications. And then they were able to get jobs in customers and partners and build their careers. And so now we move that to today, and we're continuing with that philosophy and doubling down. It's about them, except there's a shift in technology. So the network has changed. It's not the same old network like now. There's new capabilities that require software. It requires dev ops. It requires applications to hit the infrastructure it requires. I T and Infrastructure to solve business problems. But we need to bring the people along and doing that, and that is absolutely what we've been about. >>I said in my breaking analysis there were there were many things that helped Cisco rise with the three things like pointed out where the bet on I p, the M and A and then I was too narrow. I liked how you describe it as the community, but really talking about the Army of trained engineers that were advocates. And you're extending that to the partner ecosystem. What's interesting about watching this rise over the faster uses? Not only transformation of Cisco from hardware to software and now even business transformation is you see, I t go from a cost center to a profit center, but you're sort of following that track. I don't know if you're leading it are following it sort of incompetent what's going on. And, >>you know, I would say >>that we're doing both because, uh, obviously we're listening to customers and partners all the time to see what do you need? So we're listening, and that would make us leading as we're sorry. Following is >>we're >>listening and yet we're creating technology to enable them to do these new things right? So there's a reason that you can think about the network to be solving business problems. It's because we made the networking programmable and based on software. If we didn't make it software, it would still be running the old way. And it wouldn't be able to play in a Dev ops loop or be automated or anything there. So I would say that it's very combined. But Cisco takes a holistic approach right back there. We have an I T managers forum where there are people who are trying to say, Hey, you know, I've been leading technology teams in I T. But I need to learn how to talk to the business, right? So there's a transformation that needs to happen, which is okay, The technologist networkers I t folks themselves need to learn about software. But then also, these folks and their managers need to be able to talk to the business and think differently. So take some design thinking. Think about what are the business stakeholders problems where customers problems, how can I make my technology work for them? So we really have a lot going on Teoh building the kind of success of our ecosystem. >>Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned technology shift, and that's causing a lot of change is actually how people are certified business models. And it's interesting. When we were chatting years ago, Dev. Ops was actually out there. The hyper scales around you saw it evolving was pretty clear to a lot of the insiders. That's Dev Ops. Infrastructure is code. Then you kicked on something where programmable networks I heard this week, and this is kind of again goes to the next level and kind of connect the dots. Biz Dev. Ops. So the AB dynamics guys, look at this as OK. So this agile attitude yes, has been on for a while. Could you comment? I think >>a lot of people that >>are looking at Cisco trying to understand its evolution where it's gonna go >>yeah, >>is rooted in years ago. A shift in thinking, yes, and it's an agile It's a dev ops mindset, >>yes, but >>the Dev ops notion from whether it's pure Dev ops, cloud native or Dev ops or Biz Dev ops >>for what's next? So this is a It's been around for a while. You just share your Yeah, Absolutely. So >>I have a slide and we don't show slides here, which is a good thing. But it was called it the hamburger slide. So the hamburger slide, where there would be infrastructure and the applications. And then there's this other layer appear business, you know. And basically, what happens is the infrastructure became programmable, so as opposed to the infrastructure and the applications being separate, the I T teams did the infrastructure of the app Dev did. The businesses did the APS. Then now that the infrastructure's family can get into a dev ops workflow. So for cloud applications, the APS and the infrastructure can really mix. And now the network is programmable. So there's Net Dev ops. And it's not just compute that can get into Dev ops. But you know, the network can too. But then, now that business layer can flow into this. And so what happens is once again, you could say that cloud enables business, right? And so, if you know, a business is trying to say, how do I compete like a retail store? How my completing with a cloud competitors. Well, you have to embrace it. Take your traditional infrastructure, your customer data your stores, but then mix that with cloud offerings. That's a huge transformation that needs to happen. But now there's even more capabilities. As you're saying, Hey, I'm like a coffee shop and I'm rolling out all of these stores. How do I make sure my business applications get there? How do I get customer intelligence and business intelligence together so my workers can serve my customers with the right knowledge and information they need so you can actually use the infrastructure and APS as an advantage in how you serve your business? And you wouldn't even be able to do those things if you didn't know about the technology. So I would say that there's like a workforce trend where technology is enabling business and it can grow your business in different ways. But we need to make sure that we can express that because the technologist doesn't usually talk in terms of the business. But that's where all the value >>on the application has always been. That point of business value in connection to the business when the APP is the infrastructure has been removed from that now that the infrastructure's becoming programmable. It's embedded into that application, and developers can now add value on top of it. I mean, the striking thing to me was just behind us, to seeing a number of your customers lining up to learn how to code in Python. And then I o t was off the charts. And I've always been saying that Look at the edge is going to be one by developers E. I think you really got that right. I'm curious as to why you think just really is the one company in a large, established player. That is, I think, figured it out that I've said that many have tried throwing money at the problem, reaching out to developers fallen flat. I mean, even very successful software companies were struggling. Why do you think Cisco has had successes? Is a culture is at the leverage of that certification and community that you talked about earlier? >>Yeah, it's while it's really hard to say, like one reason why, because these air tricky things, like so taking on a new business strategy, getting everybody aligned in a big company, even in a little company, is hard, but it takes like everybody pushing towards the direction and what happens is different. People get it at different times. So obviously with Dev net, we're trying to push something along. The CEO Chuck Robbins. He got it and he was pushing it. And then the businesses and product teams. Some of them had a P I first, and some of them did not. But now more and more on almost all of them do. Now. All the products have AP eyes and they're getting more AP I first and now what we're doing is aligning AP eyes across the portfolio. You need to get your sales teams to understand and to engage. Like the regions. We have people in Italy who are engaging with the Italian community. We have our seas around the world that are basically engaging the people in each of their countries to evangelize it in tow, work with customers and partners in their local language is using this material to get them on board. So, you know, when we started, Definite Way had different ways we could take it. No one defined a developer program for a company like Cisco before, like a networking company, but we actually didn't do it by saying, Oh, we're only gonna talk to application developers and ignore those old networkers We said we're going to make them core and bring them along and bring in the captives and bring them together. I wouldn't say we're gonna, like, forget about the old Cisco products We said we're gonna work with them as they add AP eyes and make that better. We're gonna ignore our sales guys and the ones that we're going to bring them along and make them our evangelists and advocates to work with the region. So we kind of use the whole fabric along with it and just I kind of gained. The community >>recognized the appetite for building, and some people are like, >>I'm going to jump in and give this a try because I think it's important and something like, I'm gonna wait and see and they're like, Oh, it's something now, Okay, now I'll jump in and we're like, >>That's right, >>you're totally We do a lot of Cuban. It is many different events here at Cisco over the years. It's interesting to see when people get in and you can see it when their eyes pop up. Oh, I get it. It is a progression of whether they're orientation, what their background is. But it seems to me the early people who click it on it is our systems thinkers. Most of the techies, they're systems systems, folks. Yeah, they see as a system not as one thing. Yes, As you said, it's not just absent infrastructure. So a lot of the system guys get it first. And then on the business side, they see it from more of the making money. So you see the impact of the application changing the business model. It's a retail app or whatever they get it. That that's gonna be the future. Yeah, it depends on where you're coming from. >>It does. It does. And what's interesting is to >>see how this community has evolved and actually, how we've evolved to be able to support people along the way. So as you remember, when you were first year, it was really some techies who realized they needed to learn something new. So is about learning about software and AP eyes. And then we evolved. It became about coding. So how do we use a definite automation exchange in code exchange to use a software based model to build community code around networking use cases because they wanted to use it and get it into use cases. And then now we have people are like, Okay, I'm doing it, I get it. But I can't get my business leaders to understand. So now we're actually helping them express the business case and create use cases that solve business problems more directly, so >>your access to customer success >>and customer success. So now explain that piece. What is that? How >>to be successful at training is everything >>customer direction. What is that piece? So s >>o me and my team were Cisco employees, and sometimes I mean, this doesn't get represented, but we move around the York, so you know, as different things change. And so there's a recent move where it has been in the engineering team. I've now moved into the customer experience organization. We're doing a transformation like a customer experience, customer success, transformation for Cisco and so you know, as we think about that. Well, first of all, Cisco's always been customer oriented, But what does this mean in a world of software in world of partners? ecosystems with the products and opportunities we have now. And so, as we're gearing towards this kind of customer success and customer experience model, is that, you know, they're trying to do a transformation, and it's actually very similar to what Dev Net has already done, which is specifically, let's see. So when you engage with a company on new technology, we can say Okay, come here to the DEV Net Zone and learn about the AP eyes, you know. But as you're working with a customer and you say, Hey, you know you're from the customer, let's go on this journey together. Did you know that we have AP eyes? Let's learn about AP eyes. >>And did you know that >>this product performs this function? But it also has AP eyes. So let's teach you about those. Then you learn a different aspect of the product that you might not have thought about before because you're like, Oh, it can be a platform and then you say, Hey, and you know you need to solve automation. This can be used to solve automation, and so then you're like, Oh, I'm thinking about automation, but how do I do it? so you can't have just one product. That's >>that's a progression that depends on what the customer's orientation is, whether environment looks like >>so it >>means, like start to evolve and think about their problem. Actually, their problem is automation. Their problem is not using this product right. They're trying to solve a bigger product and hopefully this is a bigger business problem or an automation problem. And this product is a piece of the puzzle into it. So we want to kind of engage in the full discussion from what is your need, an automation and then work backwards toe like, How can this product help? And so it's kind of like turning things upside down and ensuring the customer uses. And, you know, we understand their business problem. We're helping them solve it. And this is how these products can play a role in helping you achieve that >>in every business is looking at that from the corner office. They all want to drive automation into their business. They're looking at okay, if the economy turns out more automation, whether it's you know, you see an R P. A takeoff is the cloud is supporting that, Yeah, it's a big trend >>is huge, and it's, you know, and actually moving to an automation infrastructure. It's not like buy a new product and you've automated and you're done. It's actually very hard, and it requires an architectural shift. It means, like I'm going to start to build telemetry, analyze data and get insights from it. Well, if you don't have that implemented somewhere, then you need to architect for them. And then once you start building into that and seeing dashboards and then connecting that into other business APS, then you start to go further and further so every step along the way, we want to get them closer to an automation architecture. But that takes work, >>and it's cultural as well as people hear automation. If it well, that's my job and so >>little >>education. And then once they see it, Oh, you mean I could get rid of all these things I don't like to do, and I can do this instead. Then they really lean in and create new value. >>Yeah, So what we're getting at is this, like, really interesting. I'll call it a new technology trend of looking at kind of automation, plus Ai together, right? And so I've been talking about it out here in some places, which is now we've been talking about automation. We've been talking about AI. You look at these together. There's a set of people who are like, Let's think about what automation means. It could mean Oh my gosh, someone's going to take my job away. I don't need people anymore That would be called like autonomous. And there's some things that you do want to make autonomous and work themselves. But then you can also look at kind of assisting humans. Right? So assisting like, what are you trying to do? Roll out configurations across different places and get them set up where we can automate that and you can assist a human? And being able to do it on this next age is augmenting humans. What is there that a person really couldn't do that they can do now in a night? Example of that is, you know, you take a look at threat intelligence and security going around the world. Cisco has products around the world that are looking for security threats. You put those together, you can see a threat before it comes to a customer environment and say, Hey, we found this threat. We better shut it down over in your system to make sure you're blocked and protected from it. You've augmented human capability, you know, using automation and AI. >>You know, one of the things a lot of companies do is they focus on a big wave and they focus on it. They get on that new wave. Cisco's on a lot of different ways. You got I, O. T. And Security, which you were talking about. This kubernetes and Cloud native is like all these collaboration. They're all their own big waves coming. So I have to ask you because you've been so successful, definite and then a great leader in the industry with all your experience. What's your vision as this comes in? Because Cisco is that one of the benefits uniquely positioned with all the complexity, all the opportunities to the Dev ops, like across the board up and down the stack, these waves are coming. It's not just one. You have a focus on kubernetes. You got a focus on security. There's all these different big things that you guys are working on. What's your vision >>on how >>this all plays out >>like so while there's different, there's different things going on kubernetes and cloud. You know, we're doing networking. What's going on in I O. T and Edge Computing and the Future of Cognitive Collaboration and AI and ML, And you know all of this kind of thing a security I don't actually view them as separate. Actually view them is all part of a bigger system, right? They're part of a platform that's trying to solve a bigger problem, >>and the secret is AP ice. So it's actually a >>combination of architecture in AP eyes and how this works is a fabric together and you know there's benefit. Like if you're trying to do security, sure, you can use security products to do security. But why don't you also use network segmentation to do security, like literally segment out pieces of the network and, you know, data and APS that should not be talking to other places and use that for security? So, you know, I kind of view it is all working together towards a bigger architecture because you're using Ap eyes. You can start to put these things together and start to apply policies across these different domains. So this kind of whole new area, another new technology trend, is looking at multi domain opportunities and cross architecture. So that's really key >>in the data that you get out of that as well, right? Data and metadata that you can analyze and then act upon. Yes, Dr. Inside >>multi domain, multi clouds Having >>data models, right? Look at how do you take, you know, so that all these different systems are adding up to a everything you need to create data models that these different applications can kind of pour into >>that used to be locked inside of a box. Sitting in >>these types of application would have its own >>kind of model, But we're really all working towards the bigger thing in software that lets you down in >>the silicon is a great thing to get so looking One coming, Yes, moving from the box of the chip. Yeah, not a bad strategy. >>Super interesting. So, yeah, >>if you look at, you know, where are the bottlenecks in this? And this is where you need to rethink what your business strategy is. And it's just like you down in the optics down at that layer is where the big opportunities are. And if we can differentiate and provide value in that space, then that's what we've done. We >>were riffing the other night in the taxi came in I said, The day of Digital and digital, which is the Internet's all digital. Now the business model is the killer app, and we're just more of a provocative statement like, What are you trying to dio with that? What all this is? What's the purpose of all this? >>Yeah, I >>have a business model that actually works. >>It is, But it is, Yeah, >>and what's interesting about the business model? Also, to think about that? It's not just your own business model. It's again. That's where that's why I called our new group ecosystem success. It's what you do, you know. And there's this whole model of success, meaning you your customer, your supply chain up above you and then how you deliver. But it's east west now, too, right? It's like, How does your innovation work with your partner's innovation? Another area that and how did this all happen together? Like, how do you take trends in security and advances there and, you know, in workforce and people. And as you take a look at, you know, everything that's happening in cloud and then intersect so that we're all successful >>and it's enabled by what you're saying before automation and AI obviously supported by Cloud AP eyes and data across that system that you guys were talking >>about, I think that I think the bumper sticker for Cisco's Cisco connects businesses because that's really what you're doing. >>There we go way >>shut up for the 1st 500 >>Yes, yes, yes. So yes. So some of the big news over here is that well, in this >>world of where the infrastructure becomes programmable. So what Cisco's had a long time is Cisco's sort of certification program. So we have ccn a Cisco Certified Network Associates. Si Si n Pi's CC III is the expert level, and that's been an industry standard for the last 26 years, and people have job roles. They've gotten promotions, they get recognized, their certified for delivering quality, and what we've introduced is the definite certifications. So, in addition to the engineering certifications or the software certifications and Devon, it's kind of growing to the next level. By so far, everybody who's been in here has been into definite because of their hearts and because they knew they had to learn anything. But now we're giving them a certification so they can be recognized as their efforts, and we're expanding Cisco certification to cover it. Now. This represents the move of engineering plus software together in your I T teams and together for your technology teams and the new certifications. The definite set of Cisco Live February 24th the 1st 500 people to earn a definite certification. We're going to call the definite 500. And >>so they want to be the first >>ones who are really stepping forward in this new industrial shift towards combining engineering and software, making the world of the infrastructure talking to business and driving business happen. >>Well, we'd love to be First, get a list of >>thousands of people 500 seats that will take. We'll take the 501st 10,000 in the 1,000,000 I dive >>Heard Susie. Some Cisco VP's want to get into that 500. >>They yes, Gamification. >>Always a good strategy, Susie. Great to watch your successes with folks watching, seeing definitely come from an idea execution and now core to the business model's been quite an evolution. Congratulations. Always success. >>Thank you. And thank you for joining us on this journey. >>So we've been working together on it. >>We've learned a lot. It's been so much fun. We're in the DEV Net zone. I'm John Furrier Dave Vellante with Susie Wee, the chief of the definite team and the big zones gets bigger every year. And the cube's getting big air thanks to you and the team. Appreciate it is to keep more live coverage from Barcelona. Cisco live 2020 after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California. It's theCUBE! Covering CISCO Live, US, 2019. Brought to you by CISCO and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE live at CISCO Live in San Diego, I'm Lisa Martin and I did a little switcharoo on you guys, I decided to upgrade my co-host! Susie Wee is my co-host, the SVP and CTO of DevNet. Susie it's great to have you here! >> Thank you it's great to be on this side of the table! >> It's exciting, I'm among CISCO royalty, and partner royalty. So to my right is Ramon Alvarez, the director of strategy and business development for Samsung, Ramon welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you! >> And one of our alumni, it's great to have you back as well Matt McPherson the wireless CTO from CISCO, Matt welcome back! >> Glad to be here! >> So we're on the DevNet zone. Susie the last three days have been electric to say the least. The energy, the interest, what you guys have built, you can feel it I mean I was telling you, from 9:30 this morning we started to have to yell into our microphones because there was so much interest I every session here. We've been talking a lot about WIFI6. >> Yep! >> The capabilities, the excitement, the opportunities that it brings. It's so exciting! >> It's so exciting! >> So we've had just all of the excitement around WIFI6, around 5G, we know that here at the DevNet zone we've been really pushing forward with our developers, the programmability of the network. But what we wanted to do here today is to bring you some of the making of WIFI6 and some of the making of 5G that happens and what's interesting is CISCO as a networking company, has been working very closely with Samsung as a overall networking company as a device manufacturer, and basically as we've been together to develop WIFI6 and 5G, Ramon and Matt have been working together as we created all of that technology and had some interesting releases. So we thought it would be great to just kind of share what's going on here. >> Awesome, super exciting. Matt let's start with you talk to us about this creation that you guys are doing, leveraging the power of WIFI6. >> Well you know WIFI6 it's really revolutionary compared to what we're sed to when it comes to WiFi. It's really broadening the market, this capability to do more deterministic type applications and services, we're really excited about it. Everybody that supplied WiFi has the positives and have had the struggles and as we go into this next generation we can actually make it easier as we add intelligence to the network. But of course when you make this type of transition, what happens? New technology, new standards, and so there's always these little rough edges in getting that new technology out. So what we did is we reached out to our good partners here in Samsung and we started this very early, you're hearing about WIFI6 now and you're hearing about some of the things that are happening in the industry now, but we started working way back, way back. And in fact it's kind of interesting, how do you get these new devices in peoples hands, so that you can test what WIFI6 can do in real environments, in a university environment, in a hospital environment, in an airport environment. So working with Samsung what we did is we actually had 170 covert devices, they were literally Galaxy S10's, and they were dressed up as a Galaxy S9, because it was before they released these devices they didn't want to let all their secrets out, and so what we did is we put these early on into these new work environments and we got to test, we got to do interoperability, we got to really iron out the spec so that when they released their Galaxy S10, and we released our AP's, guess what, it works. We don't put the customers through the initiation of a next generation of technology. So we're really excited to be working with Samsung and really collaborating on multiple different levels. >> So you said you've been working at this for a long time we met sort of talking about WIFI6 with you guys at DevNet create just six or seven weeks ago. Talk to us before we get into some of the meat with Ramon about some of those drivers that CISCO started seeing awhile ago in terms of the evolution of the network, and we think about some of the numbers that we're seeing for the massive amounts of mobile data, it's going to be transitioning off of cellular networks on to WiFi, talk to us about what you guys saw that vision awhile ago that lead to all those cool covert operations. >> Look a lot of people you say look WiFi works right? So why do we need a sixth generation of WiFi? But you know when we look at the trajectory of traffic it can be a little bit daunting. In 2023, CISCO's VNI index that shows these trends, we will transmit more mobile data in 2023, than every year before it combined. So this is what we're seeing this is what we have to deal with. So it's very important that we get together with these partners whether it be Intel at the chip set level, whether it would be Samsung at the device level because you know what, we can't just answer today, we have to answer the next three, five, seven years and WIFI6 is going to give us that platform. >> Alright Ramon tell us about some of the cool meat here that we really want to dig in to. >> So actually one of the things that you kind of touched up on but I would like to mention is that one of the reasons why WIFI6 is here is actually the congestion on networks. So when you go with your smartphone, you go to an event, sports venue, concert, etc, many many people are trying to connect to WiFi, the signal and actually the throughput degrades very, very quickly with the number of people who actually get into the network. So WIFI6 actually solves for that, so that's one of the top pain points that actually we have from our users, our consumer research. The second pain point we actually tried to solve with WIFI6 in our collaboration with CISCO, it's the battery life. So one of the top pain points again for smart phone users it's well my battery doesn't last for a full day, I take lots of pictures, I upload videos, etc, that's going to drain my battery. So actually WIFI6 is a mode where the devices can actually sleep and the AP's can sleep, and only wake up the device and transmit data when that channel is actually available. So that essentially for the user is actually longer battery life. There's more advantage but those are kind of the two key ones. >> There's more and actually if I can just ask both of you, as we were testing between our companies, what kinds of things were we learning and how is that going as we're developing it? >> Like we said it's a new specification, if you look really even at the ground level, all previous versions of WiFi were based on OFDM, this next generations on OFDMA. So that adds some new complexities, but also a lot more capability. Now what happens all the time when you have a new spec is people can read that spec in different ways. How we implement the spec may not be exactly how they implement the spec, and if we don't do that testing beforehand what happens is we discover that out at the customer when that phone call drops or that connection doesn't work like you would expect it to work, that AP to AP handoff doesn't work the way that you expect it to work. We found over 60 critical differences, it's hard to say bud right, but 60 critical differences in how we were interpreting the spec and how the device players were interpreting the spec, and we resolved that so the customer didn't have to go through it they just get good access. >> So it's been an amazing partnership as we were kind of working out all the kinks and I remember, nobody expects WIFI6 or WiFi to be different. Everyone's like it performs the way it does, can it be different, and then one of my guys went into the lab and he tried it and he came back, his eyes were this big. (gasp) It's fast! And he couldn't believe it and so we were able to do it, but that makes us be able to do a whole new set of applications so I think there's some new applications that we can jump into because WIFI6, it does enable new applications. >> In our case we are consumer companies, we sell devices to consumers so the number one application for us is well any kind of consumer application, social media, uploading videos, etc. So that's our established market but we also try to go into other B2B verticals, like public safety, like hospitality, financial, retail, etc. Where actually having that reliability on the network it's extremely important. So one of the reasons why hospitals, hotels, etc deploy their own WiFi network versus just using LTE or 5G is because they can actually control the user experience, they can actually control the throughput, they can control the availability, the coverts, etc. So WIFI6 actually enables that especially when there is a congested situation. >> And we've never had that deterministic control within WiFi before. >> That's right so that's kind of at the network level, and then in terms of more applications at a higher level, so I think that gets you very excited. So we actually have you know Samsung it's a device manufacturer, we have many many devices, smart phones is one of them, we have laptops, wearables, VR headsets, TV's, appliances, etc, they're all getting connected to WiFi. So one of the things that we have seen over the last few years is that the number of WiFi devices in a typical US household has increased from five per household to nine per household today, and it's going to be about 50 WiFi devices per household in 2022. >> 50? Five Zero? Whoa! Should I get my dog a smartphone? >> Your thermostat, door lock, cameras, all kinds of devices have a WiFi connection. In a home we need to be able to support that, but also in an enterprise. >> That's a shift in the industry to think of those things having WiFi connection. >> That's right sensors, motion sensors, open/close sensors, all kinds of humidity sensors, etc. They're all getting connected to WiFi so we need to be able to support that kind of growth. >> So that makes me think, sorry Susie, of security. We talked a lot within the last few days about the integration and the embedding of security to the CISCO suite, but when you're talking about whether it's data from my nest system, or a camera connected to my alarm system, data privacy it's blown up, every generation in the workforce today is aware of it. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you guys are doing to ensure that security's pegged in? >> There's so many places that you can implement security, and the fact of matter is in a good network you have to implement it in all those places, because you don't know where that breach or where it might be subject to somebody coming in and compromising your system. But one of the things that we're doing that I think really revolutionary, is this ability to pull analytics out of the network and actually baseline the behavior of that network. So we know what's normal, we know how devices communicate, we know how that light switch communicates or that light bulb, even these very simple things. And sometimes it's kind of scary you think what if someone were to hack into that really simple stack in a light bulb, how many light bulbs are in a building? And what if they actually went across those light bulbs and started basically spamming into the network? You wouldn't be able to get anything done. Well you can't just turn off all the light bulbs, we're going to disconnect all the light bulbs in the building from the network, you can't do that. So what Cisco is doing with this digital network architecture and what we call SDA or software defined access is the ability to segment and separate things out based on their function. So we can put all of that building management in one segment we can put your mission critical applications in another segment and in fact if somethings misbehaving, don't turn it off but segment it out so it can't in fact cause problems further in your network. I was talking about a light bulb, what if you're in a hospital and it's a heart monitor? >> Right or an MRI machine. >> And you don't want to turn that off, but you don't want ti do infect the rest of that hospital room or the rest of the hospital. So moving into a segment, isolate it, let the function go on, alarm the administrator so that they can address it and contain it. >> And this is exciting because what happens is if you think WIFI6, oh yeah it's an access point and it's what's in the client, and that's it. But actually now we're talking about using the capabilities of a whole network to ensure the security and things like that. Ramon you have an interesting new app that our viewers might want to see. >> Yeah actually I wanted to just continue this talk about security so sometimes we think about security and user experience as a trade off, and we don't like that. We want to maximize especially as a device manufacturer we want to improve and enhance always the user experience. So one of the things we're working on is open roaming, and I like kind of the motto that you guys had was well it's easy to use, but it's secure as well. So essentially open roaming it's a way for users WiFi to connect automatically to a WiFi network, without having to enter in a login and password information, and kind of sign in page, without going through that process. A user will get automatically authenticated, and of course we have to have some security so one thing we've done is using Samsung account in our devices as the authentication system for the user. >> And where are we doing it, right here! >> I'm actually connected through open roaming with my phone right now. >> So almost 50% of all attendees that came out to CISCO Live just automatically connected to the network. They didn't have to go through a portal, they didn't have to get out usernames and passwords, they didn't have to go to their connection manager and pick the right network, they're just connected, they're transmitting traffic, they're getting their emails. >> That happened to me this morning on another device I brought in. >> There you go, and that's a security thing because what you're doing with that is Samsung users have Samsung accounts when they provision their device they save their configuration is there, they save their preferences there, they provision it into a device it pushes it out and now you get this profile, this certificate that allows you to do these types of things, and with partners like Samsung guess what, they have a pretty big market. Go to Mobile World Congress last year, everyone with a Galaxy S9 just connected to the network. So this really broadens across the ecosystem it's changing the way we will experience networking. >> It's going to impact every persons live on every level, this is so exciting. So you guys have to come back cause we're out of time but this is, I feel like we're just getting started. But thank you guys so much. Susie thank you for being my awesome and steamed co-host. >> Thank you for giving me this opportunity to be a co-host. >> Awesome you guys, Ramon, Matt, thank you so much for your time we appreciate it. >> I'm going to hold you to bringing us back. >> Deal! Shake on it! Alright for my guest and for Susie Wee, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE live from CISCO Live San Diego, thanks for watching! (upbeat music)

>> from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem Barker's >> We'll get back to the Cube. We are live at Cisco Live in San Diego. Study. San Diego. Lisa Martin with David Lantana and David Ayer. Super geeking out here, Susie, we is with us back with us. SPP in CTO of depth that Suzy Welcome back. Thank you. It's great to be back. So this event is massive. Cisco's been doing customer and partner events for 30 years now. What started as networkers? We? No, no, it's just alive. Something else you might not know that's also 30 years old. Dizzy. The movie, The Field of dreams. >> Wow, uh, kind of feels like the field does kind of feel like that that are one >> years yes, on ly five years. This has been so influential in Cisco's transition and transformation. You've got nearly 600,000 members in this community. Definite zone. It's jam packed yesterday today. Expect tomorrow as well? Yes, and you guys made simple, really exciting announcements. Yes, we didn't tell us >> about it, so it's fantastic. >> So basically what happens is the network has gotten very powerful. It has gotten very capable. You know, you can do intelligence machine learning you Khun Dio Intent based networking. So instead of the network just being a pipe, you can actually now use it to connect users devices applications use policy to make sure they're all connected securely. There's all sorts of new things that you could do. But what happens is, while there's all that new capability, it's in order to take advantage of it. It takes more than just providing new products and new technology. So our announcements are basically in two areas and we call it. It's like unleashing the capabilities of the new network and by doing it in to a So won is by bringing software practices to networking. So now that it really is a software based, programmable network with all of these capabilities, we wantto make sure that practice of software comes into a networking, and then the other is in the area of bringing software skills to networking because you need the right skills to be able to also take advantage of that. So if I just jump right into it, so the 1st 1 in terms of bringing software practices to networking. We've announce something that we call definite automation exchange. And so what happens is, you know, of course, our whole community builds networks. And as businesses have grown, their networks have grown right and they've grown and grown business has grown growing, grown right, and then it's become hardest, become unmanageable. So while you say there's all these great new technologies, but these things have grown in their way, so our customers biggest problem is actually network automation like How do I take my network? How do I bring automation to it? There's all the promise of it and definite automation. Exchange is built to basically help our community work towards network automation, so it's a community based developer center. What we say is that we're helping people walk, run and fly with network automation by walking. We're saying, OK, there's all these cool things you could do, but let's take it in three steps like first of all is let's walk. So first, just do a read only thing like get visibility, get insights from your network, and you can be really smart about it because you can use a lot of intelligence predictive modeling. You can figure out what's going on. So that alone is super valuable. >> Get the data. >> Get the data I learn on DH. Then next is an Okay, I'm ready to take action. Like so. Now I've learned I'm ready to take action, apply a network policy, apply a security policy, put controls into your network. That's you know. So, uh, walk, run, And then when you're ready to fly is when you're saying okay, I'm going to get into the full dev ops soup with my network. I'm going to be gathering the insights. I'm going to be pushing in control. I'm now optimizing managing my network as I go. So that's the whole slice it. So the wing fact, we want to go to them the walk, run, fly. >> And if I understand from reading your blood, Great block, by the way, >> Thank you. >> A lot of executives, right? Blog's and it's kind of short of yours is really substantively like, Wow, that was >> really something on. That's No, >> But if I understood a truck that you're gonna prime Sisko was gonna prime the pump A cz? Well, yeah, with a lot of ideas and code on DH. Yes, and then engineers can share. There's if they so choose. >> Exactly. So the key part of automation exchange beyond helping people take thes areas. The question is, how are we going to help them? Right? So what happens is what we've been doing with Definitive. We've been helping people learned to code, you know, in terms of networkers, we've been helping bring software developers into the community. We've been helping them learn to use a pea eye's all the good stuff a developer a good developer program should do. But what are networkers have said is I need help solving use cases. I need help solving the problems that I'm trying to solve, like how to get telemetry and monetary, how to get telemetry and insights from my network. How do I offer a self serve network service out to my, you know, customers line of business developers, you know, howto I automate it scale. And so what happens is there's a you know there's an opportunity or a gap between the products and AP eyes themselves and then solving these use cases so are now opening up a code repository, Definite Automation exchange, where the community can develop software that actually solves those use cases. Francisco is going to curate it. It's just going to be code on Get Hub. We'll make sure that it has the right, you know, licenses that, you know, we do some tests and it's working well with the FBI's, and then we're hoping it's going to become. We're hoping, you know, kind of the industries leading network automation code repository to solve these problems. >> Well, it's this key because big challenge that customers tell us that they have with automation is they got all these bespoke tools. None of them work together. So do you think something like this exchange can help solve that problem? >> It can. I believe it can. So the reason being is that you know, there are tools that people use and everybody's environments a little different. So some might want Teo integrate in and use answerable terra form, you know, tools like that. And so then you need code that'll help integrate into that. Other people are using service now for tickets. So if something happens, integrate into that people are using different types of devices, hopefully mostly Cisco, but they may be other using others as well way can extend code that goes into that. So it really helps to go in different areas. And what's kind of cool is that our there's an amount of code that where people have the same problems, you know, you know, you start doing something. Everyone has to make the first few kind of same things in software. Let's get that into exchange. And so let's share that there's places where partners are gonna want to differentiate. Keep that to yourselves like use that as your differentiated offer on DH. Then there's areas where people want to solve in communities of interest. So we have way have someone who does networking, and he wants to do automation. He does it for power management in the utilities industry. So he wants a community that'll help write code that'll help for that area, you know, So people have different interests, and, you know, we're hoping to help facilitate that. Because Sisko actually has a great community way, have a great community that we've been building over the last 30 years there the network experts there solving the real problems around the world. They work for partners, they work for customers, and we're hoping that this will be a tool to get them to band together and contribute in a software kind of way. >> So is the community begins to understand never automation and elect your pathway of of walk, run fly swatter. Soothe projected business outcomes that that any industry, whether it's utilities or financial services, will be able to glean from network automation. I can imagine how expensive from topics perspective it is all this manual network management. So what? Oh, that's some of the things that you projecting the future that businesses who adopt this eventually are going to be able to re >> Absolutely, I mean, just, you know, very simple. Well, so many, so many things. So, uh, in the in the case of what's a manufacturing, because you're talking about different industries? So there's a whole opportunity of connected manufacturing, right? So how do I get all of those processes connected, digitized and write. Now write things air being pretty much run in their way. But if you can really connect them in, digitize them. Then you can start to glean business insights from them. Right? Should I speed up? How's my supply chain doing where my parts Where's my inventory? Everything. You get all of that connected. That is like a huge business implications on what you can do. >> You have a kitchen, get start getting the fly will effect around all that data. Akeley. So I've always been fascinated that you see definite zone and there's these engineers ccs saying Okay, I want to learn more. I want to learn how to code numbers keep growing and growing and growing. And so you've got new certifications. Now that you're >> out of that was, >> this's huge. You need to talk about that, >> Yes, so that, you >> know, kind of the second part of our thing is like how we're bringing software skills to networking. So to get you know, the most of all this opportunity, you do need software skills. And of course, that's what Definite was originally founded on is really helping people to build those skills. But we've kind of graduated to the next level because we've teamed up with the Learning and Cisco team, which creates Cisco Start ification program. Cisco has, you know, an amazing certification program. So the C C. A is the gold standard and certifications and you know networkers around the world have that C C I status partners have built up. They pay people for that. You know any customer who's deploying now, which they will hire the CCS. So that was founded in 1993. The first see CIA, and that program in the next 26 years has grown to what it is. And what we've done is we've teamed up with them to now add a definite certification. So we're bringing in software skills along with the networking skills so that we have the Cisco certifications, the Cisco definite certifications sitting side by side and you know we believe it. You know, right now the people who you've seen in the definite Zone are the ones who know what's important. They come in there doing it. But they said, I want credit for what I'm doing. Like I get credit, I get a raise, I get bonuses. My job level depends on my networking sort of occasions. I'm doing this on my nights and weekends, but I know it's important. And now, by bringing this into the program, my company can recognise this. I'm recognized as a professional for my skills. It helps in all sorts of ways. >> So go ahead. Please >> think this just sounds way more to me than the next step. In Definite. It sounds like it's a revolution. >> It's a revolution. >> First addition in 26 years, that's bay >> now. I mean, there have been changes in the program, but it's the biggest change in those 26 years. Absolutely. And you know, like we'll see what what happens. But I think it is, Ah, step change in a revolution for the industry because we're recognizing that networking skills are important and software skills are important and critical. And if you want to build a team that can compete, that can really help your companies succeed, you're gonna want both of these skills together in your organization. And I believe that that's goingto help accelerate the industry, because then they can use all of these tools, right? So right now on it department can either hold the company down or accelerate a company to success because the question is, how quickly can you help someone adopt cloud? How can they do multi cloud? How convey innovative software speeds? And now we're here, hopefully catalyzing the network industry to be ableto work at that speed. >> I was joking. You wanna be the department of No or the Department of Go? Let's go. So is being a C C. A prerequisite to the definite certificate is not okay, so is not linear. So you're getting CC eyes obviously lining up to get certified to see him here So you could get kids out of college saying, Okay, I want in. >> Absolutely. And so the way that it works is that, um so actually you could. So what we have with the Cisco certifications for both the definite as well as the original Cisco started Take bath is that there's an associate level, which means you have about a years working experience. You know enough. So see CNN, Cisco Certified Network associate. They know enough about networking so that they can learn the fundamentals of networking and then be effective as part of a team that runs networks. So that's what that certification does for you. Way also now have a definite associate, which is ensuring that you have the software skills that you can also enter a team that's writing software applications or doing automated work flows for a network. And we have to know that all developers are not created equally. So just cause you wrote a mobile app doesn't mean that you can write software for, you know, running operational network. So the definite association is more like you need to be able to securely use AP eyes, right? So there's a lot of things that are within that. And then we have the professional in the expert levels. Um, and we have it on both sides now. Originally, way were thinking that there's the network engineer path. We're going to sprinkle a little software in there, and we'll have the definite path for a software developer, and it would be its own path. But we got feedback as we started presenting to our partners into our customers. And then they're like, No, this cannot be separate people. It's like it needs to come together. And so then we changed our how we thought about it, and we said that there's a set of engineering certifications and there's a set of software certifications. Anybody can get what they want, and you can start to combine them in very interesting ways. >> I could put together my own career, Mosaic. >> Absolutely so if you said, You know what? I am going to be that tick ass networker. And if we have the unicorn of like and I'm goingto you know over time, we're going to offer definite expert in the future. I said, I'm going to be a CC expert in the future. Be a definite expert. That's awesome. But we're not forcing folks to do it, because maybe you're going to be a CC. I get a definite associates so that you can speak the language of software and know what it does. But then you'll sit alongside a developer, and you guys will be able to speak the same language together. And we also make sure that our developers learn a bit about networking. So if you look at that associate, it's kind of 80 20 networking software, the other one's 80 20 software and networking so that they can actually work and talk to each other. >> So looking at these big waves that were writing right now and compute in network with G WiFi six s edge a prize anywhere, how is definite and the certification that you've just unleashed into the world? How is it going to enable not just the community members. Yes, who helped accelerate Companies take advantage of some of these big ways. But how is it going? Helps drive Cisco's evolution? >> And so and you bring up a great distinction, which is as we talk about a new set of applications. And we talked about this that create a definite create when you're there. Is that APP developers? If they understand the capabilities of the network, they can actually write an entirely new set of applications. Because you know, five g y fi six are better. If you understand EJ computing in the opportunity there, you know a networker will install a network that can host apse that makes edge computing riel. So there's another reason for the app developer a community to come together with the networkers. So when we talk about now, how does this help? Cisco is Well, first of all, it takes all of the networkers that are out there, and it insures that they're getting to that next level so that you're really fully using those capabilities and that worked, which can then accelerate business, you know. So it really is. The new capabilities are entirely different. Wayto look at networking that really do Tie and Dr Business On the other is the other part we're talking about is those APP developers that come in and write great applications can come in and now really be connected and actually use that whole network infrastructure and all its capabilities. So that really ties us to more kind of, you know, instead of a networker going in instead of going in and selling network kit and then figuring out the line of business things separately, you Khun, bring those applications into our ecosystem and into our offerings. So it's an integrated offering like here's a connected manufacturing offering that includes what you need to connect as well a CZ third party applications that are great for the manufacturing industry. And now you're looking at selling that whole solution >> and applications that we haven't even thought of a member in Barcelona walking into the i o. T Zone and seeing some programmable device from a police car on a camera. And, yes, some of these guys could just they're going to create things that we definite create, haven't even conceived, so you're creating sort of this new role. To me, it's like D B A You know, CC, it's now this new definite creator in a role that is going to have a lot of influence in the organization because they're driving value right there, going toe, bring people with them. People going to say, Oh, I want that. So now you think you're going to stand in Barcelona? The number of people that you've trained, I don't know, make many tens of thousands. I mean, where we have today with >> hundreds of thousands, wait half 1,000,000 5 100,000 Last year were at six >> 100,000. This was going 100,000 organic new members over the last year. So >> people here over half 1,000,000 now. >> Yeah. Yeah. So unbelievable. Yep, definitely So I know it's great. And just people are interested, right? So people are interested. People are learning, you know? And that's what makes it, you know, interesting to me is people are finding value in it, and they're coming. So s O. I think that, you know, kind of definite in the last five years has been kind of like an experiment, right? So it's just like, is the industry ready? Like do networkers really want to learn about software. What air? That we've been kind of prime ing it. And, you know, by now getting to this next level, you know, just the certifications. What we have learned from all of that is that it's really and that, you know, with the new capabilities in the network, we can really take our community and our bring new people into our community to make that opportunity really into Dr Business from the network. >> Everybody wants the code >> had they dio and some >> people >> are scared. Actually, some people are very scared. >> You mean intimidated, >> intimidated, intimidated. Yes. So there's the set of people who've come in early, right? And they're the ones who you've seen in the definite Zone. But everybody, of course, they start out scared. But then right after they get over that fear, they realize this really is a new future. And so then they start jumping in, and so it's both beer and then opportunity. >> Then they're on strike. That's what it's all about, Yang. And absolutely, I could do this for my business and >> absolutely, I would love to know the end that near future, how many different products and services and Maybe even companies have been created from the definite community for springing all these different Pittsburgh folks together. Imagine the impact >> it is. I mean, like, one really small things. You've been with us at our little definite create conference is we have something there that's called Camp Create, which is where they spend a week hacking, right? So and this It's kind of sometimes our most serious attendees because they're choosing Teo Code for the weak is what you know as well as to attend way. Didn't really add it all up yet. But what we found is there's about 25 to 30 people who attend. Met a bunch of them got promoted in that year. Wow. So in different ways, you know, not in ways that are necessarily connected but in their own ways, like in their company. This person got promoted to this to this one area. This other person, one person was a contractor. They got converted to a, you know, full time employee. So you know, we have to go and do the math on it. But what's amazing is that you know it just you know that bring that fills our hearts. >> It's organic too. Well, Susie, we Thank you so much for joining David. Me on the clean. You're going back with me tomorrow. And some guests. I'm looking forward to that. Excellent. Yes, Absolutely. More, More great stars. >> Your duel Co hosting a >> way. I didn't know that. No way. But I'll turn. I'll be the host is Well, I try something new. Way we're >> gonna have fun. I am looking forward to it. Thank you >> so much. And thank you for being with us in our whole vision of definite from the beginning. So thank you. >> It's been awesome. All right. We want to thank you for watching the Cube for David. Dante. I'm Lisa Martin. We will catch you right back with our last guest from Cisco Live in San Diego.

>> Live, from Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE! Covering DevNet Create 2019, brought to you by Cisco. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with John Furrier covering day two of Cisco DevNet Create 2019, and guess who we're here with? Susie Wee SVP and CTO of Cisco DevNet. Susie thank you so much for having theCUBE here and for joining John and me today. >> Oh thank you for being here. >> So this event, there were so many bodies in here yesterday, it was pretty toasty, it's getting toasty now, this is the third DevNet Create, this community John and I have been hearing that and feeling it and seeing it, see it, learn it, code it, kind of all on your theme there the last day and a half. This is a really inspiring, really national sharing community that you guys have built here. >> It is, it's amazing, I mean just the energy here as you bring together folks. Everybody wants to learn, there's so many new technologies out there, but new technologies that can turn into business advantage, and the attendees here they all feel it, and it's a different mixture of people because there's app developers, there's infrastructure and networkers, and just bringing these folks together to see what they can achieve is amazing. So that's the energy that you can really feel here. >> And the thing that's interesting and that I'd like to perspective on where this all started from, is DevNet Create is interesting, you know Amazon's Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, uses the term builders. So you hear builders, maker culture, create. But creation is a critical part of your ethos here, and with cloud computing, Microsoft's earnings came out they were a trillion dollar market cap now, Amazon crushes their earnings again, you're seeing what cloud is doing that's enabling these creators, a new class of developer, but it's not like a new breed, it's just a new kind of orientation. This is part of your vision to share the story. >> Well and kind of the whole thing is that, you know I'm all about innovation and creation. And I believe that people just want to create. My four year old, she just wants to create. It's just in people's blood, but to now get out there and to do it, you need a catalyst. You can't just sit in a room and then create, and sometimes it's about how you bring new fields together, how you bring new technologies together, how you bring non-technologies together, how you just bring different types of people and perspectives together, and that's really what DevNet Create is all about. So, we started DevNet five years ago, just with the idea that the network is going become programmable. The infrastructure is going to provide more resources, and it's going to be programmable and provide more power to applications, so from then to now, last summer we hit half a million developers, now we're at 590 thousand developser, and we're growing. >> Well we're lucky to be part of it and thank you for including theCUBE in DevNet Create, and bringing something to the DevNet community. It's been fun and inspirational, but to be practical in the industry, you need to have a wind at your back, you need to have a wave to ride on, and creation is also about momentum. And if you look at the marketplace today, there's some big waves happening. Cloud computing is obvious, one everyone looks at, that's already changed the nature of companies, Cisco's multi-cloud looking at a bigger vision there. But new waves are coming, I mean Wifi Six is a game changer, you've got 5G. So you talked about this in the keynote, I want you to take a minute to explain that the big waves that you outlined, because with big waves there's more fun, there's more creation. There's wealth creation, there's economic vitalizations, a new vibe. Share the waves. >> Inside of the whole thing is that we say there's the infrastructure. You get your networking, you get your compute, it evolves to cloud computing and all of that, but on top of that are these applications. And this amazing set of applications, and we know that those are creating entirely new and disruptive businesses and business models, and there's a lot of growth in all of that. Now traditionally what happens is that with every wave of infrastructure advancement, comes a new set of applications and businesses, so going back to our olden days but, there was a time where you started to get a converged IP network, or you put data and voice together on an IP network, and then came voice over IP. Then came cloud computing. And you can do internet search, and you know, we're old enough to remember before then. Then you got 3G, and instead of just having the cell phone, you could do mobile apps on cell phones, so you had mobile apps. And then with 4G, you could do mobile video, and now you just expect it. Now you could think, okay the infrastructure is done, but no there's more, so some of the things that are happening right now that's really exciting is that, is I kind of talked about it in three areas. In networking we a have a couple really big things going on, which is Wifi Six and 5G. And so there's a whole site and we'll talk more about that. In computing there's the fact that actually GPU's are everywhere, and with that you can do AIML everywhere. So AI and machine learning. And then the third one is just an advancement in architecture. We knew that we'd move to mobile, we knew that we moved to compute, but now what becomes real is the edge. Edge computing. And so when you bring these things together you have new capabilities in network with Wifi Six and 5G, you have new capabilities in computing because GPU's are everywhere so you can do AI and ML, and then you actually have a spot at the edge where you can do edge processing, and then all of a sudden there's this whole new world of applications just waiting to be built, and we want to let developers know that. Because you kind of develop and you build from what you know, like oh this is just how good I can do, but there's a whole new capability coming. >> Well first of all, let's unpack those talk chats, because one of the things that I, as an entrepreneur, you know we've always talked about this, the creativity that comes from entrepreneurial thinking, whether your a true entrepreneur starting a company, or within a company doing that inside a company, takes creative juices, you got to have that catalyst as you mentioned, but also you got to imagine new ideas, right. And so by enabling, say Wifi for instance, everyone knows what Wifi is, but when you think about the new advances of Wifi and having connectivity with wireless and wired networks, with new data access, it just opens up this creative outlet. This is going to be the tsunami or the renaissance of applications. And you've been talking about it. >> It is, it is. And so like if we kind of geek out, because I was working on HD TV before it really became HD TV and their doing things like OFDM, and you know, we're so excited, spread spectrum technologies, but right now with Wifi Six, we can really geek out again. So OFDM is moving to OFDMA, OFDM multiple access. That means like, an access point usually talks to one client at a time, but now it can split up and talk to multiple clients at a time. And with that you can actually get much higher capacity, right so you can actually really use your kind of, network more efficiently, and then you can actually now also do scheduling. And then you can actually guarantee that a client is going to be scheduled in and get transmissions. That changes what you can do with Wifi and the way you think about it. And then there's this power savings, because now we can tell a device the time to wake up, so you kind of sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep, here's your target wake up time. Sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep, here's your target wake up time, that extends battery life, so you can have sensors that'll be out there for one year, five years, ten years, doing its thing. And so that takes all those IoT applications you've always wanted to build, but makes them real. Because someone has to go up and install that sensor, and the battery life matters. >> And so the second wave is the GPU anywhere which I like, because when you think of GPUS, Nvidia, you're thinking of graphics, you're thinking of gaming, but it's actually a processor for machine learning, so what are your thoughts on this because if you put GPUs in devices everywhere, and the data that you're now accessing across the network brings more intelligence. What's the impact of this GPU anywhere? Is it just IoT, is it just applications, what's the net net? >> So kind of, the most important thing about it is that before, you kind of needed to have a PhD to do AI and machine learning, right? And we have friends who are experts at that and they're continuing to push the envelope in there. I was just back at MIT and just the advances in AL and ML is amazing. But the other thing that's happening is that this is just getting wrapped up so developers can just use it. So you can actually have a TensorFlow.js library that'll just sit on your mobile device. You can actually just using your browser, you can actually write a web app that uses that and then uses the GPU, which just means right there you can write a little web app, with like five lines of code, you can say, find all the people in this picture. Find the bottles in this picture. Right so just be like, doing that on the fly, and you don't have to have a PhD in machine learning, you can actually, developers can just use this capability. And so that's kind of what unlocks it, is just because it's accessible to everyone and now you'll get that mixed wave of innovation when people can just use it and find the right applications for it. >> So looking at these three big changes that you've talked about, network, compute, architectural, did you leverage these big waves to design this years Create? Because we're hearing all about the three technologies tracks. Tell us a little bit about that. >> It is, well so first of all we have Wifi Six here, live, and people know there's the idea of it, we've done some performance tests around it and we're like it screams. You know, it just, it really does scream, and you're used to not counting on that, right? And so it opened up peoples' eyes and they're thinking differently now about what they can do here. >> What sort of reactions of the geeks at Cisco when they look at the data of Wifi Six, what's some of the anecdotal reactions that they're saying? >> People are surprised, cause everybody's kind of cynical about it. Cause, quite honestly, even getting ready for it, it just like guys we're going to jump on Wifi Six. And they're like eh, yeah, well, whatever. And then one of my guys Oshitosha went off and did the speed test and he started working with it and he came back into my office, his eyes were popped out of his head, (gasp), that's fast. >> And you showed that yesterday, all the cameras came in like, whoa! >> Because you don't have that expectation, but once you know it, it's going to really unleash this whole new set of things. There's actually something else interesting we did with the edge processing with the GPUs which is the idea of edge computing, not a new idea, the reality of it, is still coming into play. Now what happens is Cisco just announced some new products. These industrial routers, it's an industrial gateway, it means that you can like put it up on the telephone pole, you can put it into a manufacturing plant, you know at high temperatures, and it's the gateway that will connect all of your devices and senors, and be the networking conduit to get everything back. So that's an awesome product, the mass product actually hosts applications. And what matters is the deployment of these infrastructures, right? So Cisco's partners will get out there, they're going to sell and kind of install this networking equipment in manufacturing companies, but now it can host applications so developers can actually reach it. And so now that's a place for developers, but we're doing something new here, which is that we have a prototype of taking that product, we have a prototype GPU, a Nvidia Jetson that we've put on top of it, and we're letting developers hack at it. And say, would you use this? Like, tell us some of your best ideas, try it out. Because we still need to figure out the market and what's there, and we're doing it with developers. >> And where do they go with the creativity there? Because obviously one's a gateway so they're used to gateways, and they understand edge devices. What are some of the ideas that are going to come out of hacking a GPU? Is it running data analytics on the edge? Is it hosting an application and managing edge devices themselves? What are some of the cool things? >> I mean things like video sensing. So now like at your edge you have lots of cameras and because you can do GPU processing, you can actually take these multi-camera inputs, do video sensing algorithms, you know things that you kind of dreamed about before, but now just doing that for real. You know, finding construction workers, finding the hard hats, in the images to make sure that you can actually have people be safe. One thing that we know about AI and machine learning, is like a lot of times people say, okay I'm going to hire a data scientist, a data scientist comes in, and they can't really get the data. Like they don't have anything to work on until there's a good data set to work on. Well actually as you connect up these environments, that's one data set coming in. So you connect up like transportation systems, like SCADA, like utilities protocols, you're actually talking to manufacturing equipment. >> Real time data from traffic, Teslas. >> Exactly. And so that stuff comes in, but then you need to kind of munch on that data to know, when should I be looking, how can I get it into a form that I can do some AI and machine learning on it. >> So new use cases, you expect new use cases to emerge? >> They are, and it's really cool because there was a time when there was all of this stuff you could do on the web, and in the cloud, and with our applications, but it's coming back to the physical world. >> And that's what you mean by the edge, is then this architectural thing, that's really the edge. The new architecture of having these kinds of capabilities is going to create sets of applications that we've never seen before. New startups, new applications. >> It is and really the kind of thing with DevNet Create is bringing in the community of people who do install infrastructure, knowing that this infrastructure is becoming programmable, and having that able to host the applications and the innovations that are coming from the developers, it's like, it just unlocks entirely new business models. And I think here these two communities are meeting and mixing, and I think that's the energy that we're seeing out here. Because they didn't expect to talk to each other. When we started DevNet Create, we knew that it was coming, we didn't know how the people would mix, and this has evolved to where people are mixing in entirely new ways and making connections, and someone who's written an app is like, oh, you're a partner, you can deploy this in all different countries, that's a new kind of deployment model for my app. >> We talked a little bit about that yesterday, with our guest as well as Mandy, and you've got these kind of different worlds colliding, but one of the things that John pointed out, is that this is not a marketing driven event, this is not for lead generation, this is a truly collaborative event, and you're getting clearly developers and infrastructure guys and girls from clearly, very probably, computing companies who are sharing. So I can imagine the cultural change that this can bring to, born in the cloud, traditional enterprise, maybe something that wasn't originally planned, but I can just imagine these worlds colliding and seeing how much better they can work together. >> And that is something that with DevNet, if you even go to the world of networking and IT and you know, just enterprises, there's a new model. So things become programmable, people's biggest problem is automation, doing things at scale, like how do I go ahead and deploy my networks across all these sites around the world? You can automate that. How do I take machinery and get business insights from that so I can actually use it for more, you know, you want to do that in software. And so you have to change your mindset cause then it is about collaboration, it's about sharing software and everyone knows that they can get there faster by sharing code and ending up with a code repository, we have code exchange, that we've created in DevNet, we've just opened it up last year, we now have over 400 repos, we just crossed over 400 on there. >> You guys are changing the way people are doing work within your own community, both DevNet and DevNet Create, bringing those worlds together. And it's working, it's magical so congratulations on all the success you've had. I got to ask you about your journey because we've talked years before you even joined Cisco and we've been following and talking to you since you've been here, and I was saying on our opening yesterday, Cisco as a company is like a big aircraft carrier, it's making the big move right, and you're seeing Chuck Robinson, the CEO, cloud, everything has APIs on, every portfolio project got APIs, so he's the pulling company into telemove, which is let's get cloudified, let's figure out our role in cloud computing and beyond, and you're mentioning some of those things, as you continue to show progress in the growth of DevNet and the community, it's changing Cisco. And we're seeing as we cover with theCUBE, and Chuck's called you out publicly and said Susie, great job, so this is a recognition that DevNet and the work that you and your team are doing is changing the face of Cisco internally and externally. How is that going, as the battleship starts to move, and by the way, data center is still more important than ever before with fibrated multicloud, things are lining up for Cisco, and you're a big part of it. What's going on in the company, and what's Chuck Robinson saying to you in your meetings with him, like hey, good job, or let's double down. >> Yeah, no Chuck is an amazing leader. And Chuck completely understands the vision, and that's why he's been supporting DevNet. So he's been supporting DevNet, not just because oh, he likes Susie or anything like that, it's because he understands the importance of programmability he understands what it means for starting new businesses and creating new business models. What it means for the ecosystem to grow into it, what that opportunity is. So he's always understood it, and I'm super lucky because he's been supporting these efforts. But now what's happening is of course he wants more. And I just presented to Chuck and his executive leadership team last week, about the plans that we have going forward. We've actually just kind of, what I would say is that, we've done the MVP of DevNet, so I know that you know, we've got the half a million members, actually almost 600 thousand >> Product market fit, it's all there >> We know have like, real assets, we have a real community, we have companies that are changing how they work, using our assets and really forming in this community, and now to get it to the next level, he's actually really kind of, sponsoring and working with us to develop it to the next level. And really the team is all coming together. The engineering team, the customer experience teams, sales and marketing, and then how we work externally with all of our communities. And so we're really growing into the next level. >> And you've got a great team, you know we've worked with all of you team, a lot of your team, but one of things that I like about what you've done here, is that, and you said it yesterday on stage at closing keynote, you feel like a star, you used the word MVP, minimum viable product. That's a startup word. So you have this startup culture, and you're in a big company so it's working. Is it contagious, are people, are there antibodies coming at you, are there people joining you, what's going on because how do you keep that startup vibe going. >> Yeah, I think that I'm just very fortunate because my team all has that attitude, they're very externally driven, so they're like, how do I help our developers, how do we help our community, how do bring them along, and we totally drive ourselves by that. And then we're constantly asking them how can we help you more, what do you want from us, and they say if we're doing something that's not useful to you, tell us now so we can stop, so we can build something else. And so we continue to evolve. And so we actually listen and then we really figure out how to go to that next level. Now what's really fun is that also though, we work with all of the other organizations, right, so you know I'm not going to replicate the sales force, we work with them, I'm not going to replicate the SEs that are out on the field. They're using DevNet, and they're running their own DevNet express events in their countries for their partners and customers. So we've really built out, really collaboratively and we've gotten so much support. And the first days, everyone was like, hey, guys you have a software strategy, you need to look at developers, you need APIs, and they're like nice job Susie, yes. Keep on going. >> You're bringing the Dev Ops ethos to the culture. DevNet's an API to all the other organizations. >> Well and now that we are where we are, it's just, it's the partnerships like our product teams are investing and improving their APIs. We advocate for the developers viewpoint into those, and it's a collaboration. Like so I don't make the products, our product teams make the products. I don't sell the products, our sales team sells the products. Right, so we've really brought together the forces and we're fortunate because everyone is joining in. >> Well it sounds to me like what DevNet is doing, is really driving this organic cultural evolution within Cisco. Is it, would you say, and maybe I'm making a leap here, it sounds to me, like what I've seen, and this is my first DevNet as well, is that DevNet seems to be an accelerator of Cisco's evolution. >> I would it's an accelerator, and you know, what I want to say is that we have great efforts going on across the company, and people are trying to figure it out. So I can't say I'm the one driving it, that would just be too much to say. But we are trying to accelerate each other's efforts and now that we've grown a community, we've provided a platform. Like, we do get more than a million eyeballs a month onto our site. And we use that as a channel, so we really working to accelerate and kind of catalyze each other's efforts. >> And if you step out and zoom out, you can see how it all hangs together. You've got APIs in all the products, so that's an enabler. You have developer onboarding of new kinds of customers and existing ones melting together, kind of in the same melting pot of developers, and you got the cloud wave behind you, and Ad Gen AI. And then you can see Cisco becoming multicloud, it's almost like it's feeding and turning in the right spot, where, I mean you don't have a cloud, but I mean you have connectivity, you have data, you have Dev Ops, Net Dev, so it seems like a nice positioning for the future. But you have all this other revenue and customers, so it's going to take some time. >> We have great products. Our products five years ago, we had handful of products with APIs. Now, our whole portfolio is programmable. So that's not my efforts, those are the product teams building great products, and entering this world of programmability. We're bringing in the community and giving them the tools so they can use them, right? So otherwise you can't just make a product and have it sit there, you need to help it come along. >> Okay, what was your presentation to Chuck? What's the vision? Where do you go next? You've got some great momentum, congratulations on the success, we love being a part of this, a lot of action. It's very inspiring and intoxicating at the same time, what's next, what's the vision? >> Yeah, so really if we, and I love the way that we've built up DevNet, is because we started with our developers, and the communities that needed to become developers, or power users of software. So, we've done the technical enablement, like we have documented APIs, we have learning labs, we have sandboxes so people can just code. So we've really been focusing on enabling them and providing all that technical enablement. And now what happens is people are asking us, how do I make this real, how do I spread this across my organization, how do I bring these solutions to my customers and then to the world? And in order to do that I need to change how I do manufacturing, in order to do this, I need to change how we build solutions, and so help us with that fuller solution, so we're really stepping up to go beyond the technical enablement, to just bringing it to reality, and to real solutions that are in operational environments, and so it's just really exciting to be working together on all that. And then we'll have a bunch more new stuff coming that we'll talk about at Cisco Live. >> And you have a great party at Cisco Live, you also have those social club event, you got to keep that going, right? >> Of course, we'll keep the social club going and we'll have a bunch of new things to announce at Cisco Live as well. >> It's starting in just a few weeks from now, so last question, your takeaway from this, some of the anecdotes that you've heard the last day and a half of DevNet Create 3. >> Yeah, so you know, kind of the vision that we had set forward. And it's one that we've been thinking about it, it's just that the infrastructure really enables a new set of applications and business models. And we had the idea of it, but again with these advances that we talked about, with Wifi Six and 5G, with GPUs enabling AI and machine learning, and with edge computing, is that people get it. And people know that it's not like some day you will have this, and some day you will have that, which I've been in research, I know that view. But it's actually like right here and right now. >> Making it real. >> Making it real, and it's available for people to use, like this next one to two years is going to be super exciting for the industry, cause it's not just theoretical, it's not just what it could do, but there's real goals that are right out there for people to develop exciting new things. >> I wish I was younger, I wish I was in my 20s, I mean like. >> It's okay, we take old people and young people all together, diversity, yes. >> More inclusion, young and old. It's so exciting because it's such an enablement, and knowing what's the megatrends that are the real waves, it's actually real, it's happening. >> And I actually want to, while we do talk about diversity and inclusion and enablement, what's really exciting is I just brought us that, we have some of our partners who are transforming themselves, and we actually have some women in tech initiatives that have started out. >> I love that, tell us about it. >> Okay so, Presidio, Verizon, they've invested in helping the women in their organizations, well they're helping everybody evolve to embrace programmability and automation to understand the application, you know the opportunities there. So they are fully, kind of, taking this paradigm and transforming their workforces to embrace it. But in addition we've partnered to also provide extra support, and call out for the women who are making the journey, and who have to, you know, face maybe some additional challenges, or just ensuring that they have the opportunity and they get the visibility, and they've both sponsored, so Presidio, Verizon, have both sponsored bringing some of their women to DevNet Create. >> I loved how you brought them on stage this morning, without telling them. They endeavor you, and you just had this genuinely enormous smile of pride. >> I'm so proud of them. >> And you should be. But that's amazing that Cisco and DevNet is also making that investment in women in technology. >> And we're doing it together with them and I'm just proud of what their doing, and this is the workforce. You saw the women up on stage if you guys watched the keynote, you'll see that it's out there. These are the people you want to hire, and why would you not use that workforce. >> Exactly, why would you not? >> And get them all young too, like you mentioned your daughter, when she starts putting the Meraki switch at home, you know you've made it. She's almost ready. >> Yes she's handling a computer for me already, she's like mommy you have two, how come I don't have one? >> She says mommy why are you using command line? >> That's next! Susie, you're an inspiration, an inspirational female in technology, we all often gravitate towards Sheryl Sandberg. I think we should start including Susie Wee in that. Thank you so much, >> No thank you very much. For having us at DevNet, it's been a pleasure to meet you, and have the chance to interview you, and we can't wait to see where do you go from here. >> We will continue to change the world together, thank you. >> I love it. Awesome. For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live, from Cisco DevNet Create 2019. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain, its theCUBE, covering Cisco Live! Europe, brought to you by Cisco, and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain, for Cisco Live! Europe 2019, I'm John Furrier, with my co-host Dave Vellante as well as Stu Miniman has been co-hosting all week, three days of coverage, we're in day two. We're here with very special guest, we're in the DevNet Zone, and we're here with the leader of the DevNet team of Cisco, Susie Wee, Senior Vice President, CTO of Cisco DevNet, welcome, good to see you. >> Thank you, good to see you, and I'm glad that we have you here again in the DevNet Zone. >> You've been running around, it's been super exciting to watch the evolution, we chatted a couple of years ago, okay we're going to get some developer-centric APIs and a small community growing, now it's exploding. (Susie laughs) Feature of the show, the size gets bigger every year. >> It was interesting, yeah, we took a chance on it right? So we didn't know and you took this bet with me is just that the network is becoming programmable, the infrastructure is programmable, and not only is the technology becoming programmable, but we can take the community of networkers, IT infrastructure folks, app developers and get them to understand the programmability of the infrastructure, and it's really interesting that, you know, these classes are packed, they're very deep they're very technical, the community's getting along and, you know, networkers are developers. >> Yeah you know, you nailed it, because I think as a CTO, you understood the dev-ops movement, saw that in cloud. And I remember my first conversation with you like, you know, the network has a dev-ops angle too if you can make it programmable, and that's what it's done, and you're seeing Cisco's wide having this software extraction, ACI anywhere, hyperflux anywhere, connected to the cloud, now Edge. APIs are at the center, the DNA Center platform. >> Yes! >> API First, very successful project. >> Yes yes, it's-- >> This is the new DNA of Cisco is APIs, this is what it's all about. >> It is, it is and you know, like at first, you know, when we started this journey five years ago a few of our products had APIs, like a few of them were programmable. But you know, you don't take your network in overnight, it's programmable when you have this type of thing. But we've been building it in, and now practically every product is programmable, every product has APIs, so now you have a really rich fabric of yeah, security, data center, enterprises and campus and branch networks. Like, and it can now, put together really interesting things. >> Well congratulations, it happened and it's happening, so I got to ask the question, now that it's happening, happened and happening, continuing to happen, what's the impact to the customer base because now you're now seeing Cisco clearly defining the network and the security aspect of what the network can do, foundationally, and then enabling it to be programmable. >> Yeah. >> What's happening now for you guys, obviously apps could take advantage of it, but what else is the side effect of this investment? >> Yeah so, the interesting thing is, if we take a look at the industry at large, what happens is, you kind of have the traditional view of, IT, you know, so if you take a look at IT, you know, what do you need it for? I need it to get my compute, just give me my servers, give me my network, and let's just hope it works. And then it was also viewed as being old, like I can get all this stuff on the cloud, and I can just do my development there, why do I need all of that stuff right? But once you take it, and you know, the industry has come along, what happens is, you need to bring those systems together, you need to modernize your IT, you need to be able to just, you know, take in the cloud services, to take the applications come across, but the real reason you need it is because you want to impact the business, you know, so kind of what happens is like, every business in the world, every, is being disrupted right, and if you take a look, it has a digital disruptor going on. If you're in retail, then, you know, you're a brick and mortar, you know, traditionally a brick and mortar store kind of company, and then you have an online retailer that's kind of starting to eat your lunch, right, if you're in banking, you have the digital disruption like every, manufacturing is starting to get interesting and you know, what you're doing in energy. So all of this has kind of disruption angles, but really the key is that, IT holds the keys. So, IT can sit there and keep its old infrastructure and say, I have all this responsibility, I'm running this machinery, I have this customer database, or you can modernize, right? And so you can either hold your business back, or you can modernize, make it programmable and then suddenly allow cloud native, public, private cloud, deploy new applications and services and suddenly become an innovative platform for the company, then you can solve business problems and make that real, and we're actually seeing that's becoming real. (laughs) >> Well and you're seeing it right in front of us. So a big challenge there of what you just mentioned, is just having the skills to be able to do that but the appetite of this audience to absorb that knowledge is very very high, so for example, we've been here all week watching, essentially Cisco users, engineers, absorb this new content to learn how to basically program infrastructure. >> That's right, and it's not Cisco employees, it's the community, it's the world of like, Cisco-certified engineers like, people who are doing networking and IT for companies and partners around the world. >> And so, what do they have to go through to get from, you know, where they were, not modernized to modernized? >> Yeah, and actually, and that's a good way 'cause when we look back to five years ago, it was a question, like we knew the technology was going to become programmable and the question is, are these network guys, you know, are these IT guys everywhere are they going to stay in the old world are they really going to be the ones that can work in the new world, or are we going to hire a bunch of new software guys who just know it, are cloud native, they get it all, to do it all. Well, it doesn't work that way because to work in oil and gas, you need some expertise in that and those guys know about it, to work in, you know, retail and banking, and all of these, there's some industry knowledge that you need to have. But then you need to pick up that software skill and five years ago, we didn't know if they would make that transition, but we created DevNet to give them the tools within their language and kind of, you know if they do and what we found is that, they're making the jump. And you see it here with everyone behind us, in front of us, like they are learning. >> Your community said we're all in. Well I'm interested in, we've seen other large organizations infrastructure companies try to attract developers like this, I'm wondering is it because of the network, is it because of Cisco? Are there some other ingredients that you could buy, is it the certified engineers who have this appetite? Why is it that Cisco has been so successful, and I can name a number of other companies that have tried and failed, some of them even owned clouds, and have really not been able to get traction with developers, why Cisco? >> Well I mean, I think we've been fortunate in many ways, as we've been building it out but I think part of it, you know like the way any company would have to go about you know, kind of taking on programmability, dev-ops, you know, these types of models, is tough, and it's, there's not one formula for how you do it, but in our case, it was that Cisco had a very loyal community. Or we have, and we appreciate that very loyal community 'cause they are out there, workin' the gear, building the networks like, running train stations, transportation systems you know, running all around the world, and so, and they've had to invest a lot into that knowledge. Now we then, gave them the tools to learn, we said, here's coding 101, here's your APIs, here's how to learn about it, and your first API call will be get network devices. Here's how you automate your infrastructure, here's how you do your things, and because we put it in, they're grabbing on and they're doing it and you know, so, it was kind of having that base community and being respectful of it and yet, bringing them along, pushing them. Like we don't say keep doing things the old way yes, learn software, and we're not going to water down how you have to learn software. Like you're going to get in there, you're going to use Rest APIs, you're going to use Postman, you're going to use Git, and we have that kind of like first track to just get 'em using those tools. And we also don't take an elitist culture like we're very welcoming of it, and respectful of what they've done and like, just teach 'em and let 'em go. And the thing is like, once you do it, like once you spend your time and you go oh, okay, so you get the code from GitHub, I got it, now I see all this other stuff. Now I made my Rest API call and I've used Postman. Oh, I get it, it's a tool. Just, once you've done just that, you are a different person. >> And then it's business impact. >> Then it's business, yeah no and like then you're also able to experiment, like you suddenly see a bigger world. 'Cause you've been responsible for this one thing, but now you see the bigger world and you think differently, and then it's business impact, because then you're like okay, how do I modernize my infrastructure? How can I just automate this task that I do every day? I'm like, I don't want to do that anymore, I want to automate it, let me do this. And once you get that mindset, then you're doing more, and then you're saying wait, now can I install applications on this, boy, my network and my infrastructure can gives lots of business insights. So I can start to get information about what applications are being called, what are being used, you know, when you have retail operations you can say, oh, what's happening in this store versus that store? When you have a transportation system, where are we most busy? When you're doing banking, where is like, are you having mobile transactions or in-store transactions? There's all this stuff you learn and then suddenly, you can, you know, really create the applications that-- >> So they get the bug, they get inspired they stand up some quick sandbox with some value and go wow-- >> Or they use our DevNet Sandbox so that they can start stuff and get experi-- >> It's a cloud kind of mindset of standing something up and saying look at it, wow, I can do this, I can be more contributing to the organization. Talk about the modernization, I want to get kind of the next step for you 'cause the next level for you is what? Because if this continues, you're going to start to see enterprises saying oh, I can play in the cloud, I can use microservices. >> Yes. >> I can tap into that agility and scale of the cloud, and leverage my resources and my investment I have now to compete, you just mentioned that. How is that going to work, take us through that. >> Yeah and there's more, in addition to that, is also, I can also leverage the ecosystem, right? 'Cause you're used to doing everything yourself, but you're not going to win by doing everything yourself, even if you made everything modern, right? You still need to use the ecosystem as well. But you know, but then at that stage what you can do and actually we're seeing this as, like our developers are not only the infrastructure folks, but now, all of the sudden our ISVs, app developers, who are out there writing apps, are able to actually put stuff into the infrastructure, so we actually had some IoT announcements this week, where we have these industrial routers that are coming out, and you can take an industrial router and put it into a police car and because a police car has a dashboard camera, it has a WiFi system, it has on-board computer, tablets, like all of this stuff, the officer has stuff, that's a mobile office. And it has a gateway in it. Well now, the gateway that we put in there does app hosting, it can host containerized applications. So then if you take a look at it, all the police cars that are moving around are basically hosting containerized apps, you have this kind of system, and Cisco makes that. >> In a moveable edge. >> And then we have the gateway manager that does it, and if you take a look at what does the gateway manager do it has to manage all of those devices, you know, and then it can also deploy applications. So we have an ability to now manage, we also have an ability to deploy containers, pull back containers, and then this also works in manufacturing, it works in utility, so you have a substation, you have these industrial routers out there that can host apps, you know, then all of a sudden edge computing becomes real. But what this brings together is that now, you can actually get ISVs who can actually now say, hey I'm an app developer, I wanted to write an app, I have one that could be used in manufacturing. I could never do it before, but oh, there's this platform, now I can do it, and I don't have to start installing routers, like a Cisco partner will do it for a customer, and I can just drop my app in and it's, we're actually seeing that now-- >> So basically what's happening, the nirvana is first of all, intelligent edge is actually possible. >> Yes. >> With having the power at the edge with APIs, but for the ISVs, they might have the domain expertise at saying, hey I'm an expert on police, fire, public safety, vertical. >> Yes. >> But, I could build the best app, but I don't need to do all this other stuff. >> Yes. >> So I can focus all my attention on this. >> Yes. >> And their bottleneck was having that kind of compute and or Edge device. >> Yes. >> Is that what you're kind of getting at? >> Yeah, and there's, exactly it was because you know, I mean an app developer is awesome at writing apps. They don't want to get into the business of deploying networks and like even managing and operating how that is, but there's a whole like kind of Cisco ecosystem that does that. Like we have a lot of people who will love to operationalize that system, deploy that, you know, kind of maintain it. Then there's IT and OT operators who are running that stuff, but that app developer can write their app drop it into there, and then all of that can be taken care of. And we actually have two ISVs here with us, one in manufacturing, one in utilities, who are, you know, DevNet ISV partners, they've written applications and they actually have real stories about this, and kind of what they had to say is, like in the manufacturing example, is okay, so they write, they have this innovation, I wrote this cool app for manufacturing, right? So there's something that it does, it's building it, you know, they've gotten expertise in that, and then, as they've been, they're doing something innovative, they actually need the end customer, who does, the manufacturer, to use it, and adopt a new technology. Well, hey, you know, I'm running my stuff, why should I use that, how would I? So they actually work with a systems integrator, like a channel partner that actually will customize the solution. But even that person may not have thought about edge computing, what can you do, what's this crazy idea you have, but now they've actually gotten trained up, they're getting trained up on our IoT technologies, they're getting trained up on how to operationalize it, and this guy just writes his app, he actually points them to the DevNet Sandbox to learn about it, so he's like, no let me show you how this Edge processing thing works, go use the DevNet Sandbox, you can spin up your instance, you can see it working, oh look there's these APIs, let me show you. And it turns out they're using the Sandbox to actually train the partners and the end customer about what this model is like. And then, these guys are adopting it, and they're getting paying customers through this. >> Did you start hunting for ISVs, did they find you, how did that all transpire? >> It kind of happens in all different ways. (laughter) >> So yes. >> Yeah yeah, it happens in all different ways, and basically, in some cases like we actually sometimes have innovation centers and then you have you know, kind of as you know, the start-up that's trying to figure out how to get their stuff seen, they show up, we look for it. In our case in Italy, with the manufacturing company, then what happened was, the government was actually investing and the government was actually giving tax subsidies for manufacturing plants to modernize. And so, what they were doing was actually giving an incentive and then looking for these types of partners, so we actually teamed up with our country teams to find some of these and they have a great product. And then we started, you know, working with them. They actually already had an appreciation for Cisco because they, you know, in their country, they did computer science in college, they might've done some networking with the Cisco Networking Academy, so they knew about it, but finally, it came that they could actually bring this ecosystem together. >> Susie, congratulations on all your success, been great to be part of it in our way, but you and your team have done an amazing job, great feedback on Twitter on the swag got the-- (laughter) Swag bag's gettin' a lot of attention, which is always a key important thing. But in general, super important initiative, share some insight into how this has changed Cisco's executive view of the world because, you know, the cloud had horizontal scalability, but Cisco had it too. And now the new positioning, the new branding that Karen Walker and her team are putting out, the bridge to tomorrow, the future, is about almost a horizontally scalable Cisco. It's everywhere now so-- >> Yeah the bridge to possible, yeah. >> Bridge to possible, yes. >> Yeah well I mean, really what happens is, you know, there was a time when you're like, I'm going to buy my security, I'm going to buy my networking, I'm going to buy my data center, but really more and more people just want an infrastructure that works, right? An infrastructure that's capable that can allow you to innovate, and really what happens, when you think about how do you put all of these systems together, 'cause they're still individual, and they need to be individual in best in class products, well the best way to put 'em together is with APIs. (laughs) So, it's not that you need to architect them all into one big product, it's actually better to have best in class, clearly define the APIs, and then allow, as kind of modularity and to build it out. So, really we've had tremendous support from Chuck Robbins, our CEO, and he's understood this vision and he's been helping, kind of, you know, like DevNet is a start-up itself, like he's been helping us navigate the waters to really make it happen and as we moved and as he's evolved the organization, we've actually started to get more and more support from our executives and we're working across the team, so everything that we do is together with all the teams. And now what we're doing is we're co-launching products. Every time we launch a new product, we launch a new product with the product offer and the developer offer. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, here we've launched the new IoT products. >> With APIs. >> And, with APIs, and IOX and App-posting capabilities and we launched them together with a new DevNet IoT developer center. At developer.cisco.com/iot, and this is actually, if you take a look at the last say half year or year, our products have been launching, you'll see, oh here's the new DNA Center, and here's the new DevNet developer center. You know, then we can say, here's the new kind of ACI, and here's the new ACI developer center. Here's the new Meraki feature, here's the new ACI-- >> And it's no secret that DNA Center has over 600 people engineers in there. >> Yeah (laughs) >> That public information might not be-- >> You know, but we've actually gotten in the mode in the understanding of you know, every product should have a developer offer because it's about the ecosystem, and we're getting tremendous support now. >> Yeah a lot of people ask me about Amazon Web Services 'cause we're so close, we cover them deeply. They always ask me, hey John, why is that, why is Amazon so successful I go, well they got a great management team, they've got a great business model, but it was built on APIs first. It was a web service framework. You guys have been very smart by betting on the API because that's where the growth is, so it's not Amazon being the cloud, it's the fact that they built building blocks with APIs, that grew. >> Yes. >> And so I think what you've got here, that's lightening in the bottle is, having an API strategy creates more connections, connections create more fabric, and then there's more data, it's just, it's a great growth vehicle. >> Absolutely. >> So, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> So is that your market place, do you have a market place so it's just, I guess SDKs and APIs and now that you have ISVs comin' in, is that sort of in the plan? >> We do, no we do actually so, so yeah so basically, when you're in this world, then you have your device, you know, it's your phone, and then you have apps that you download and you get it from an app store. But when we're talking about, you know, the types of solutions we're talking about, there is infrastructure, there is infrastructure for you know, again, utilities companies, for police stations, for retail stores, and then, you have ISV applications that can help in each of those domains. There's oftentimes a systems integrator that's putting something together for a customer. And so now kind of the app store for this type of thing actually involves, you know, our infrastructure products together with kind of, and infrastructure, and third-party ones, you know, ISV software that can be customized and have innovation in different ways together with that system integrator and we're training them all, people across that, but we actually have something called DevNet Exchange. And what we've done is there's actually two parts, there's Code Exchange, which is basically, pointers out to you know, source code that's out in GitHub, so we're just going out to code repos that are actually helping people get started with different products. But in addition, we have Ecosystem Exchange, which actually lists the ISV solutions that can be used as well as the system's integrators who can actually deliver solutions in these different domains, so you know, DevNet Ecosystem Exchange is the place where we actually do list the ISVs with the SIs you know, with the different platforms so, that's the app store for a programmable infrastructure. >> Susie, congratulations again, thank you so much for including us in your DevNet Zone with theCUBE here for three days. >> Thank you for coming to us and for really helping us tell the story. >> It' a great story to tell and it's kickin' butt and takin' names-- (laughter) Susie Wee, Senior Vice President and CTO of DevNet, makin' it happen just the beginning, scratching the surface of the explosion of API-based economies, around the network, the network value, and certainly cloud and IoT. Of course, we're bringing you the edge of the network here with theCUBE, in Barcelona, we'll be back with more live coverage day two, 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. >> Okay welcome back everyone, we're here live in the Cisco DevNet Zone, at Cisco Live 2018. It's theCUBE's exclusive coverage. This is Go Live, I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman there, here with Suzie Wee who is the CTO and Vice President of Cisco. This is her baby DevNet, the fastest growing developer program in Cisco history, only four years old. Welcome to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Hey John good to see you, hey Stu. >> I made that stat, it was only four years old. So DevNet, obviously just for color commentary, really successful developer program, only in it's fourth year or so for Cisco. But it's really changing the face of Cisco. It's showing that a new collaboration, a new co-development, a new developer framework is being built on top of networks and it's on a collision course with Cloud Native. Kay, this is a great path for network engineers. It really changed the show vibe so congratulations. >> Thank you, thank you. Yeah, and why do you say collision course? There's like a whole new paradigm, right? And it's pretty amazing, it's pretty amazing. >> Well some of the things that we've been seeing here, obviously CCIE's or 25 years of excellence and stats was out here >> Yes, Yes. >> The key note from the CEO, Chuck Robbins, talks about an old way and new way. Developers are clearly in the driver's seat here and network engineers, Cisco partners, customers technical folks and engineers. They're at the keys to the kingdom and you introduced a concept called Network Dev Ops. >> Yes. >> Okay, a few years ago when we first had you on theCUBE. Where is that now? Where is Network Dev Ops now? What's the vibe internally? Is there a full acceptance to it? Is there embracing it? >> It's amazing and ya know it's like, when we were pushing it we were just saying, "Hey, the network is changing, the network "is gonna be programmable, the network "is going to have API's", and you go back four years and then you're just like, "What was the buzz?" The buzz was SDN, y'know the buzz was SDN. SDN was open flow, it was separation of control plain from data plain. But, it was still kind of research. And what we knew is like, it wouldn't become real until the people who are building and operating the World's networks were ready to adopt it. And so, at first of course, it was like, there were the people who were like, "Okay this network thing, this programmability "is gonna come to the network, but what can we do there?" And since then, people have jumped in, they've like really gotten in. And like here at this Cisco Live, what we're seeing is that people are ready to code. And so the concept of, I'm a networker, now there's software built into my entire network programming portfolio. How do I build the skills? I'm a developer, and the networkers are getting comfortable with understanding that they need to code, they need to understand these skills. But one thing that we did, was we actually separated out, like, the definition of developer. >> Yep. >> Y'know. >> You guys done a good job of really defining a path for the network engineer, who can extend their skill set and solve network problems, be creative, and also do great business outcome oriented things. So, I want you to take a minute to explain the DevNet story because you guys just didn't throw a PowerPoint at this. You dug in, you built it up, and you threw a lot of resources for Cisco, I mean small for Cisco's scale, but you guys dug in, you did the homework and you're doing new things. So take us to the DevNet story and what's happening this year in the momentum. Take us through that little journey. >> Yeah, so the story was back in actually 2013. Cisco was saying, "Hey, we're gonna get into software "we're doing software, we have a software strategy." And all of that is fantastic, either... But the thing that was missing, was like, Hey, we need an ecosystem, like the reason you do software is to have an ecosystem. And in order to have an ecosystem you want people to build upon your stuff. You need to expose your API's. It doesn't happen by itself, you need to have a developer program so that you can actually really let people use all of that and partake in the ecosystem. So we, kind of, I evangelized, evangelized, evangelized, gave a couple hundred pitches, got the okay to start DevNet, and that was in 2014. And then in 2014, then we said okay. So now we got the okay to start a developer program for Cisco. But, y'know, it's still not a sure shot that it would work. >> Yeah. >> And then we said our dream is to have a developer conference at Cisco Live. And so we wanted to have that developer conference at Cisco Live and then three months later, we had it. And we're like okay, 24 hour hack-a-thon, deep dive API sessions, but would the people come? Would they be ready? And then, they came. Like, they came, it was packed. It was just like wall to wall of people, who are excited to learn about software. So now you go and then you fast forward, y'know, four years, and now we just hit 500,000 developers. 500,000 people have registered for DevNet. And you can be like, "Well what does that mean?" We have half a million developers. Is it a real number? Well, my team kept scrubbing the database. Like so, we had hit 400,000 and then our numbers got lower and I was like "Come on guys, stop it!" And they were like, "No, no, no, we have to scrub it, "we gotta out the duplicates." And then finally we got it up and we've grown it. It basically is at 500,000 registered developers. And what that means is like, now we have a community. We have a community of people who are getting up on network API's, we have a community of people who can develop, and once you do that you hit this completely different inflection point. Where at first our mission was just to help networkers be developers, to help the app developers understand that the network has API's and to do stuff there. That's still our goal, to enable developers. But now we have a community, what we can do is really catalyze that community into business and impact. >> Suzie, first of all congratulations. It's been so much fun to be here in the DevNet Zone. It'd been a few years since I'd been to Cisco Live. And y'know, people in these sessions every time. And you go, people are coding, they're white-boarding, they're, y'know building. Playing with Legos, they're doing all sorts of stuff. Over the last five years, y'know, we all knew that, y'know, developers of the new Kingmakers. It's been talked about a lot. But we've seen many infrastructure companies try. They create little developer conferences, they bring in speakers, they'll get some momentum, and then after a year or two, it kind of fizzles out. >> Yes. >> Give us a little bit behind the scenes, as to, y'know is it because networking people are worried about their jobs and they're getting on-board? Is it, y'know, I know part of it is your team and the ecosystem you've built here. But, give is some of the reasons why this has succeeded when so many other have, kind of, come and gone. >> Yeah well, I mean we're very fortunate that we've kind of executed in a way that it has continued to be here and we know that's really hard to do. It takes executive support, it takes the troops, it takes fighting anti-bodies, and kind of all of that kind of stuff. But I think, like, the key has been that we've been working with the community. When we had that first DevNet Zone, that first developer conference at Cisco Live four years ago, people came. And that told Cisco something, right? And then as we've continued to build it out, we've actually been not doing it as a silo within Cisco. We've been doing it with our sales organization, with our partner organization, we've been doing it with our ecosystem and our partners and out there. We've just continuously been doing it based on what their needs are. >> And Suzie, I love that, because there are some of the events I saw, they were like, "Well, the developer "is this special unicorn", and we're gonna have this special area, it's velvet rope, we're gonna treat 'em really well. But, this is the first thing you see when you come in, you're very approachable. The line I've heard from your team is, "We are going to meet them where they are." There are no, y'know, "Gosh I haven't "touched programming in 20 years." No, no, no, you're fine, you're good come on in. I'm not sure if I'm really (mumbles). Well you're not programming, you're coding. So, I think that's part of the success, is these people. Y'know, this is their careers, and you're giving them that path forward. >> It is, and when we look at like, developer programs, you'd think it would be easy to start a developer program. But, there's no formula for it, y'know? And when we did it for Cisco, like as we've grown this, it depends on the products that we have, it depends on the community that we have, the types of solutions, what our customers want. And basically what happens is, we did have a core set of networkers who are scared. And we, instead of making DevNet the elite place for the elite developers, we said it is the place to bring in the community. We're gonna be welcoming, we're bringing them in on the journey, because they're the ones who need to be there. And so we've really tried this more open approach. And if you look at Cisco's community of networkers, they're amazing, like, they are developing and installing and operating networks around the World in every country. They've been dedicated, but they are scared of that transition to software and programmability. And they've been dedicated to us, we're dedicated to them, getting to that next level. >> You just did a good job of bringing that tribe kind of mentality and co-development, co-creation, people who are learning. So you have first time learners kicking the tires on coding and growing and experts. So Cisco Champions coming in; Powerhouse developers. >> Yeah >> Not Cisco employees, it's Cisco Champions, and so a nice balance. So that's a good sign of success. >> And you're right, that's key because it's not just, like just beginners. I mean, first of all, there is a very large stage of new people who are just coming in and then wanting to get started and that's awesome. And in addition, very advanced folks, who are like, y'know, just the most advanced developer you'd find, who also has networking expertise. And then of course, the app developers. We're talking to app developers and cloud developers and DevOps pros, and they're coming in as well. >> Yea, and Suzie you bring up a great point. Cause one of the challenges when you have the cool new innovation stuff, is the business, like well how does that connect back? So help connect the dots, we heard Chuck Robbins on stage. Not only was it just DevNet and 500,000 but the new products that are coming out just tie right into it. >> It's crazy, like yea, it's awesome. Because what happens is, programmability, Cisco, is building programmability into our entire portfolio. It's not that we have one product that has API's, I mean that's where we were a few years ago. But now we look... Our enterprise networking products, y'know, for the data center, for service provider, for wireless. All of those products are programmable. Our security products are programmable. IoT, collaboration, our entire portfolio is now programmable, so it gives you this kind of whole portfolio of programmability to play with, and that cross-domain. Who covers that many domains? And that's really powerful. When we take a look at the programmability, it was like for the network devices themselves. Like those have Asics that are programmable. So if there's like a new protocol that comes up to handle IoT things, we can actually re-program the Asics to get that going at line rates. You can do like, on-board application hosting on those network devices. We have controller levels, so you can hit the network, and then now you have like analytics and insights that you can do to pull out information from the network, and then be able to, y'know, operate at that level as well. >> So a strategic advantage architecturally for Cisco, certainly in the network side and scaling up at the stack with Kubernetes and (mumbles). We saw Google on-stage, kinda giving an indicator of where it's going. I want to ask you about the culture question for DevNet. Obviously people are fascinated with the success of DevNet, we've been great to follow the success through your journey and being part of it. But for the folks that are now seeing the success, and want to join: What can they expect, if I join the DevNet mission? What's the expectation? What's gonna be the vibe? What would you share to someone watching, that's gonna jump in and join the journey, what can they expect? >> Well, I think that first of all, it's going to be very welcoming. Like, they're gonna feel welcome. And I'm just proud of my team, because people come in and they actually say, "Wow, sometimes you go to developer conferences "and it's a little bit intimidating." And yea, you might be intimidated, but here you're going to feel welcome. Because, y'know, we really want things to happen. And then there's gonna be this kind of like, intrigue in terms of what you can build. Because what we're building is different. It's not a well known area, like everyone knows how to build apps for a mobile device. People don't know how to build applications for programmable infrastructure. Like, the fact that hey, your wireless access points now give you location and proximity information. I can write an indoor location app. Sounds simple, but it's awesome. >> Connect a camera to it. >> It's amazing, right? >> Hello! >> And then what happens is, as you're doing that, you have like, connect a camera, you're like put a Playstation into a hospital... The Children's Hospital of L.A came and spoke, and they were talking about the business problem. They had a patient, who was very sick, a young boy. And his wish was to have Playstation so he could play it. And then they had to go to their networkers cause you don't put Playstations in hospitals. They had to make that happen and intent-based networking lets you make that wish, and then activate that in the network, that's now a programmable infrastructure. So the types of problems that you can solve are different, it's amazing. >> The new apps are coming out and you're creating a new, first generation green field of networked apps. >> Yes. (chuckles heartily) >> Like what iPhone did for mobile apps, you guys are doing for networks. >> That's right, that's right. >> So that's awesome, it's super cool. Programmable infrastructure, all DevOps kinda geeky stuff. For the next steps, as you guys are now at the beginning of the next inflection point. >> Yes. >> What're you guys focused on? What's happening with the team? What's happening with some of the initiatives you're doing? Also demos get better and better. The training classes are still going on. What's your focus? >> So with some of the things that are happening now, which is... So we've hit this milestone of half a million developers. But what does that mean? What that means is that, we have half a million people who can use network API's. What that means also, is that they're contributing code. So it's no longer just, "Here I'm gonna help "you use your API", but now it's also like, they're contributors back. And what we're doing, is we're actually embracing that and making that part of the innovation model for networking. So, you're not just taking Cisco's platforms and the innovation there, which is of course growing tremendously, but now you can also add in innovation by the community. And I know it's a straight forward concept for software. It's not a straightforward concept for networking and infrastructure. >> To bring an open-source ethos, to code sharing, co-contributing. >> Exactly, and something that we've released is code exchange, definite code exchange. And what it is, is just a list of curated software. Software that's out of GitHub, that works for our platforms, y'know. But the thing that developers are always like, "Okay there's a lot of software out there, "which one should I use?" and then basically giving them like, the curated list of here's the stuff that you can use. >> So Suzie, it's been fun to watch the transformation of Cisco overall. As we look at... Before, we used to measure in boxes and ports. What's the measurement internally? When you talk about saying, "Okay how are we doing "on our journey to become a software company?" Give us a little insight as to internally how Cisco measures that. >> The way that we measure that now is, we're talking to our customers and our partners and their adoption of API's, of programmability, their ability to execute on that and to be successful in this business. And so, it's really an external looking view. So it's all just like okay, how much do they get it? How much can they use it? How much are they building the skills? So it's really looking at the success of the community and being able to build the skills and use these products and build solutions with them. >> Suzie, congratulations on continuing growing, hitting a major milestone, 500,000 developers, half a million developers, that's a real community. It's just the beginning now, it's the start line. >> (chuckling) The start line, it is. >> One finish line is another start line. >> It is a start line, it's absolutely the start line. >> And you guys had a great event last night at the Mango party, the Mango Cafe. Talk about that, you had a celebration. Turns out a lot of people showed up. It was supposed to be a little private party. >> It was a little private party, yea. So we, y'know, just wanted to thank the team and thank our community. Because, quite honestly, to get to this half a million it wasn't just the people who work for me who got it there. It's the fact that, there's of course our team who's very dedicated to that, but then it's our partners. It's even you guys, right? It's our partners who have like... I understand this mission, I'm gonna jump in, I'm gonna help it happen. It's our systems engineers, it's our partners, it's our innovation folks, it's people from the community who understand the mission and have joined in to push it forward. So we had this party last night at Mango Cafe, you guys were there. The people were callin it kinda the best one. It's really just appreciation for our community and what they've done to get it there. Because it's not us, it's our community who've done it. >> This is the open ethos. Cisco becoming open. What's it like to be on the inside and seeing Cisco open up like this? >> It's, I mean, it's amazing. And what's amazing is like, when I started DevNet you'd think like okay, "I'm gonna run a developer program." The thing that surprises me is just, how hurtful it is to so many people. Like, people, they find a path. They see a new opportunity, they figure out a new way they wanna advance their businesses and their careers. And it's like, all heart. And that's how it grew. Like with the resources, it's just because people who had felt this heart and this connection into this mission and drive, they're taking it to the next level so it's amazing >> Like open-source software, people love to be part of a great project. >> It is, it is. >> And DevNet certainly is. And DevNet Create. Don't forget DevNet Create is your other event that bring the cloud native world with the networking world together. >> It is. >> Great project. >> You were with us at DevNet Create and that's where it's this mixing of communities of like, the app developers with the networkers who are getting out there. And what's funny is, we didn't know how those communities would interact. And they're mixing, they're getting it. They're just like "Okay, I have this location software, "I need to work together with the guys "who are gonna install the network and then "we can make this amazing experience." And they're mixing and when they do it the right things happening. >> Very complimentary, there's love going wild. >> App guys love the network guys to take care of the network and the network guys love the app guys that take care of the apps. >> Exactly! Exactly. >> It's a win-win. Great stuff, congratulations. Again, a new way to program. Just like we saw the iPhone creating the app store. Networking now is programmable. We expect to see a lot of great creativity, new problems, new things being created. And that's an opportunity for all. We're here at theCUBE bringing you all the action from the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live. More live coverage. Day three, stay with us, I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman, we'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering DevNet Create 2018. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Hello everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Cisco's DevNet Create here in Mountain View in the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier, my co-cost, Lauren Cooney, our next guest is Susie Wee, is vice president and CTO of Cisco DevNet. This is her event, DevNet is a Cisco's developer team, conference, community, DevNet created a cloud native, much more dev ops oriented. Our second year covering it, it's only a year and a half old. The creator with her team, Susie, great to have you back. >> Great, it's great to be back. >> What a success, again. You guys are learning, we heard from the keynote that you made some changes, heard some feedback, you added more cooler elements. But this is about technology enablement tools, education, and then fun, and having people exchange information. How's it going? What's the upkeep? >> It's going great. So we're really excited to have our second DevNet Create, and what happened was last year, what we've always tried to do with DevNet overall is to make sure that we had hands-on material because people want to code, people want to learn about the newest technologies. We also made sure that the content of the first DevNet Create was from Cisco, but also from the leading players in the community. And so we got feedback from last year on how to improve it for this year, and basically they just wanted more hands on, and so we've actually expanded from having three parallel workshops to eight parallel workshops, where just folks can get hands-on and code. We continued to have both Cisco content as well as community content from leaders in the field. When we got feedback last year, what happened was we were collecting the feedback. The people who responded, we asked a few questions, and we said: Did you feel that this was useful for you? Did you feel that you were learning about modern tools and technologies that would help you in your career? Would you come back again? The strangest thing that happened is like 100% of people said that they were learning about topics that are modern and they need for their careers. And 100% of them said they would come back again. And I'm like, is it still 100%? 'Cause one person says no, it's not 100%. And so to everyone that responded, they wanted to come back, so we just gave them more of what they wanted. >> It's great, it feels great. You've got a good vibe, but I think there's some real interesting things. We talked last time about how the cloud native world connecting with the commercial liability of Cisco. Cisco is not a small company, they invented routing as we know it, they connect the Internet, and you had that kind of ops networking culture with this new programmable Internet kind of coming together, so there's some notable news you guys had here, why I was impressed by. One is these business exchange, or business ecosystem. Talk about some of the things that you guys are doing now as a result of these two worlds coming together. It's not just speeds that feed tech goodness, just like business value. Money making! >> (laughing) Just to go a little bit more into that, what happens is you kind of have your world of infrastructure, and you have developers who are writing cloud apps, it's so easy to deploy, and really get a lot of value out there. But then you have the world of real companies, real data, real existing infrastructure, enterprise data, smart cities that you want to bring online and everything there, and there's a new type of app that's come to play, and there's a new type of app that of course, needs to work in the cloud, but also needs to couple in with the real world and physical things, and enterprise data. And so that brings rise to a whole new set of applications and new ways to do business. So in terms of what we're doing with that, as someone writes this kind of an app, it's not easy, just like download it onto my phone. It's actually, how do I couple that with the location based infrastructure? How do I couple that with enterprise and hybrid cloud data? And so what we have now is a business exchange, an ecosystem exchange where we can bring those applications up, where if someone is using Cisco infrastructure, we have partners around the world who install and manage solutions that they put for their customers. And we want to show them these are the applications that work together with those products. These are the solutions that you can deliver, so we want to take the applications that our developers are writing and make it available to our partners, to let them use our go to market that we have around the world. >> We get the technical developer ecosystem, and you have the business ecosystem, so that's an indicator that there's some movement and growth. Where is it coming from? Where are you seeing the highlights here? >> Yeah, so in terms of the movement and growth, what happens is we're concentrated on technical enablement for the first few years of DevNet. But clearly, the reason to do the technical enablement is to do that business pull through. Where do we see the growth? So, what happens is everyone in the world wants to digitize, right? So people want to take their manufacturing lines, they want to digitize them. People who have cities want to offer newer experiences that are still kind of leveraging the old, but then providing a top-notch experience for that. So we have people that are in cities who want to use our infrastructure, but also have innovative applications to give to their folks. We have partners around the world who want to not only provide infrastructure, but to provide interesting solutions and experiences. So it's really interesting to see the hunger and the desire now for people to use applications in all different ways, and we're trying to really package it up for them. >> So you're actually stitching these applications together and then packaging them up for consumption for the solution? Is that what you're looking at? >> Yeah, because everybody's buying. Everybody needs a network, everybody has something that exists, but they want to go above it. That boundary between applications and infrastructure is kind of blurring, right? And what an application can do when it's really coupled in to an infrastructure with APIs is completely new, and they want to play, they want to innovate. They don't want to just do the same old thing, and they want to kind of unleash the power, get the value from all of the application development that's going on. >> I think that's great. One of the things I saw from the keynote was the numbers in terms of your exponential growth over the past four years and also the number of folks who continuously visit the site. I think that's awesome. Can you kind of give folks that are looking to build communities any tips or tricks? >> Yeah, and actually, Lauren, you were with us early on. You saw when I was begging for Cisco to have a developer community, and so we didn't have any members at that time. But yeah, we've grown to 480,000, actually 485,000 registered developers. We have 60,000 active monthly users. >> Lauren: That's great. >> So they are really doing stuff. But yeah, in terms of what it takes to grow that community, I think really the key is that my incentive, my goals, my mission, which I shared, is that we want to make developers successful. We want to make our partners in that broader ecosystem and our customers successful. It's not actually my job to sell products. Obviously any solution that's written around APIs for a product will sell products, but my job is to make the ecosystem successful. So I think the key is just constantly keeping their best interest at heart, and having a model where obviously it will pull through the right business for Cisco. >> You've got great self-awareness, and I think that's important to understand what they're trying to do, but also you bring a lot to the table. Cisco has massive presence and enterprises in businesses, whether it's service providers, down to the small medium enterprise to large enterprises. As you look across Cisco, you bring the goods to the party, so to speak. How do you balance that, and what's your approach? So you're taking more of the programmable net ops, which I love, by the way, we talked about that in Barcelona at Cisco Live. You can bring a lot to the table, but you don't want to firehose the developers with all this Cisco stuff. How are you blending that together? What's your approach? >> This is a great point. So what we have to do is we have to understand who our audience is, and we need to bring the right material and speak the language for that audience. And to give you an example, is that we've had you at DevNet Create, we've had you at the DevNet Zones at Cisco Live. When we go to Cisco Live and we have our developer conferences, that is the group in the audience that knows Cisco. They're getting certified, they know how to deploy infrastructure, it's a tremendous community. We have millions of people around the world who basically run, deploy, manage these solutions. >> John: Over years of experience, too. >> Oh, decades of experience, yes, and certification, mastery, expertise. >> They're the network nerds. >> They are the network nerds! (laughs) >> Moving packets around, but now it's changed. >> And the way that we talk to them is different, because what we present to them is how can you automate your infrastructure? How can you scale and use the newest tools? How can you get observability and insights from that infrastructure itself? And then, here's the software tools that you need to use, and here's the APIs you need to know about. Let us understand your problems, and let's work on this together. Now, the types of platforms that we expose and the APIs will be for networking, it'll be for security, it will be for compute, it'll be in many of these areas. Then we come over to DevNet Create, and what we had to do was create a separate venue to hit app developers, cloud native developers, they're not going to Cisco Live. They're actually going to developer conferences, they're in the Bay Area, they're all around the world. They don't think of Cisco or even of infrastructure in what they do, necessarily. >> It's a different culture. >> It's a different culture. And we actually had to re-jigger our vocabulary, we had to re-jigger what we present to them, because when they think of IOS, they don't think of a network operating system, Cisco's iOS operating system, they think of a mobile operating system. So we've actually had to even retrain ourselves to show this is the value that we provide to application developers, here's the platforms and the APIs that matter to you. Here's the right level of abstraction of what would be relevant to an app developer, and really speak to them. And DevNet Create is a separate venue created for that reason. >> And timing is everything, as we know. The wind's at your back because you've got Kubernetes, the container madness, the standardization of contains, which is not new, the Google guy was on earlier talking about containers. You've got micro services, you've got Istio, which is where you're partnering with Google, so this is a new, real emerging tech area that's a nice glue layer between the cultures. How are you handling that? Do you agree? >> Oh my goodness. >> What's your focus on? >> Yes, it's so amazing. So the whole world's in containers and micro services, is shifting how applications are developed. We actually used it within our own system, where we wanted to use the newest technologies, we saw the benefits of working in container and microservices based architecture, to not write monolithic apps but to really be able to compose and reuse services. So we had to go through that change, but what we saw is that when you're dealing with enterprise data, confidential data, customer data, and then public cloud data and everything there, there's a lot of thinking about how to write a cloud app that is a hybrid cloud app that uses OnPrim and public cloud and the best of both worlds. And the world of containers is interesting because suddenly it's the performance of your application, it depends even more on the network. Getting security of how your containers are built up, how they're connected, how they're spinning up in different places, you need that consistency. So having the whole tool of how do you now deploy containers on OnPrim resources as well as public cloud based resources is tricky, and you need to build in that security into the infrastructure itself, and then provide the right abstraction for the developers with tools like Istio. So we're partnered up with Google. It's been a fantastic collaboration where we start with Google's leadership in just cloud native development and what they have to do to scale, and then take together the problems and the opportunities of real enterprises, of real cities, and things there. And as Allen said this morning, it's complicated. It's not that easy. There's a whole new set of problems that we need to deal with, and this partnership is amazing at putting that together. >> Makes the network more important. >> Makes the network more important, yes. >> Awesome, so now talk about what you're doing for incentives. Obviously, you've got a great posture to the marketplace, love how you're doing it, you're bringing two worlds together, bringing a lot to the table, but now you've got to keep people motivated and keep them incentives. Couple things you announced on stage, DevNet Solutions Plus, which is much more curated set of approved rockstar developers or apps that can get on a price list. That's like a lottery ticket. It's like the golden ticket for a developer. There's real value there, right? You can't invite everybody, but you got to do some QAing, but talk about some of these incentive programs you have. >> Absolutely. So what happens is once again, a company like Cisco has an entire community and ecosystem of people and places of infrastructure around the world, and they're looking to differentiate, they're looking to have interesting offerings as well. They're very relevant, because an app developer today needs to figure out how can they make money, how can they take all of everything they've invested in software and bring it to a business value. And so what we're doing is actually coupling that app developer with the entire Cisco channel and the Cisco partners that are out there, and then letting their applications come forward. So when you get something onto... The way that it works is that Cisco has its price list, partners around the world can create solutions that they deliver with those products. But in addition to Cisco's products, what we can do is put on a software and ISV's products onto there, and we're adding it on to the Cisco price list. It's a whole new type of app store. (laughs) But it's another way to go to market to get into these places. >> You're seeing some early returns in terms of the types of ISVs that are coming into the tables, or pattern to the match, or see more network-centric? Who are some of the kinds of developers? What's the make up look like? >> Yeah, so it's really a combination. So what happens is there's the set of applications that are built on infrastructure, surprisingly. So it builds on a collaboration, or a unified communication infrastructure, things that are built on a UCS, like a compute infrastructure. Things that need the network in a mission critical way. So like trading applications, right? You need that network to work, the performance of the application needs to be coupled, so then people tend to buy a kit of here's the software, here's the hardware that makes it all work, I'm buying infrastructure, I want to buy these together. And so it's really kind of putting that bundle of value together and then letting that sell. And I talked to our partners around the world, it's an amazing ecosystem. And when they can actually connect to the world of software developers and this ecosystem in a way that it helps them differentiate their business, it helps bring the app developer money and a business opportunity. It's a whole new level of scale. It's incredible. >> You'll be pushing video apps on there, too. >> Susie: Absolutely. >> CUBE videos. >> CUBE videos, there we go. (laughing) Absolutely. >> Interesting times. Awesome. Anything you want to add? >> Yeah, definitely. One of the things I was wondering about is that with this whole app ecosystem and the partners and the things along those lines, what are the apps that you're seeing that you actually never expected to see? >> Well, some are ones that we actually did expect, or we hoped for them, but the fact that they're coming through is another case. There's a set of applications that are built, for example, around contact centers. Contact centers are customer care, it's the way that people are interacting, right? And there's a whole kind of communications infrastructure around that, it's how people are answering phones, offering services, knowing what to do, so how you build those solutions together. There's a set of healthcare applications, so when you're going into healthcare, your patient monitoring devices versus your guest Wi-Fi services are different, so the kinds of solutions that you can provide there are key. There's actually a great thing in terms of indoor location based services. So we have Meraki and CMX where your Wi-Fi infrastructure not only provides wireless connectivity but gives you indoor location proximity. There's actually a company here called Map Wise, which has built kind of a wayfinding application on top. When I was at Web Summit, then they had Cisco infrastructure for putting up the conference, then they had their application to help people navigate throughout the conference, and they came in, and I actually spoke to Matthew, who's here, and he was like yeah, I had to learn because I had to go in early. They had to set up the network, and then I'm a software guy, I had to get my app to work on that network. I hadn't really thought about how to do that before. Right, so you're starting to couple these apps into that. >> Stu: New use cases. >> These are new use cases, and so much value. >> Yeah, and it's good that you get the terminology, it's a language issue, right? So you got to get the languages nailed down. All right, final question for you. What's the bumper sticker here? What's the phrase? I heard you on stage, create, connect, secure. What's the current DevNet Create tagline? >> So it is: Connect to Create. And so in one port, it was about connecting the world, providing that connection, and that's what we've done over the last 25 years. And over the next 25, even more things will be connected, but it's really about the solutions that we can build together as a team, and there's an ecosystem now that you have APIs that are exposed. You can build machine learning, and artificial intelligence together with world leading connectivity, together with world leading cloud companies. And when you bring all those together, you can have entirely new types of experiences that we can do, so it's Connect to Create. Along with that, actually comes the need for security and protection, and so that fabric needs to not only connect to create, but also connect and protect to create. And we think that by building that into the infrastructure as well, we can help app developers to secure their customers' data and to secure their users themselves, access, and all sorts of things. >> I love the concept of co-creation, really great collaboration model, and you guys are doing a great job. Congratulations on driving this developer program, and programs now, from a handful of renegades, now to a big organization, or growing organization. >> We're still lean, but our pack is growing. (laughing) >> You don't got to be a rocket scientist to know they're going to be doubling down on this. Cisco, cracking the code on the developer forum about learning the languages, knowing how to lead into the right cultures and bring them together, and have the right technology, enablement, and Susie, the creator, a part of the team, member of Cisco team for DevNet. Thanks for coming on and sharing, appreciate it. >> Susie: Thank you so much. >> Be right back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From Barcelona, Spain. It´s theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco Veeam and theCUBE´s ecosystem partners. >> Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE´s exclusive live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain with Cisco´s Live 2018 Europe. I was going to say DevNet, but we´re on the DevNet zone. I´m John Furrier, your host, with Stu Miniman, analyst at Wikibon.com . Our next guest is Susie Wee, who´s Vice-President, CTO of DevNet. Susie, CUBE alumni, welcome back to theCUBE, great to see you. >> Great to see you, welcome to Barcelona. >> John: Thank you for having us, we´re in the hot section of the Devnet Zone, the signs, cause it´s a big part of the hallway here. And it´s really where the action is. >> Susie: It is. >> You guys have continued to do a great job and we´re psyched to be on the ground where the action is. Thanks for inviting us. >> Great, I´m glad that you´re here. There´s so much going on. >> Okay, so Devnet is this renaissance going on at Cisco. But it´s also not just a Cisco phenomenon, the world of software development is seeing an explosion. I mean, from the edge of the network, and crazy fringe of cryptocurrency, blockchain, all the way into app development and then under the hood DevOps. Some really great things are happening, you have it featured here, DevOps, at Devnet. What´s going on at the DevNet zone? >> Yeah, it´s really interesting because what happens is here at Cisco live and here in the DevNet zone, we have basically people who deployed network and Compute Infrastructures, around Europe. And so, it´s pretty amazing that we have the people who are like feet on the street, working in those networks, deploying them, digitizing Smart Cities, putting up new buildings, putting up new infrastructure everywhere. And, what´s really cool is, they´re all interested in learning about APIs and software. And, so, that´s not easy, right? That´s something that´s a big shift in, like, I´m running a network infrastructure, and I´m ready to learn about software and deep-dive into APIs. So, our new products are coming out, which actually have built-in programmability. Like, the network now has APIs, it´s getting built into the network. And whereas you could always like take a Compute Infrastructure and manage it virtually, use, you know, CICD pipelines and everything there with DevOps. But the thing is, now the Network has APIs and you can now kind of flexibly deploy your network in that same way of DevOps but using Net DevOps, and that´s kind of what it´s all about. >> Yeah, Susie, I wonder, there was so much hype for a bunch of years about like, software to find networking. (Susie laughs) But, under the covers, like behind the scenes, you know, it´s the API economy. That´s where the actions happen, it doesn´t seem like it´s gotten quite the attention, you have some interesting things about where Net and Dev go together. What do people miss out there, that, you know, kind of the industry watchers, that, you know, aren´t here, aren´t seeing the people that are, you know, been spending days already doing stuff here. >> Susie: Yeah. >> And obviously you´re really excited. >> Well there was all the kind of excitement and hype, you know, it kind of went through it´s hype curve of what software-defined networking was and would be and could be. But the thing that we have to remember is that there´s like real mission critical networks operating all around the world and people who are out there, who deploy them and run them and manage them. And so, what happens is, you need to do more than just like put out a new protocol or put out a new innovation. You need to kind of bring the community along and kind of still make those revolutions, but, by evolving, right, having the evolutions and the folks who are deploying and making all the right thing happen. So, what happens is, just SDN is now becoming a reality. Because, it took more than just putting a controller on top of an existing network, like, that´s good, that´s an important part of it. But, it´s also just building programmability into the network elements themselves. And then, being able to get that really kind of rapid responses. You´re, you know, deploying new configuration, setting policy, incorporating security, you know. And so, now, just SDN is becoming real and the real world here, all of these folks are picking it all up. >> So I have to ask you, you mentioned Net DevOps, cause, you, we love, we´ve talked about DevOps all day long, Stu and I, with all the shows and, you know, we´re hop the trot for DevOps. But you said Net DevOps. >> Susie: Yeah. >> What is that? (Susie laughs) >> Can you explain? >> Yeah, it´s really awesome, it´s just basically the fact that, you know, with DevOps you´re taking your applications, cloud applications, deploying them fast, right? Rapidly, CICD, using this infrastructure-as-code type of thinking. Well now, it´s not only the Compute but the network plays in that too. So, basically, if you picture underneath that network is a bunch of network devices, a bunch of security, you know, products, all of these things are coming together to really connect everything. And, that´s becoming programmable. And what happens is now with Net DevOps you can create and treat the network as code. So, you want to deploy changes in your network, you´ll do it with a software configuration update. You know, you want to like, add new devices into the network. You want to add new users and set new policies for security, control how apps are done, how cloud, you know, applications are running. You can actually roll that out as software changes. So, what happens is suddently, it´s not only Compute that works in a DevOps pipeline, but the network is also participating in this Net DevOps pipeline. >> You know, I love this new trend, Net DevOps, because it´s kind of like, the old days was you moved up the stack. Now you see the movement down the stack from the applications, to DevOps, now moving lower to NetOps, Net DevOps. >> Susie: Yes. >> But the question is, that makes still no sense, by the way, but I need to ask. Who´s writing that code? The network guys? So, in DevOps, we knew who the DevOps guys were, it was the operators and the developers kind of coming together. >> Susie: Yeah. >> Yeah, pushing code, real agile. Who does that, the same guys doing DevOps? Or is it the network guys, a combination oh both? Would you... >> Oh, my God. >> A lot of people. (says in foreign language) >> Yeah, it´s really exciting the way that it´s evolving. So, what you see is, you know, in Cisco Live, we have a huge kind of community, just people who come to Cisco Live to get trained, to get their certifications on how to deploy the latest networking technologies and operate, manage them. They get certified and their running those networks around the world. They´re now here, picking up the software skills and learning to use these, the new software products, and being able to deploy in Net DevOps. So, they´re all here to learn about how can I put built-in automation. You know, once you have that programmability and automation you can scale and work things out in really big ways. How can I put applications performance monitoring into my network? You know, and make sure that it´s operating properly and we´re getting the right assurance that it´s performing well. So, the network operators, are picking up those skills. But, in addition, there´s actually the app developers, who are coming in and app developers who are writing, for example, management or DevOps or even, you know, Docker, Kubernetes. Folks who are in that, who need the network. And basically now they´re like "the network has APIs, I can actually use that, so that, if I, you know, for Docker and for Kubernetes, you know, we´re working with Google on stuff. Our developers are actually now writing tools to make sure that, as you´re optimizing your microservices, the placement of them, you´re taking the network into account as well. >> So you kind of get both. >> So it´s interesting, and Kubernetes plays an interesting role because you can actually run those functions >> Susie: Yes. >> On Kubernetes, can´t you? >> Susie: Yes. >> So that´s kind of a new trend. >> Susie: Yeah. >> Who´s, I mean, so they´re writing code in here, in DevNet Zone? Or is that, the network operators are coming in banging out code? >> So, network operator are here banging out code. There´s app developers who are coming in and banging out code as well. And this whole thing of like, you know, the infrastructure guys, the app developer guys. And then, the DevOps. There´s this DevOps professional, kind of like the IT folks that are moving on to embrace DevOps and they´re kind of emerging in the middle of here to use all of these tools that are created in open source. >> So you´re appealing to all constituency stakeholders of software. >> We are, we are, yeah. (laughs) >> We are, and actually I that some... >> Is that why DevNet´s so popular? (laughs) >> I think that people have a need, they see a need and (laughs), and basically what I think, like the trend that´s going on that´s kind of making this stuff happen, is that, we know there´s so much exciting, excitement in applications and cloud and all of the developments there, and the internet of things. These applications need the network more than ever before. So, before, they only used the network for connectivity, but now they need the network for security. They need it for scale. They do need more bandwidth, they need good performance. And, so... >> John: And they need to program that too. >> And they need to program it, exactly. And so, that´s what the new network APIs, the fact that you have a programmable network is what´s letting those guys play. And not just say, you know, before it was "here´s your network, like, just do the most you can, given the performance of the network", right? >> So Susie, first of all... >> But now it´s programmable. >> Congratulations on, you know, the DevNet Zone here is awesome. >> Susie: Thank you. >> And, we know it´s challenging to bring developers in and to, you know, pull this community in where, they might not have been before, there´s retraining everything, but, I was wondering if you can give us a little inside into Cisco. So, Cisco, you know, has been around for decades. Networking company. Software has been a piece of it for a long time, I mean, it´s, you know, even when it´s, you know, "hey, we spent a lot of money on building this chip out there", I was who´s what drove that. Software´s a large piece but, the whole developer angle, getting Cisco behind this, give us a little bit of inside as for what kind of transformation, you know, your team has driven inside to get more of Cisco onboard. I mean, you know, people that are used to selling boxes, and things that, you know, the networking industry is about ports and cables and speeds and feeds and, you know, apps are very different. >> It is, it is very different and it´s, um, it was actually really great. So we´ve built DevNet over the last four years. And it was one thing to kind of have a strategy, like, we knew that the products were going to software, that SDN was emerging. And that, the only way it could actually become real is for Cisco to also participate in it, right? Just cause there´s so much network out there that is Cisco. And so, the entire industry has made that become more real. But, you need to build an ecosystem around it, right? The only reason that it´d have software, like, there´s many reasons, but one of the main reasons is actually to make sure that the ecosystem is participating in the innovation. So, yeah, we created DevNet to, not just focus on our internal development but to provide and kind of catalyze the industry to participate and really innovate and build software on top using all the new APIs. So, um, so yeah, it´s been, it´s been amazing to see the growth and what´s interesting is, over the last 4 years, it´s the community. So, from our first DevNet Zone we had a lot of people who are interested. You know, they´re all like, ah! You know, my day job´s been networking. I coded a long time ago, let me get back into it. But now we see that audience, plus much more. Like, if you look at here at how engaged all of these kind of networkers and developers are, is, they´re right in there. They´re just hungry saying, you know, I have applications that I need to deploy. Applications are hitting the infrastructure. My network can make a difference in how well these new applications run. They´re all in. >> Susie, you´ve done this you´ve done this a number of times, now. Do you have like, kind of the hero numbers as to a what percentage of the attendees you know, spend a bunch of time in the DevNet zone, how much code or applications get written? Just, kind of order of magnitude. >> Susie: Oh. >> Kind of the engagement. >> You mean like, kind of like, from before til now? >> Yeah, well, pr just, you know, what expectations... >> Yeah. >> For this show, what you´ve seen at some of the previous events. >> Yeah, well, kind of what´s funny is, what happened is, the DevNet Zone, like having a developer conference within Cisco Live, it kind of grew as like a "What´s going on there?". And people where immediately interested, it was full. But we have just kind of grown and grown it to have learning labs, to have ISV partners in here, to have just kind of, like, you know, resellers. People who are solutions providers, they are kind of all here. This has, actually turned into the busiest area of Cisco Live. >> Yeah, and you´ve got your own events, too. >> Yes, yes, that´s right. And on top of like having the DevNet Zone here, our developer conference within Cisco Live, what other Cisco audience comes in, right? A huge ecosystem. But also have DevNet Create. So, when we´re going out, app developers are also interested in network APIs. So, it´s not just networkers. And, so, we actually have DevNet Create, which is just the dedicated developer conference for IOT, cloud developers, app developers. And they´ve shown big interest in all of this as well. >> And this is a whole new constituency, but it´s kind of the same game, though, right? It´s like, you offering the programmable network to a whole another net new Cisco community? Is that kind of like you guys look at it? >> It is, and, exactly. And like, we´ve gone outside, we´re offering the network. And what we´re doing is, we´re actually, you know, when you´re a real networking geek, like a networking expert. >> John: Like us. >> You can do network talk, right? And you´re talking network, and you´re kind of getting into all of that. And before app developers were like, we don´t care about that, like, just, we need to write our apps. We shouldn´t have to worry about the network. But, now that those APIs are coming too, and again, their apps are dependent on network performance, they´re dependent on security they can get from the network. It turns out that once we express the value proposition to them, like, this is what a network API can do for you. They´re really interested. >> And even though that we´ve observed that there´s a separation between app developers who just want to write apps >> Susie: Yep >> And software engineering, which is under the hood they still need to be involved in the network because of microservices. >> Susie: Yes. >> So now they have the ability to use APIs that they´re comfortable with, they know ABIs. And, make unique changes to the app, based upon unique network characteristics they can tap into. >> Yeah. >> John: This seems to be the glue in the crossover point for you guys. >> It is. >> John: Did I get that right? >> It is, it is. So, what happens is, there will always be a set of app developers, who of course, are not going to use the network. They´re going to write their app, they´re going to want it to deploy everywhere, of course. I mean, that´s what everybody wants. But you´ve already seen it. As someone writes a cloud app, right? They write a cloud service or a cloud app, and it scales, and they´re deploying their app across different clusters and >> They are learning a lot >> John: They´re going to write >> About what´s going on >> John: They´re going to write policy. >> They´re going to write policies >> Yeah >> They have to decide what countries am I going to spin up my servers in, you know. >> Yeah. >> So, actually, they do a lot of that. So, what happens is, this set of kind of cloud developers, and specially as they moved to microservices as you said, their applications are going to a microservices-based architecture. Things can spin up in different places and then it becomes more critical of, you know, how do these different containers talk to each other? What´s the networking policy for what data can go in and out? What´s the security policy? And, you need to build that in. So, the network matters to them. >> Well, a beautiful thing about what you guys are doing is, you´re catering to a whole new generation of developers who are slinging APIs on one end, but also potentially writing Node.js code. And so, the´re very familiar with IO. >> Susie: Exactly, yes. >> So, microservices is like fish to water. And so, you´re just making it easier >> Susie: Yes. >> for them. That´s the, that´s the angle on the app side. >> That´s right, and then we´re just giving them that tool. And they had so much pain with it before because a lot of times people would be like writing their app, right? They´re doing it in their cluster, then they push it to production. Boom, it goes out. And then, it doesn´t work anymore. And a lot of times it´s because the network is not set up properly in their new thing. So they blame the network and the blame... But, once you start to open up the APIs, you can start to move these things and do it, you know... >> Well, Susie, you´ve got a great group. It´s the biggest story here. We believe, we´ve been reporting DevNet Zone. You know, theCUBE, we´re always on the best trends and the best waves, you´re on it. >> By the way, have you seen the security challenge over here? >> The blackhat >> So,the blackhat, white hat security challenge? It´s actually pretty interesting. (John laughs) >> It shows... >> John: Well, we´ll have to go test our chops, too. >> That´s right, that´s right. >> John: Dust off those coding hands. >> That´s right. (laughs) >> We´ll go over there. Well, I love the tagline, all around these classrooms. Learn, code, inspire and connect. >> Yes. >> Great motto, cause you´re building community in one end, and educating on the other spectrum. So, education to community, great spectrum. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Susie Wee, Vice-President and CTO of DevNet, here at Cisco, doing a great job. This is where the action is. This is the transformation of Cisco. It´s becoming software and network DevOps. New term, Net DevOps, heard here on theCUBE. I´m John Furrier and Stu Miniman. We´ll be back with more live coverage, in Barcelona, Spain after this short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering DevNet Create 2017. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our live coverage from theCUBE exclusive, two days with Cisco's inaugural DevNet Create event. I'm John Furrier, with my co-host, Peter Burris, who's the general manager of Wikibon.com, and head of research for SiliconANGLE Media. We're talking with Susie Wee, who is the vice president and CTO of Cisco's DevNet, the creator of DevNet, the developer program that was started as grassroots, now a full-blown Cisco developer program. Now starting another foray into the cloud-native open-source community with this new event, DevNet Create. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you, John. >> Thanks for having us. We love going to the inaugural events because they're always the first, and you know, being bloggers, and media, you got to be first. First news, first comments. >> Susie: Always first. >> Always first, and we're the only media here, so thank you. >> Susie: Thank you. >> So tell us about the event (Susie chuckles). You're the host and the creator, with your team. >> Susie: Yes. >> How did this come together, why DevNet Create? You have DevNet, this event is going extremely well, tell us. >> Awesome, so, yeah, so we have DevNet, we've had DevNet for about three years. It was actually exactly three years ago that we had our first DevNet Zone, a developer conference at Cisco Live, three years ago. And there, we felt like we pretty squarely hit... We've had successes there, we've had a pretty strong handle on our infrastructure audience, but what we see is that there's this huge transition, transformation going on in the industry, with IoT and cloud, that changes the definition of how applications meet infrastructure. And so this whole thing with, you know, applications, what is an application? What is the infrastructure? The infrastructure is now programmable, how can apps interact? It opens up a whole new world, and so what we did was we created DevNet Create as a standalone developer conference focused on IoT and cloud to focus on that transformation. >> And a lot of industry trends kind of going on, and moves you're making, it's the company, or you, Cisco is making, AppDynamics, big acquisition, kind of speaks to that, but also, there's always a natural progression for Cisco to have moving up the stack with software, but IoT gives you guys a unique opportunity with the network concept. So, making it network programmable, infrastructure as code, as some say in the DevOps world, is the ethos. >> Absolutely. >> How do you guys see yourselves engaging with the community, and what are some of the plans, and what's some of the feedback you're getting here at the event? >> So what we've done here at the event is that, you know, as you've seen from the channel is that, our content is 90% from the community, maybe 10% from Cisco, 90% from the community, because we believe it is all about the ecosystem. It's about how applications meet the infrastructure, it's the systems people are building together. And there's a lot of movement in developing these technologies. We don't know the final form of how an IoT app... Like, who's going to build the app, who's going to build the users, who's going to run the service, who's going to run the infrastructure? It's all still evolving, and we think that the community needs to come together to solve this to make the most of the opportunity. And so that's what, really, this is all about. And then, we think it actually involves learning the languages, making sure that the app folks know the language of the infrastructure folks. They don't have to become experts in it, but just knowing the language. Understand what part's programmable, what part's not, what benefit can you derive from the infrastructure. And then, by really having knowledge of what you can get across, and creating a forum for people to get together to have this conversation, we can make those breakthroughs. >> So just a clarification, you said that 90% of the sessions are non-Cisco, or from the community, and only 10% from Cisco? >> Susie: That's right. >> Is that by design? >> That is absolutely by design. So, when we have the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live, that's all about all of Cisco's products, platforms, APIs, bringing in the community to come and learn about those, but DevNet Create was really, squarely for IoT and app developers, IoT app developers, cloud developers, people working on DevOps, to look at that intersection. So we didn't go into all the gory details of networking, like we very much like to do, but we were really trying to focus on, "What's the value to application developers, "and what are the opportunities?" >> Well, it's interesting because, Susie, we're in the midst, as you said, of a pretty significant transformation, and there's a lot of turbulence, not only in business and how business conceives of digital technology, and the role it's going to play, the developer world, cloud-this, cloud-that, different suppliers, but one of the anchor points is the network, even though the network itself is changing, >> It is. >> in the midst of a transformation, but it's a step function. So, you go from, on the wireless, go outside, 1G to 3G, to 5G, et cetera, that kind of thing, but how is the developer going to inform that next step function in the network, the next big transformation in the network, and to what degree is this kind of a session going to really catalyze that kind of a change? >> Absolutely. So, what happens is, you're right, it's something that we all know, all app developers know, and actually, every person in the world knows, the network is important. The network provides connectivity, the network is what provides Internet, data, and everything there. That's critical to apps, but the thing that's been heard about it is it's not programmable. Like, you kind of get that thing configured, it's working now, you leave it. Don't touch it. >> It's still wires. In the minds of a lot of people, (Susie laughs) it's still wires, right? >> It is, it's wires, or even if it's wireless, once you can get it configured, you leave it. You're not playing with it again, it's too, kind of, dangerous or fragile to change it. >> Because of the sensitivity to operational... >> Because of the sensitivity to operations. The big change that's happening is the network is becoming programmable. The network has APIs, and then, we have things like automation and controller-based networking coming into play, so you don't actually configure it by going one network device at a time, you feed these into a controller, and then, now you're actually doing network-wide commands. That takes out the human error, it actually makes it easy to configure and reconfigure. And when you have that ability to provision resources, to kind of reset configurations, when you can do that quickly through APIs, you suddenly have a tool that you never had before. So let me give you an example. So let's say that you're in a building, you have your badging systems, your automated elevators, you have your surveillance cameras, you want to put out a new security system with surveillance cameras. You don't want to put that on the same network segment as your vending machines. You have a different level of security required. Could put in a work order to say... >> Unless you're really worried about who's stealing from the vending machines. (all laugh) >> So what you can do, now that it's programmable, is use infrastructure as code, is basically say, "Boom, give me a new network segment, "let me drop these new devices onto it, "let the programmable network automatically create "a separate network segment that has "all of these devices together." Then you can start to use group-based policy to now set, you know, the rules that you want, for how those cameras are accessed, who they're accessible by, what kind of data can come in and out of it. You can actually do that with infrastructure as code. That was not a knob that app developers had before. So they don't need to become networking experts, but now they have these knobs that they can use to give you that next level of security, to give you that next level of programmability, and to do it at the speed that an app developer needs. >> So I was talking to Steve Post-y earlier this morning, and he's from Redhead, he's a lead developer, he's not a network guy, he's self-proclaimed, "Hey, I'm not a networking person, I care about apps," and he's a developer, and he brought up something interesting I want to get your thoughts on. I think you're onto something really big with your vision, which is why we're so pumped about it, and he brought up an example of ecosystem's edges, and margins of the edge of these, that when they come together, creates innovation opportunities. And he used the example of data science meets cloud. And what he was using in particular was the example of most data people in the old days were data jocks, they did data, they did things, and they weren't really computer scientists, but as those two communities came together, the computer scientist saying, "Hey, I don't know about data," and the data guy's like, "Hey, you know about algorithms," "I know about algorithms," so innovation happened when that came together. What you're doing here, if I got this right, is you're saying, "Hey, DevNet's doing great," from a Cisco perspective, "but now this whole new creative innovation world "in the cloud is happening in real time. "Bring 'em together, "so best of Cisco knowledge to the guys who don't want to be (chuckles) "experts in that can share information." Is that kind of where this is going? >> Yeah, that's exactly where it's going, and same example, earlier in my career, I was working on sending video over networks, and then you had the networking people doing networking, you had the video people doing video compression, but then video networking, or streaming media, kind of, oh, you can put, you know, your knowledge of the compression and the network all together, so that kind of emerged as a field. The same thing, so, so far, the applications, and the infrastructure, and IT departments have been completely separate. You would just do the best you can, it was the job of IT to provide it, but now, suddenly there's an opportunity to bring these together. And it's, again, it's because the infrastructure's becoming programmable, and now it has knobs and can work quickly. So, yes, this is kind of new ground. And things could continue the way they are, right? And it's okay, we're getting by, but you just won't be realizing the potential of the real kind of... >> Well, open-source has clearly demonstrated that the collective intelligence of communities can really move fast, and share, and it's now tier one, so you're seeing companies go public, MuleSoft, Cloudera, and the list goes on and on. So now you have the dynamic of open-source, so I got to ask you the question, as you go out with DevNet Create, as this creation, the builders that are out there building apps are going to have programmable networks, how do you see this next leg of the journey? Because you have the foray now with DevNet Create, looks good, really well done, what's next? >> What's next is going on and making the real instances that show the application and infrastructure synergy. So let me just give you a really simple example of something that we're doing, which is that Apple and Cisco have had a partnership, and this partnership is coming together in that we have iOS developers who are writing mobile apps. So you have your mobile apps people are writing, we have iOS 10, your app developers are writing these apps. But everybody knows you run into a situation where your app gets congested on the network. Let's say that we're here in Westfield Mall, and they want to put out an AR/VR app, and you want that traffic to work, right? 'Cause if the mall wants to offer an AR/VR service, it takes a lot of bandwidth to get that data through, but through this partnership, what we have is an ability we have to use an iOS 10 SDK to, basically, business optimize your app so that it can run well on a Cisco infrastructure. So basically, it's just saying, "Hey, this is important, "put it in the highest QoS (John laughs) level setting, "and make your AR/VR work." So it's just having these real instances where these work together. >> I mean, I used to be a plumber back in my day when I used to work at HP, and I know how hard it is, and so I'm going to bring this up, because networks used to be stable and fragile/brittle, and then that would determine what you could do on top of it. But there are things like DNS, we hear about DNS, we hear about configuration management, setting ports, and doing this, to your point, I want dynamic provisioning or policy at any given moment, yet the network's got to be ready to do that. >> You don't want to submit a work order for that. (laughs) >> You don't want to have to say, "Hey, can you provision port, whatever, "I need to send a bunch of bandwidth." This is what we're talking about when we say programmable infrastructure, just letting the apps interface with network APIs, right? >> Absolutely, and I think that, you heard earlier, that with CNCF, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, just announced CNI, so that what they're doing is now offering an ability to take your kind of container orchestration and take into consideration what's going on in the network, right? So if this link is more congested than that, then make sure that you're doing your orchestration in the right ways, that the network is informing the cloud layer, that the cloud platform's informing the network, so that's going to be huge. >> But do you think, I'm curious, Susie, do you think that we're going to see a time when we start bringing conventions at layer 7 in the network, so we start to parse layer 7 down a little bit, so developers can think in terms of some of those higher-level services that previously have been presentation? Are we likely to see that kind of a thing? As the pain of the network starts to go away, and an explicit knowledge of layer 1-6 become a lot less important, are we going to see a natural expansion at layer 7, and think about distributed data, distributed applications, distributed services, more coherence to how that happens on an industry-wide basis? What do you think? >> Yeah, so let's see, I don't know if I have a view on which layers go away, or which layers compress... >> But the knowledge, the focal point of those? >> But the knowledge, absolutely. So it comes into play, and what happens is, like, what is the infrastructure? In the Internet of things, things are a part of your infrastructure. That's just different. As you're going to microservices, applications aren't applications, they're being written as microservices, and then once you put those microservices in containers, they can move around. So you actually have a pretty different paradigm for thinking about the architecture of applications, of how they're orchestrated, what resources they sit on, and how you provision, so you get a very new paradigm for that. And then the key is... >> But they're inherently networked? >> That's right, that's right. It's all about connectivity, it's all about, you know, they don't do anything without the network. And we're pushing the boundaries of the network. >> These aren't function calls over memory like we used to think about things, these things are inherently networked. We know we have network SOAs, and service levels, and whatnot... >> Susie: There is. >> It sounds like we have... I was wondering, here, at this conference, are developers starting to talk about, "Geez, I would like to look at Kubernetes "as a lower-level feature in layer 7," >> Susie: They are. (laughs) >> "where there's a consistent approach to thinking about "how that orchestration layer is going to work, "and how containers work above that, "because I don't have to worry about session anymore, I don't have to worry about transmission." >> Susie: Absolutely. >> That goes away, so give me a little bit more visibility into some of that higher-level stuff, where, really, the connectivity issues are becoming more obvious. >> Absolutely, and an interesting example is that, you know, we actually talked about AppDynamics in the keynote, and so, with AppDynamics, what kind of information can you get from these bits of code that are running in different places? And it comes into where we have the Royal Bank of Scotland, who's saying, "What's my busiest bank branch "where people are doing mobile banking in the country?" And they're like, "Well, how do I answer that question?" And then you see that, oh, someone has their mobile phone, they take an app, then you actually break it down to how is that request, that API, how is that being, kind of, operated throughout your network. And when you take a look, you say, "Okay, well, this called this "piece of code that's running here. "This piece of code used this API to talk to this other service, to talk to this other," you can map that out, get back the calls of, "Hey, this is how many times this API has been called, "this is how many times this service has been called, "this is the ones that are talking to who," then they came up with the answer, saying that our busiest bank branch is the 9 a.m. Paddington Train Station. >> And that's a great example, because now you gain visibility >> Exactly >> into where the dependencies are, which even if you don't explicitly render it that way, starts to build a picture of what the layers of function might look like based on the dependencies and the sharing of the underlying services. >> That's right, and that's where you're saying, like, "What? The infrastructure just gave me business value (John laughs) "in a very direct way. "How did that happen?" >> John: That's a huge opportunity for Cisco. >> So it's a big... >> Well, let's get in the studio and let's break down the Kubernetes and the containers, 'cause Docker's here, a lot of other folks are here. We've had, also, Abby Kearns, the executive director of Cloud Foundry. We've had the executive director from the Cloud Native Compute Foundation, Dan was here, a lot of folks here in the industry kind of validating >> Yeah, Craig was here. >> your support. Sun used to have an expression, the network is the computer, but now, maybe Chuck Robbins should go for network is the app, or the app is the network, (Susie laughs) I mean, that's what's happening here. The interplay between the two is happening big time. >> It is happening here, yeah. Just every element, every piece of code, what we saw is that this year, developers will write 111 billion lines of code. You think about that, every piece of... >> Peter: That we know about. (chuckles) >> That we know about, there's probably more. (chuckles) and all of that, you're right, these are broken up into pieces that are inherently networked, right? They have data, it's all about data and information that they're sharing to give interesting experiences. So this is absolutely a new paradigm. >> Well, congratulations on your success. What a great journey, I know it's been a short time, but I noticed after our in-studio interview, when you came in to share with us, the show, as a preview, Chuck Robbins retweeted one of the tweets. >> Susie: He did. >> And so I got to ask you, internally at Cisco, I know you put this together kind of as a entrepreneurial inside the company, and had support for that, what is the conversation you have with Chuck and the executive team about this effort? Because they got to see a clear line of sight that the value of the network is creating business value. What are some of the internal conversations, can you give us a little bit of color without giving away all the trade secrets? >> Yeah, well, internally, we're getting huge support. Chuck Robbins checks in on this, he actually has been checking in saying, "How's it going?" Rowan Trollope sending, "Hey, how's it going? "I heard it's going great." >> Did he text you today? >> Chuck did a couple days ago. >> John: Okay. (chuckles) >> And then Rowan, today, so, yeah, so we have a lot of conversation. >> Rowan's a CUBE alumni, Chuck's got to get on theCUBE, (Susie laughs) Rowan's been on before. >> Yeah, so they're all kind of checking in on it. We have the IoT World Forum going on in parallel, in London, so, otherwise, they would be here as well. But they understand... >> John: There's a general excitement? This is not a rogue event? >> There's huge excitement. >> This is not, like, a rogue event? >> It's not, it's not, and what happens is... They also understand that we're talking about bringing in the ecosystem. It's not just a Cisco conversation, it is a community... >> Yeah, you're doing it right, you're not trying to take over the sandbox. You're coming in with respect and actually putting out content, and learning. >> Putting out content, and really, it's all about letting people interact and create this new area. It's breaking new ground, it's facilitating a conversation. I mean, where apps meet infrastructure, it's controversial as well. Some people should say, "They should never meet. "Why would they ever meet?" (Susie and John laugh) >> So, we do a lot of shows, I was telling Peter that, you know, we were at the first Hadoop Summit, second Hadoop World, with Cloudera, when they were a small startup, Docker's first event, CubeCon's first event, we do a lot of firsts, and I got to tell you, the energy here feels a lot like those events, where it's just so obvious that (chuckles) "Okay, finally, programmable infrastructure." >> Well, I'll be honest, I'm relieved, because, you know, we were taking a bet. So, you know, when I was bouncing this idea off of you, we were talking about it, it was a risk. So the question is, will it appeal to the app developers, will it appeal to the cloud developers, will it appeal overall? And I'm very relieved and happy to see that the vibe is very positive. >> Very positive. >> So people are very receptive to these ideas. >> Well, you know community, give more than you take has always been a great philosophy. >> I'm always a little paranoid and (John laughs) nervous but I'm very pleased, 'cause people seem to be really happy. There's a lot of action. >> There are a lot of PCs with Docker stickers on them here. (John laughs) >> There are. (laughs) There are, yes, yes. We have the true cloud, IoT, we have the hardcore developers here, and they seem to be very engaged and really embracing... >> Well, we've always been covering DevOps, again, from the beginning, and cloud-native is, to me, it's just a semantic word for DevOps. It's happening, it's going mainstream, and great to see Cisco, and congratulations on all your work, and thanks for including theCUBE in your inaugural event. >> Susie: Thank you. >> Susie Wee, Vice President and CTO at Cisco's DevNet. We're here for the inaugural event, DevNet Create, with the community, two great communities coming together. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris, stay tuned for more coverage from our exclusive DevNet Create coverage, stay with us. (upbeat music) >> Hi, I'm April Mitchell, and I'm the senior director of strategy.

>> Narrator: It's The Cube covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by S.A.P. Cloud Platform and Honna Interprise Cloud. >> Hello there, and welcome to The Cube conversation here in Palo Alto Studios, I'm John Furrier with The Cube, and we have a special guest here. Susie Wee, who's the vice president and CTO of DevNet at Cisco Systems for a Cube conversation around what's happening in cloud, and really some of the most important trends that are generating out of a new event that she's starting called DevNet Creative, which The Cube will be there. Susie, welcome to this Cube conversation. >> Hi, John. Thanks, it's great to be here. >> So, you were a pioneer within Cisco. You know, superstar technologist, CTO. You helped really put the Cisco DevNet Developer program together. Which as been a huge success. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> And that's been, you know, Cisco has a big community of geeks. They're super smart. They like to surf the web and learn, and develop new stuff on Cisco, but there's also a whole nother world, and you created an event called DevNet Create as a new initiative. A new pioneering effort. >> Absolutely. >> Why a new event? What's the big news here? >> It's really interesting. I think that what's going on is in the world of, kind of, the infrastructure, right? So the infrastructure has our networking, our compute, our storage, and all of that is changing in that it's becoming programmable, and so once it's programmable, you're like, "What?" My infrastructure has APIs. Once it has APIs, you can do things like DevOps, right? You can start to do things like really have good flexibility with how you deploy your applications, you can get much more rapid deployment of apps, and you can get, just, fundamentally, different, and improved applications. So, the big thing that's going on is that there's this huge industry transformation in front of us, and the transformation is in how applications meet infrastructure, and this has happened as applications go to the cloud, then how applications meet the cloud, apps are changing, right? Then as the infrastructure becomes programmable, there's APIs into it, so there's this really kind of fresh ground that's ahead of us, and we can make the most of this, and that's what DevNet Create is all about. >> You know, people always ask me, this is our eighth year doing The Cube, "John, you and Dave do such a good job with The Cube." "You always pick the events that are going to be good." (laughter) We did some when we were first on, I do parole, I mean, with Cloud Air, and nobody had heard of Cloud Air. We can sniff the trends out, and to me, I think you're onto something really big here, and this is why I'm excited to bring The Cube to your event. I know it's small, it's inaugural, and it's very community-oriented, but I think you guys are on fault line of a massive shift, and I think you're on the right side of this, and I think the app dynamics acquisition that Cisco did points to some of the things that going to give Cisco, I think, a big lift, and that is, by looking at the plumbing as being automated, certainly relevant, that's not going away, but as you move up the stack, there's going to be the need for rapid, rapid application deployment. >> Susie Wee: Absolutely. >> Conceive, build, ship in minutes. It could be automated with bots and AI and whatnot, so this is the trend. Talk about that dynamic, 'cause that requires a fundamental rethinking and reimagining of the Cloud, security, how packets move. >> Susie Wee: Absolutely. >> Do you agree with that, and obviously, you're running the event, so you probably have some bias there, but more importantly, this big trend. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of the applications themselves, we take apps for granted these days, and we've had applications forever, right? But the applications are how people interact with the system, with the Cloud, with all the surfaces that they use everyday, so we know that everyone's lives have been transformed with apps, and then we also know that the Cloud has been huge. You know, work loads are moving with the Cloud. The Cloud has instant deployment, global resources, again, big stuff there as well, but that's going to shift again, right? So what happens is now that the Cloud is as awesome as it is, now that applications are great as they are, we're going to go to this next generation where the applications get even better, the Cloud gets even better, the way they meet, and therefore, the surfaces that people use get better. Let's have some examples of like, what could be better? Well, now that you have things like app dynamics, you can start to get information from your applications in the infrastructure that give you business insights, so let's say that you have your application running, and then you know how many times different APIs have been called. You know what parts of your systems, or your applications, are called the most. You know who's using them. You know how often they're being used, by whom, and so on. What order are they being used? All of this can start to give you business insight, so then you say, oh, the infrastructure's not just about delivering, compute, network, and storage, it's also about giving the insights into how people are using my stuff, so I can get business insights all of a sudden, and then it's a whole new world. >> Talk about how you got here, and your journey with Cisco being creating the DevNet and now DevNet Create, 'cause I think there's some trends in the industry, and we're going to be covering Sapphire, which is SAP's big show coming up in Orlando, and Cisco has some announcements, I know, I was brief under NDA on that so I really can't talk about it right now, but I do know for a fact it's going to be some significant innovations that's Cisco's bringing to the table, and they're an app provider. Now, they're older version, they're the big ERP, and the big software and framewares, and they announced Cloud Native with iOS development. This notion of, like a new breed of developers is not a mutually exclusive argument against IT, it's just the continuation. There's a dynamic going on between software developments and apps, and not only just on the business model side, but actually, technically. >> Yeah, absolutely. There's a few different things. So, first of all, an app developers can, so we have something called Meraki. Meraki is our wireless access points, it was a big acquisition we did a few years ago, and you can think of, you know, wireless access points as giving you connectivity, wireless connectivity, but now imagine that it also, you have APIs into it and it tells you how many mobile devices are connected. Where are they connected from? And where are the mobile devices located? If someone comes into your store, how many people have been there before? And how many people is it their first time there? So, this is all stuff that you can get from your wireless access points and you can start to do really interesting stuff. I think any app developer would love to have that information of what can I get? Who's in my store, or who's in my venue? And the infrastructure gives you that. >> And you guys run most, if not all the networks in the world. An IOT device and your other things that's connected to a network, wireless or wired. >> Yeah. >> And packets are moving around, so you have that data. >> We have that data, yes. So, yes, exactly. Cisco infrastructure is everywhere. >> But it's been hard to expose that over the years because Cisco's always had this notion that we play at a certain part of the stack and now it's almost like finally, after decades of conversations, I know from folks I talked to at Cisco, let's move up the stack. There's always been this push that does Cisco move up the stack and how? >> Yes, and basically the way that the way and the reason that Cisco can move up the stack now is because the infrastructure is programmable, so now, our kit, the network, is programmable. Now there's analytics that are being built into the network as things are running around, so like having a programmable network, having analytics, where you can either gather information together on how applications and things are being used, or a key, and then how do we move up the stack is when we work with the ecosystem. We work with the community, is that we have a developer program like DevNet, which is why we founded it, is we're going to enable those app developers to come to the world of the enterprise, so right now, when you have an enterprise, you know, who can write an awesome IOT app for a building, or for a casino, or for a mall, or for a hotel, it's whoever that hotel works with. Whatever system integrator they have, and that's all amazing, 'cause, you know, your building's instrumented, >> Yeah, so you don't have to >> Susie Wee: You know where people are. >> It's a horizontal market of developers versus a specific Cisco community, which you have to nurture in and of itself. >> Exactly. >> In the course of business, guys who know how to handle the packets and the networking gear, and know someone who's, hey, I know Cisco's a network provider, a network supplier, I just don't want to have to go get a training certification to get some data; just give it to me. >> That's right, and so what we can do is say, hey, here's the APIs, go to developer.cisco.com. Everything's there. Everything's free. Here's learning labs on how to use the different APIs. Here's use cases. We actually have kit in the clouds so we have a sandbox that lets people use stuff. If you want to write an app for a contact center, 'cause we sell contacts in our stuff, we have a contact center that you can write and deploy your app on. You don't have to buy one to test it, right? So it's really interesting when these apps hit these places, which is that, you know, you need a contact center, well, we'll have one for you. >> Here's the hard question. I want to put you on the spot and bring the heat, if you will. You guys have been great in your own ecosystem. Dominant for Cisco as a company. As you move into this new ecosystem, because ecosystems are now business-model parts of public companies. Cloud Air just went public. Ortenwer's went public. Viewelsoft. A new class of new kind of open-source companies are going public. You guys are not necessarily an open-source company. You have open-source initiatives. You have to now embrace a new kind of ecosystem. >> Absolutely. >> Where's the progress on this? How early is it? 'Cause I think that's what DevNet created to me, and Cisco is now going into a new market and being proactive. >> Absolutely >> The question is are you ready? Do you have the chops? Where are you in the progress of that? (laughter) >> We're ready. Now, it's going to take work to work with the community to get there, but let me just go back 'cause when we first started DeveNet three years ago, we said, hey, are those networkers and those infrastructure guys, are they really ready for programmability and software? We didn't know, and then we had out first DevNet event, and it was packed. We're like, oh my gosh, these guys are so ready, and we didn't know that at the time, so we've made good progress there, but now that we're sitting there to work with the community, I think that I'm hoping that they're going to be embracing so we're certainly going to be open. We've actually opened up, kind of, the thinking within Cisco. We've done a lot of cultural change within Cisco because people have seen the success of DevNet and of the developers outside in the world who are actually jumping in and ready to embrace programmability. >> So, it's the old data. It started home. What you did. >> It started home. >> You did with your own core. >> And then used that to then build out. >> And you guys have apps, we know, again, we go to a lot of events. I've seen Cisco around in a lot of some of the open-stores events. I was at the Nix Foundation. You guys had some presence, but it seemed like a toe in the water. How are you guys going to go big in this? >> That's what changed, is actually Cisco has had some little developer efforts and a lot of heroics done by people within Cisco. Like, hey, I have this great product, I want to run a hackathon, right? So, we've had all of these heroic attempts, but until DevNet came along, we didn't have one centrally funded program with a mandate from the CEO to go and get that programmability and develop our ecosystem out there. That's what we had now for the last three years with DevNet, so now is we go to the next layer. You're right, we do have the people who are out working with the Cloud Native, working with OpenStock, working with OpenDaylight, working in the SDN, the Lennox foundation, and what we're doing is now bringing that to the next level. Again, adding the DevNet power, now that we have kind of established our base to really embrace this, so we hope that we're going to provide a lot more, kind of, foundation so that we can go big in these cases. >> How big is the cultural change within Cisco, just give some color without giving away too many trade secrets, but I know Cisco have, and a lot of my friends worked there I've known for years, from the beginning, I've been intimate with the company's culture, and they've been a case study of dominance, just the way their competitiveness has been, the products have been great. They run the networks, but now they have to move into this open source and the community world. Talk about some of the cultural changes. Any conversations? The CEO, when you talk to him, what's the conversation like there? >> I just met with our CEO, Chuck Robins, a couple weeks ago, updated him on our progress. He actually, he an John Chambers, together, helped found DevNet, so they understand the need for it, and they helped break down the barriers and create the funding and the organization to do it, and we had to do some re-orgs to get it going originally. >> It's not just lip service, they're putting their muscle behind it. >> They're putting their effort behind it and they're dedicated to it, and they understand it. Chuck is fully behind it. He sees the importance of programmability. He actually understands the applications meet infrastructure and the transformation that can happen there, so he is super supportive all the way. He sent me a text this morning and said, "Yeah, when is DevNet Create again?" >> Great. >> So he's on top of it. He knows what we're doing. >> We'll have him on The Cube for sure. >> Absolutely. >> So applications meets infrastructure is the DevOps ethos, and that really highlights your theme. >> It does. Now, some of the other cultural change that has happened is, for example, we have something called systems engineers in our sales force. So what happens is, in our sales force, we have technical folks. We have 6,000 sales engineers around the world. Systems engineers, and they understand the technical side. They're all taking DevNet training. They're taking DevNet learning labs. They're learning to code. They're learning to use our APIs and now, the other thing is that they're now running DevNet events around the world. These guys are not only getting trained, but they are running their own developer events, and so they've picked it all up. This is a transformation that, you know, we've partnered with them on, and that's really changed what they're doing and they're realizing that, hey, there's a conversation, like, we can finally have the assets to help out app developers, and the app developers, they do need help. People have been rating mobile apps for years. Not that many of them are making money, right? The question is how do you do good to those app developers? How do you bring those app developers into the enterprise? How do you take it and make sure that when you have the newest things, like... >> I've always said: feed it data. >> Feed it data. >> Data is a great life blood of applications. >> Absolutely, and so then the applications have data. Then you start to analyze it, you get the intelligence from it right there, and then all new insight. >> The automation around provisioning all that network plumbing is really, really hard and nuanced. If you can automate that away, developers will just have parade to your door. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, so, personal question. You've been very successful in building DevNet. Building developer programs is everyone's holy grail right now. There are people in companies: "We got to build a developer program." "Throw some money at it." They might have some lip service from the CEO or full commitment. What is the key to success. To get the companies and to actually conceive, to build, and deploy a successful developer program for a company? >> Yeah, that's a good question. I have to say that building the developer program is not as easy as you would think. I would think it should be easy, like get out there, go find some web service that's running free developer community stuff >> Someone creates a free code. >> Give 'em code, and that's it? But it's actually not that at all. There is actually a few things that have been key to what we've done. One of them, and actually, I spoke about this at the Evan's developer relations conference a few weeks back, but one of the keys there is just be entrepreneurial. You actually have to be an entrepreneur even if you're in a big company, then you especially have to be entrepreneurial. >> John: You got to hustle harder. >> And what I mean is you have to hustle hard and, with few resources, you have to show quick wins fast, and you have to make bets, right? What are the kind of things we do? Well, when we first started, we actually didn't have an organization. It was me. It was a couple rebels from different parts of the org who are like, we need this, and we were making proposals. >> Skull and crossbones kind of thing going on, yeah, big time. >> And we pretended that, hey, just pretend that we have a full-blown developer program. What would you do? What we did was, we went out there, we went made developer.cisco.com, we made one site, we brought all of the APIs into one place so that developers could access it, and it was just going through and kind of building that site, which is really hard in a big company like Cisco with APIs all over the place, and we just silently launched it, and then people started discovering it. Like, oh, all of Cisco's stuff is here. Holy Cow. That was one thing. >> Go humble early. Learned from Lennox himself. >> And we actually got kind of blasted on the Twittershpere because actually on our developer page, we had one section that was actually going to just product information and not having APIs in it, and so this guy was like, that's all product stuff. That's not about APIs, so we got blasted. We were like holy crap, he's right. We went, we changed it. Got rid of all that. >> That's agile. >> And fixed it and then he became our biggest fan, right? We changed and we learned from feedback from the community. >> You applied the entrepreneurial hustle. Hustle hard and make bets. >> Susie: Make bets. >> What's your big bet that your hustling now for, and I mean hustle in a good way, DevNet Create. What's your bet? >> Our first bet back then, big bet, was the DevNet's own at Cisco Live, was let's have a developer conference at Cisco Live. We have no idea if people are going to be interested, but let's just do it. So, we got second floor of Mosconi's. >> You're going big or going home. >> Yeah, exactly, so we like boom! Kind of got the same place they have Google IO and Dreamforce. We got the space, kind of created it, didn't know if anybody would come. It was jampacked. We're like, oh my God. John Chambers came by. He told his whole staff, like, you guys have to see what's happening. The DevNet zone's now the busiest part of Cisco Live. That was our big bet then, and fortunately it paid off, and I think that's what made us part of the fabric that let us continue on, but now our big bet is DevNet Create. It's about applications hitting the infrastructure and really ensuring that the infrastructure is giving benefit to app developers. >> John: Real benefit. >> Real benefit. It's not just for the sake of business, it's actually because, to me, there's a real inflection going on in the industry. Apps can just ride on top, and then just do whatever the infrastructure can provide for them, and that'll get us to one place, but once you really think about it, then you say, okay, where does the data for the apps need to sit? Oh my gosh, there's data sovereignty issues, so it can't just sit anywhere. How do we scale out? Like, when we scale out, and you could just say, oh yeah, just go buy it and Amazon, Google, someone else will take care of it for me. Well, some of it will, and you should absolutely use... We're using all of those >> The policy stuff. >> As well, but there's policy, there's, you know, so when you're really working to scale out and understand what's critical for your business, there's more that can be had, and then now you can go to the next level of where apps can get value added business insights from the network like what we were talking about before, and then, a really big thing is just when I kind of think forward to the world of IOT, and you say again, this building is now IOT enabled. This building has APIs. It's the infrastructure, and app developers would love to get access to that. >> Peter Barris and I were talking at The Cube about a new standard we want to see. All data should be presented in less than 100 milliseconds from any database. >> Susie: Nice, nice. >> That's a moon shot, but let's think about that. That's what we want. Okay, so final question. Congratulations on all your success, and I do believe that a trend is there, the question is when will it get there. Upcoming for DevNet Create, what do you hope to bring to the community? What do you want the community to look for and expect? And what will they see? >> Absolutely. What we want is, we hope that DevNet Create is just a catalyst for this to happen. For this transformation that's happening, and we want it to help drive things with the community in a faster way than if we just let it go itself. There's basically going to be two tracks at DevNet Create. One is on Cloud and DevOps, and the other is on IOT and apps. With Cloud, there's all these questions of how are we going to take monolithic legacy apps and turn them into micro surfaces? We have the world of containers. We have the world of container orchestration and everything there. That's all really hot stuff, but the way that we move this together, bring it into full production and get all of the apps really embracing that is key. What we're hoping will happen at DevNet Create is that the world of Cloud developers, the world of app developers, IOT developers will come together with those that are working in DevOps, those in the infrastructure to really understand what are the benefits that can happen across these layers? I'm not saying that every app developer needs to become an infrastructure developer, right? I'm not saying that every developer must be an operator, but there's benefits that can happen in the right way. Really, what we're hoping is that with DevNet Create, we can drive that conversation at the event itself and then continue with the ongoing community. >> And who are you targeting specifically to the event? Non-Cisco developers or Cisco developers with a plus, with a twist, or? >> Non-Cisco developers as well as some Cisco developers as well, but it's really about the industry. Where as when you go to a traditional DevNet event, you're going to be hearing all about Cisco APIs and Cisco products and how they play together in these solutions, but at DevNet Create, 90% or more of the talks are non-Cisco. We had a call for papers. I was really nervous when we had the call for papers and I was super relieved because we had great papers come in. Actually, the only problem is that we didn't have enough slots for the great papers. We even had to turn around some really good ones. Turn away some really good ones. We have a really strong agenda, and we actually said no to more Cisco talks because we wanted it from the ecosystem. We have people from Google, from Amazon, from Howdy. There's just lots of... >> And so will this be a Cisco event going forward? Or an industry event? Because there's a trend in the event world where people are going in for the big DreamForce and the big one show, big tent, zillion people, and then a series of industry shows around open-source communities with governance. Are you guys going to make this a Cisco managed show? Or thinking about opening it up to the community to manage? What's your thoughts on the vision of that? >> We're hoping to catalyze it. We will continue to have our other Cisco DevNet events that are really about the Cisco APIs themselves and really training and bringing along that core community, and we invite all the developers to attend that as well, but we really view DevNet Create to really be an event for the community. We'd be open to doing this with cosponsors and hosting it with others. >> So you're open. >> We're open. We're actually doing this with Lennox Foundation as well, so we have them involved. Many of them are on our advisory board. We are very open. We're actually working with SiliconANGLE and The Cube. We want to do it in the most open way as possible. >> As I said, we like to sniff out all the hot events. This is one inaugural event. I think it's really, really important because it really shows Cisco's commitment to open source in a way that's been toe in the waters in the past, like you said, little rebels in the organization doing their thing trying to get the word inside Cisco, but now with the cultural shift, I think you guys have it with app dynamics. There's a business path. I see a path there and I think the community only benefits. >> Absolutely, and if the community benefits, and our goal is to actually make our community and our developers successful. That's actually our only goal. For them to be successful in their careers and their business, and that will, in turn, make Cisco successful, but really, it's really about making the community successful. >> I mean if you think about the 5G end-to-end. I mean, end-to-end architectures are winning. We do a whole segment on end-to-end, but to make it end-to-end work that's not just one company, you'd need to have a strong developer community, and I think this is kind of where I see the event's importance is true network transformation and programmability. The ethos of DevOps needs to go to the next level so cars can program themselves. I mean, everything. 5G's coming too, so a lot of new stuff happening. >> Absolutely. I don't think any major industry transformation happened with one company alone. It really takes a community, right? Be it a community of product makers, a community of solutions providers, surface providers, and consumers themselves. This is really about the community. >> Susie, congratulations on all your success, and we're looking forward to seeing DevNet Create's inaugural opening in May. Appreciate it, and great to talk to you about some of the mega trends and your perspective on that. >> And thank you for helping to drive this vision and agenda. I think that we'll be able to do this together. >> Susie, with CTO at Cisco Systems, DevNet creator and pioneer with her team of rebels, now a full on group. Really talking about the app meets infrastructure total transformation enabling all the AI in terms of vehicles, smart cities, smart home. Thanks for joining us. This is a Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier and thanks for watching. (upbeat music)