(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this Cube Conversation. I'm Dave Nicholson, and this is continuing coverage of Google Cloud Next '21. I'm joined today by Sachin Gupta, General Manager and Vice President of Open Infrastructure at Google Cloud. Sachin, welcome to theCube. >> Thanks Dave, it's great to be here. >> So, you and I both know that the definition of what constitutes Cloud has been hotly contested by some over the last 20 years. But I think you and I both know that in some quarters there really has never been a debate. NIST, for example, the standard body that calls out what constitutes Cloud, has always considered Cloud an operational model, a set of capabilities, and it has never considered Cloud specifically tied to a location. With that in mind, how about if you share with us what was announced at Cloud Next '21 around Google Distributed Cloud? >> Yeah, thanks Dave. The power of Cloud in terms of automation, simplicity, observability, is undeniable, but our mission at Google Cloud is to ensure that we're meeting customers where they are, in their digital transformation journey. And so in talking to customers, we found that there are some reasons that could prevent them to move certain workloads to Cloud. And that could be because there's a low latency requirement. There is high amounts of data processing that needs to happen on-prem. So taking data from on-prem, moving into the Cloud to get it processed and all the way back may not be very efficient. There could be security, privacy, data residency, compliance requirements that they're dealing with. And then some industries, for some customers, there's some very strict data sovereignty requirements that don't allow them to move things into the public Cloud. And so when we talked to customers, we realized that we needed to extend the Cloud, and therefore we introduced Google Distributor Cloud at Next 2021. And what Google Distributed Cloud provides is all of that power of Cloud anywhere the customers need it. And this could be at a Google network edge, it could be at an operator or communication server provider edge as well. It could be at the customer edge, so right on-premise at their site, it could be in their data centers. And so a lot of flexibility in how you deploy three fully managed hardware and software solutions delivered through Google. >> Yeah it's interesting because often statistics are cited that somewhere near 75% of of what we do in IT, is still "on-premises." The reality is, however, that what's happening in those physical locations on the edge is looking a lot more Cloudy, isn't it. (laughs) >> Yes, and the customers are looking for that computational power, storage, automation, simplicity, in all of these locations. >> So what does this look like from an infrastructure stack perspective? Is there some secret sauce that you're layering into this that we should know about? >> Yeah, so let me just talk about it a little bit more. So we start off with third party hardware. So we're sourcing from Dell, HPE, Cisco, Nvidia, NetApp, bringing it together. We're using Anthos, you are hopefully familiar with Anthos, which is our hybrid multi-cloud software layer. And then on top of that, we use open source technologies. For example, built on Kubernetes. We offer a containerized environment, a VM environment, that enables both Google first-party services, as well as third-party services that customers may choose to deploy, on top of this infrastructure. And so the management of the entire infrastructure, top to bottom, is delivered to Google directly, and therefore customers can focus on applications, they can focus on business initiatives, and not worry about the infrastructure complexity. They can just leave that to us. >> So you mentioned both Kubernetes, thinking of containerization as Cloud native, you also said VMs. So this spans the divide between containerized microservices-based applications and say VM-ware style of virtual machines or other VMs? >> Yes, look, the majority of customers are looking to modernize and move to a containerized environment with Kubernetes, but there are some workloads that they may have that still require a VM-like environment, and having the simplicity and the efficiency of operating VMs like containers on top of Google Distributed Cloud, built on Anthos, is extremely powerful for them. And so it goes back to our mission. We're going to meet customers where they are, and if they need VM support as well, we're providing it. >> So let's talk about initial implementations of this. What kind of scale are you anticipating that customers will deploy? >> The scale is going to vary based on use case. So it could be a very small, let's think about it as a single server type of scale, all the way to many, many dozens of racks that could be going in to support Google Distributed Cloud. And so, for example, from a communication service provider point of view, looking to modernize their 5G network, in the core it could be many, many racks with Google Distributed Cloud the edge product. And for their RAM solutions, it could be a much smaller form factor, as an example. And so depending on use case, you're going to find all kinds of different form factors. And I didn't mention this before, but we also, in addition to scale, we offer two operational modes. One is the edge product. So Google Distributed Cloud edge that is connected to the Cloud. And so it gets operational updates, et cetera, directly through the Cloud. And the second one is something we call the hosted mode, and in hosted mode, it's completely air-gapped. So this infrastructure, what is modernized and provides rich 1PN third party services, does not connect to the Cloud at all. And therefore, the organizations that have the strictest data latency sovereignty requirements, can benefit from a completely air-gapped solution as well. >> So I'm curious, let's say you started with an air-gapped model. Often our capabilities in Cloud exceed our customer's comfort level for a period of time. Can that air-gapped, initial implementation be connected to the Cloud in the future? >> The air-gap implementation, typically customers, the same customer, may have multiple deployments, where one will require the air-gap solution, and another could be the hosted solution, and the other could be the edge product, which is connected. And in both cases, the underlying stack is consistent. So, while I don't hear customers saying, "I want to start from air-gap and move," we are providing Google Distributed Cloud as one portfolio to customers so that we can address these different use cases. In the air-gap solution, the software updates obviously still come from Google, and customers need to move that across the air gap check signatures, check for vulnerability, load it in the system, and the system will then automatically update itself. And so the software we still provide, but in that case, there's additional checks that that customer will typically go through before enabling that software onto their system. >> Yeah, so you mentioned at the outset, some of the drivers, latency security, et cetera, but can you restate that? I'd like to hear what the thinking behind this was at Google when customers were presenting you with a variety of problems they needed solutions for. I think it bears recapping that. >> Right, so let me give you a few examples here. So one is, when you think about 5G, when you think about what 4G did for the industry in terms of enabling the gig economy, with 5G we can really enable richer experiences. And this could be highly immersive experiences, it could be augmented reality, it could be all kinds of technologies that require lower latency. And for this, you need to build out the 5G infrastructure on top of a modernized solution like Google Distributed Cloud. Let me just get into a few use cases though, to just bring some color here. For example, for a retailer, instead of worrying about IP and infrastructure in the store, the people in the store can focus on their customers, and they can implement solutions using Google Distributed Cloud for things like inventory management, asset protection, et cetera, in the store. Inside a manufacturing facility, once again, you can reduce incidents, you can reduce injuries, you can look at your robotic solutions that require low latency feedback, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of emerging applications through ISVs, that a rich, on-prem or anywhere you want it in the edge infrastructure, can enable a new suite of possibilities that weren't possible before. In some cases, customers say, "You know what, I want 5G. But I actually you want a private 5G deployment." And that becomes possible with the Google Distributed Cloud as well. >> So we talked a little bit about scale. What's the smallest increment that someone could deploy? You just gave an example of retail. Some retail outfits are small stores, without any IT staff at all. There's the concept of a single-node Kubernetes cluster, which is something we love to come up with in our business terminology that makes no sense, single node cluster. The point is, these increments, especially in the containerized world, are getting smaller. What's the smallest increment that you can deliver, you're planning to deliver? >> I'll answer this two ways. First of all, we are planning to deliver a smallest increment, think of it as one server. We are planning to deliver that as well, all the way up to many, many racks. But in addition, there's something unique that I wanted to call out. Let's say you're in the medium or larger deployment in the racks, and you want to scale up, compute, and store it separately. That's something we enable as well, because we will work with customers in terms of what they need for their application, and then scale that hardware up and down based on their need. And so there's a lot of flexibility in that, but we will enable scale all the way down to a single server unit as well. >> So what is the feedback been from the partners that will be providing the hardware infrastructure, folks like Dell. What has their reaction been? >> I think that they're obviously very eager to work with us. We're happy to partner with them in order to provide customers flexibility, any kind of scale in any kind of location, different kind of hardware equipment that they need. But in addition to those partners on the hardware side, there are customers and partners as well who are enabling rich experiences and solutions for that retailer, for that manufacturer, for example. And so working with AT&T, we announced partnership on 5G and edge to enable experiences, especially in the areas of retail and manufacturing, like I talked about earlier, but then in Europe, we're partnering with OVHcloud, for example, in order to enable very strict data sovereignty requirements that are happening in that country. And so where there's many communication service providers, there's many partners trying to solve for different use cases for their end customers. >> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's pretend for a minute that you're getting Yelp reviews of this infrastructure that you're responsible for moving forward. What would a delighted customer's comments look like? >> I think a delighted customer's comments will be probably in two or three areas, all right? So first up will be, it's all about the applications and the end user experience that this can enable. And so the power of Google AI ML technology, third-party software as well, that can run consistently single operational model, build once, deploy anywhere, is extremely powerful. So I would say, the power of the applications and the simplicity that it enables is number one. I think number two is the scale of operations experience that Google has. They don't need to worry about, "do I have 5 sites or 500 sites or 5,000 sites?" It doesn't matter. The fleet operations, the scaled operations capability, the global network capability that Google has, all that experience in site reliability engineering, we can now bring to all of these vast amounts of edge locations, so they don't need to worry about scale at all. And then finally, they can be sort of rest assured that this is built on Anthos, it's built on Kubernetes, there's a lot of open source components here, they have flexibility, they have choice, they can run our one-piece services, they can run third-party services on this, and so we're going to preserve the flexibility in choice. I think these are the things that would likely get highlighted. >> So Sachin, you talk to customers around the world. Where do you see the mix between net-neu stuff going into infrastructure like this, versus modernized and migrated workloads into the solution? What does that mix look like? And I know it's a bit of speculation, but what are your thoughts? >> I think, Dave, that's a great question, I think it's a difficult one to answer because we find that those conversations happen together with the same customers. At least that's what I find. And so they are looking to modernize, create a much richer environment for their developers, so that they can innovate much more quickly, react to business needs much more quickly, to cater to their own end customers in a much better way, get business insights from the data that they have. They're looking to do all of this, but at the same time, they have, perhaps, legacy infrastructure or applications that they just can't easily migrate off of, that may still be in a VM environment, more traditional type of storage environment, and they need to be able to address both worlds. And so, yes, there are some who are so-called "born in the Cloud," everything is Cloud native, but the vast majority of customers that I talked to, are absolutely looking to modernize, like you don't find a customer that says, "Just help me lift and shift, I'm not looking to modernize." I don't quite see that. They are looking to modernize but they want to make sure that we have the options that they need to support different kinds of environment that they have today. >> And you mentioned insights. We should explore that a little further. Can you give us an example of artificial intelligence, machine learning being used now at the edge, where you're putting more compute power at the edge? Can you give us an idea of the kinds of things that that enables specifically? >> Yes, so when you think about video processing, for example, if I have a lot of video feeds and I'm looking based on that, I want to apply artificial intelligence, I'm trying to detect object inventory movement, people movement, et cetera. Again, adhering to all the privacy and local regulations. When I have that much data streaming in, if I have to take that out of my edge all the way across the WHEN network, into the Cloud for processing, and bring it all the way back and then make a decision, I'm just moving a lot of data up and down into the Cloud. And in this case, what you're able to do is say, no, you don't actually need to move it into the public Cloud. You can keep that data locally. You can have a Google Distributed Cloud edge instance there, you're going to run your AI application right there, achieve the insights and take an action very, very quickly. And so it saves you, from a latency point of view, significantly, and it saves you from a data transmission up and down into the Cloud significantly, which you sometimes, you know, you're not supposed to send that data up, that there's data residency requirements, and sometimes the cost of just moving it, it doesn't make sense. >> So do you have any final thoughts? What else should we know about this? Anything that we didn't touch on? >> I think we've touched on a lot of great things. I think I'm just going to reiterate, you started with a "what is the definition of Cloud itself" and our mission once again, is to really understand what customers are trying to do and meet them where they are. And we're finding that they're looking for Cloud solutions in a public region. We've announced a lot more regions. We continue to grow our footprint globally, but in addition, they want to be able to get that power of Google Cloud infrastructure and all the benefits that it provides in many different edge locations all the way on onto their premises. And I think one of the things we perhaps spent less time on is, we're also very unique that in our strategy, we're bringing in underlying third-party hardware, but it's a fully managed solution that can operate in that connected edge mode, as well as a disconnected hosted mode, which just enables pretty much all the use cases we've heard about from customers. So one portfolio that can address any kind of need that they have. >> Fantastic. Well, I said at the outset Sachin, before we got started, you and I could talk for hours on this subject. Sadly, we don't have hours. I'd like to thank you for joining us in theCube. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us for this Cube conversation, covering the events at Google Cloud NEXT 2021. I'm Dave Nicholson. Thanks for joining. (upbeat music)

(funky music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi, I'm Peter Burress, and welcome to another CUBE conversation from our beautiful studios in wonderful Palo Alto, California. Enterprises have always struggled with how they're going to add more end points into their networks. More users, more devices, more machines, they need better speeds, lower latencies, greater security. How are they going to do it? Well, we've got a new set of standards coming along within the wifi world as well within the cellular world, to provide those greater densities, lower latencies, higher performance. Wifi Six is what we talk about within kind of the extension of the 802.11 family of protocols, but Wifi Six, like every other significant transformation has required that enterprises think differently about certain attributes of networking. So to have that conversation, we got Sachin Gupta who's a senior vice president of Cisco here, Sachin, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks Peter, very excited to be here. >> Alright, look, so I'm a CIO, and I am working with my team to incorporate these new technologies that are going to improve the quality of my endpoint services, and I'm looking at Wifi Six. What am I mainly worried about as I think about adopting these new technologies? >> So just before we just get into adopting of the new technologies, why are you going after Wi-Fi 6, like what's the reason for the CIO? And quite simply it's, all of the new use cases that are coming on, like everything, all the IoT endpoints have to connect securely, all the bandwidth hungry end users, and the immersive experiences I'm looking to enable, it could be augmented reality, it could be virtual reality, all those are driving a need for me to rethink access, and rethink the network overall. And Wi-fi 6 is one critical component of that. Wi-fi 6 promises four times the capacity, lower latency, a greater range, so the things you talked about in your set-up. So it's a wonderful technology to start addressing some of those problems, but in of it's own it's not sufficient. You got to go well beyond the standard in order to address the CIO problem. >> Okay, so specifically, so think about some of the adoption problems. I got the use cases nailed down, how am I thinking about where things are going to go? Am I going to have to lay out the network differently? What kinds of practical things do I have to start thinking about? >> Well first of all, you have to think about why are you moving, where are you moving with Wi-fi 6. So again, capacity, lower latency, better battery life, the new use cases it enables. After that you need to make sure that whatever you're going to connect, will interoperate. Right? So look, sometimes a standard comes out and it can take a few years before the endpoints and the infrastructure actually get the maximum capability from the new standard. And so we worked proactively with the likes of Samsung, with the likes of Intel, to make sure those endpoints, which any of the new Samsung Galaxy S10, already supports Wi-fi 6. Interaccess points work together to give you the best experience possible. So that's sort of step one. But there's many other things we need to think through. We're also thinking about the problem of just onboarding onto Wi-fi. You know the experience to onboard onto cellular, right? >> Oh, sure. >> You get off airplane mode >> And it works. >> It just works, you're on. What's the experience like on Wifi? >> Well it's certainly not just getting a message from my local carrier that I'm now roaming. You got to get on, yeah it's a lot more involved, you got to authenticate, exactly. >> Give me your phone number, give me your room number, I'll text you something, get on to the It's cumbersome, okay? And we want to make Wifi onboarding to something we call open roaming. Open roaming is a Cisco project, it's a consortium we've set up. That takes all the venue providers and the identity providers, brings them together. So that when you go round, and you roam with Wifi, you onboard the network just like you onboard with cellular. >> So get essentially the same experience you get in the cellular world. >> Same experience. It makes it easy for you to get connected. So those are some of the basic things, but you got to go beyond that then. Now you have to worry about, okay, what do those endpoints require, alright? Well, first of all you need to recognize what the endpoint is. Is this a light bulb, or is it a heart-rate monitor, is it a tablet of some sort, what is actually connecting? So for device recognition, and to understand the experience you're getting, I need virtual analytics. And that's something the infrastructure now needs to provide. So we for the first time now, we've embedded our own ACIG, our own silicon inside the access point. So that we can get visibility from layer one to seven. And now we can pinpoint, what is the device, is it behaving in a compliant way, and how do I deliver the right experience for it. So these are some of things to think about as you move, it's a yes I want Wi-fi 6, but again tying in back to the problem you're looking to solve, how does the entire solution address your problem. >> Alright so we've identified some of the issues that have to be addressed here, and Wifi Six is here. You said the Galaxy S10 already supports it. >> Our access points are shipping, yes. >> So talk to me about the role out of some of these new technologies, these new devices from Cisco, and how customers are going to have to think a little bit differently as they start to plan out their new network structure. >> That's a great question. So I think it's not about hey, I'm just going to roll out new AP's. You should really rethink networking. What am I trying to provide here? And that's why we came out with an architectural approach across the board which is intent based networking. And what we're really talking about there is how do you automate all of the things that IT needs to do, to deliver the security and experience for all of those users and things. How do you get the data, the power of data, the analytics out? And how do you deliver security and policy. >> But it's in the context of the application and the work that's being performed. >> Yes, it's the users and devices and the applications and data. What are you trying to achieve? That's what intent based networking is all about. And so, I love how your asking the question because if you think about the wireless AP's, we only talk about the top already with the endpoint, right? But then I think about the switching architecture, are you segmenting all of that traffic? Is it fully automated? Do you have an identity and policy engine? Can I take the location data that's coming out? Cause remember these APs now are multilingual. They speak BLE, they speak Zigbee and Thread, they're also Wi-fi 6. So how do I take the location data and deliver new business outcomes? How can I tell you that the wheelchair has left the premises? How can I tell you how many people walked in your store, verus walked outside it? How do I get you better asset utilization? Those outcomes are provided at the software step at the top. So you should really be thinking about what am I trying to do for my business, and what architectural approach allows me to deliver those outcomes that I'm looking for. And yes, Wi-fi 6 APs are one critical component there, but you should think about the entire solution though. >> So we got new access points that are Wifi Six enabled ready to go, how far back does this change go into the network? >> So the Wi-fi 6 APs, the beauty of these Wi-fi standards is they're backward compatible. So you can take all kinds of older endpoints, multiple generations, and get them to work in a Wi-fi 6 new environment. So that's nice because it's not a rip and replace of all your clients, when you put the new APs in, they're backward compatible, that's always the case. And a lot of the new software stack and the technology that I talked about with intent based networking, works with at least the two previous generations as well. So if you want some of that telemetry and analytics and security, you can start getting that with some of the APs you may already have, and then when you bring in Wi-fi 6, it's sort of purpose built for that architecture. >> Alright, so we've talked a lot about the use cases of the business side, let's spend a little bit of time describing the fact that you've got the sidecar co processor for analytics inside the APs. How is that going to change the work of IT, the work of network management and administration and security? >> That's a great one So, I'll give you one example of what that does. Today, if you want to go troubleshoot a wireless issue, you're literally walking around with a sensor acting like a client to go figure out what the behavior is, what's going on, how do I figure out what the interference is, why is the experience bad, right? Can take you hours, weeks, days, it's very costly. These new APs, and with our solution with W-fi 6, first of all, I get data with my relationship with Apple from the endpoint. So I get the view from a real client. Then on the access point itself, with that co processor, I can get layer one to seven data and packet captures to see did you fail during authentication, was there some sort of RF issue that's happening, what exactly is happening that's interfering with what's going on? Or, maybe the problem is not even there, it's somewhere else in the network. And the beauty of our Cisco DNA Center solution, which is our controller in intent based networking, is we see end to end. We see the entire network and we can help you pinpoint where that issue is and save a whole bunch of money you'd spend troubleshooting, to deliver the right experience. >> But it sounds as though some of the, historically, some of the analytics associated with network administration was very focused on the device. Intent based network is intended to focus on the application and service that's being provided, but the analytics didn't follow. So know what you're saying is we're going to follow the analytics so that the applications, the services become primary citizens within the network. >> That's exactly right So you have to be able to look at the client holistic view, the application performance holistic view, and the performance of each network element, and that's what the co processor that we talked about helps. Now another thing we did is, that portfolio now, on the enterprise side, we now run the same operating system that also helps simplify for IT. The entire access network with the Catalyst 9000 series, the new access points are called the Catalyst 9100, and we're making it part of one brand and one family, because it's one OS, one programmable architecture, one operational environment if you will, that simplifies the job of IT significantly as well, and then we're also introducing obviously with Wifi Six, our cloud managed Meraki access points to support those deployments as well. >> Alright so one more question on this and then I want to talk about something else in a second. But the beauty, or the essential feature of networking has to be a degree of openness. So new access points can talk to each other, new devices can talk to each other, et cetera. These are new technologies as you said they're going to roll out and diffuse, hopefully very very rapidly, but there will be both enterprise, but also some other network supplier issues. How is Cisco ensuring that your leadership and your thought leadership but also your engineering leadership gets into those other organizations at an appropriate rate so this entire industry can adopt and change and introduce these new kinds of capabilities. >> So I talked about that new family of the Catalyst 9000 series. Let me start there. So all the protocols we support are open interoperable so you can have my switch somebody else's AP, somebody else's AP my switch, all those combinations work. It supports net config open API's programmable models. We expose those through a Cisco dev net. So we have the largest developer community on top of sort of a networking infrastructure where you can write applications that can automate or can get data >> Or services? >> Or deploy services in a very open way. And then we do the same thing at our controller layer. On Cisco DNA Center, fully open so you can have partners ecosystem delivering services and applications on top of the network, on top of that controller. So we think about openness from every angle, and that's how you have to be in a networking world, right? I mean you need to be able to connect to anything. >> Right. Every significant change in networking, someone always presumed it was going to lead to various behavior by the leader to try to somehow close it down. You're saying that's not what's happening here. We're trying to dramatically extend the benefits and capabilities of networking because those enterprises need new use cases. >> But we are saying though, that if you buy that campus architecture, access architecture through Cisco, you're going to get a degree of consistency and automation and analytics and security that's unmatched. So you might as well go, but if you want to compose that with different components, that's absolutely doable. >> Alright, so one last question. The historical norm has been I get a cell service and I get Wifi. Cell had certain positive benefits, and Wifi had other positive benefits. We're talking about Wifi Six, but also we got to talk about 5G. How are the two of them going to work together in your estimation? >> Look, from a wireless standpoint, the problems that you're trying to solve are the same, right? I need more capacity, I need lower latency, more deterministic, better battery life, they're the same. So you need to solve those when you're in an SP outdoor ubiquitous environment, or whether your sort of indoor, where you have predominantly Wifi and that's where most of your traffic flows. So Wifi Six and 5G, it's a beautiful thing that they're both trying to allow you to be in this wireless first, cloud driven world, where most of your apps and data sit in the cloud, and where your experience is really optimized by the data and telemetry that's coming out of the infrastructure. So for me, it's not an or question, it's Wifi Six and 5G that allow you to start solving that problem. >> So everything just as we have today just more, better, faster, lower power. >> Yes, can I add one more thing? >> Of course! >> I just kind of need to do this, okay? So look, when you think about the wireless infrastructure and chaining that out, I talked about how it effects the rest of the network, right? So you do need to think about upgrading your switching infrastructure, we call it being wired for wireless, okay? So with that, we also introduced a new product called the Catalyst 9600. That's a modular core switch, so you're like why are you bringing this up Sasha? >> No, I know why you're bringing it up. >> After 20 years, we are providing the next generation of the Cat 6k, Cat 6k is iconic, it's the foundation of tens of thousands of mission critical networks in the world. This is next-gen, it's more than 10x the capacity, if you have all these endpoints and access points that have more capacity, you need to think about a switch that's bigger factor. >> Scales! >> But fits into intent based networking fully programmable the same way. Just want to do a shout-out for, look we've talked about every aspect of this. APs, switches, identity, everything. >> We're offering, Cisco is offering and the enterprises are going to adopt new classes of network technology at the endpoints, faster, better, but that's going to lead to new use cases, new services, and it's just going to drive that much more complexity and routing and switching and patching thorough the network, you got to be able to scale. >> Right, you have to think about all the components. >> Absolutely. Sachin Gupta is the senior vice president of Cisco, we've been talking about how to think through Wifi Six upgrades. Thank you very much for being on the CUBE. >> Thank you, Peter. >> And once again I'm Peter Burress, and this has been a CUBE conversation. Until next time. (funky music)

(funky music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering CISCO Live Europe. Brought to you by CISCO and it's ecosystem partners. >> Everyone welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain for Cisco Live Europe 2019, I'm John Furrier, and my co-host, Stu Miniman. Our next guest Sachin Gupta, senior vice-president of product management in Cisco's enterprise networking business, it's the crown jewels of Cisco, Sachin got the keys to the kingdom. Runs project management, so we get all the info from you, thanks for joining us. Good to see you again, good to see you again, king alumni. >> Yes, thanks. >> Thanks for coming on, I know you've got a keynote at 12 coming up shortly, thanks for spending the time, I'll get right to it. Networking is being reinvented, David Geckler said that onstage yesterday in the keynote. It's not changing, it's just shaping differently for customer needs intent-based networking, we talked briefly last year at Cisco Live in North America moving up the stack, it's here. Intent-based networking, cloud connections, IOT, all kinds of edge con activity, everything's connected, now on to the network. This is real. >> This is real, and John, look, it's been really exciting, right? We've gone through an 18 month journey here, when we first introduced in tent-based networking we talked about moving away from CLI box by box to really solving the problem at an abstracted, intent layer. Specify what user groups and what segments you want, what experience you want to deliver for those applications, and then the network feeding the data back up so you can learn from it, you can manage it, you can troubleshoot it in a much, much simpler way. We're now into this, as I said, 18 months. We have thousands of customers already using intent based networking we talked about software defining access for automated segmentation in the campus, talked about insurance, and then we've been adding capability along the way. And in just this week, David Geckler had people on stage, talked about more innovations with intent-based networking in the data center with ACI anywhere, with innovations on hyper flex. Liz came on and talked about IOT, and how that fits into the framework. And then Gordon talked about what we're doing with SD Ren, really, really exciting stuff going on there. >> Well, why don't you take a minute and quickly explain for the folks watching want to get us on the record so we can get definition. What is intent-based networking? What does it mean, what's the impact for the customers, what is it? >> Intent-based networking means that you can now express your business intent. Here's the outcome I'm looking for from the infrastructure. The system and the architecture will convert that automatically, provision, all the underlying components get the data and the context back out and prove to you that the intent you wanted was delivered. >> And what is changing now, more than ever, because applications are coming on. We see DevNet, we're in the DevNet zone. Seeing a lot of activity, developers. >> Yeah, so now you've got networks that are preventable instead of individual devices that you have to learn from the ground up, all their bells and whistles, you can now live at that intent layer, add an API layer on top of the controllers and move much more quickly. You can now start thinking about multiple domains, and how you cross those domains. >> What is the big product change, if any, especially software, is key to all of this? We've got plenty of hardware. You mentioned Liz in IOT, still runs router, she takes that software, she packages them. We interviewed her yesterday, she was talking about the synergies between code bases in which she customizes for the IOT market, then you've got the intent-based networking. What's the product look like, what's the products as they get more horizontal? >> Yes, so make no mistake, the hardware is still very important. Silicon ASIC's very important, but the magic now is in the software layer. So it starts with the operating system, and Liz talked about how we now have the Cisco IOS EXE operating system, which is modular hot patchable API driven programmable, and now runs across the entire portfolio. It runs on her ruggedized IOT infrastructure, runs on our switches, run on the wireless controller, runs on the routers and the SDWAN nodes, virtual and physical, same operating system. And then the SD controller layer on top of that. So for the campus, you've got DNA centers. So let's code DNA center, and then for the WAN you've got Cisco, the TeleV manage solution that provides a controller layer for automation, for analytics on top of the infrastructure. >> I wonder if we can unpack that SDWAN piece a bit, because WAN's been around a long time. I think back to the 90s, WAN was something that helped us get the internet. In the 2000s there was WAN optimization, I worked on a lot of replication solutions. I'm not sure that people understand the connection between SDWAN and really enabling the multi-cloud world that we need today, and the portfolio that Cisco has to attract that. >> You mentioned the 90s, I joined Cisco in 97, and I actually worked in WAN technical support. (laughing) So I've been with WAN for a very long time. And the customers aren't waking up and saying hey, I need a new WAN. That's not how the conversation starts. What's happening is it's a business transformation question. The companies, the customers are using infrastructure as a service, AWS services. They're using ACER, they're using Google Cloud platform. They're using all the SaaS products. Webex from Cisco, right, they're using Office 365. They're using all of these new applications and their data is not sitting in the data center. I mean, as we've noticed this week, the data center moves to where your data is. Well now, if your data isn't in it's data center that's conveniently connected through a WAN connection and it's all over the place. It's in the cloud, in many clouds. You have to think about, how do you get traffic in and out, how do you deliver security, and in this world where you may be using internet connections and all kinds of connections, how do you deliver the right application experience, and then oh, by the way, how do you manage all of this? That's what SDWAN is about, I need to transfer my business as I move applications or consume cloud services, I need to re-architect my WAN, and SDWAN helps me go do that. >> A big piece of that is what a network person needs to manage today, a lot of what they need to manage, they don't own. They don't control it, and some of that means I can't necessarily put a box that I can dial into and do this, so I need a software piece that I can put there as part of my overall configuration. >> Yes, you need a software piece, and you need something that scales to something that is cloud delivered. You can't be going to hundreds or thousands of sites and manually provisioning these for these services. You need to be able to have virtual services. If you're consuming a cloud service, you need your router or your service presence, your SDWAN presence in the cloud, right? So virtual network functions, virtual services become really critical in this world. >> Just on scale, you know, I've worked with Cisco on a lot of branch solutions over my career, there's lots of different components of scale that these type of solutions play into. >> Okay, people say if everything is in the cloud, does the scale requirement go down? All you think about is do I have 100 sites and I had one or two data centers. Alright, well now I have the same hundred sites, and I have hundreds of services. SaaS applications I'm consuming, and as I said, infrastructure as a service. And I still have some data centers for my legacy applications as well. So the complexity has actually increased, the scale requirement has increased. I need a much better software method, a software define method, to manage all of this. >> This is a key point, a lot of inflection points in the industry always have an abstraction layer to abstract away complexities. So you got two things going on here that are pretty clear, there's more complexity and more scale. So software's the perfect solution to manage that, is that what you're saying? >> Software's the perfect solution to manage this, and that's sort of one more level to that complexity. Because your traffic isn't neatly going from your branch through sort of a lease line or MPLS circuit that you can VPN into a data center, it's a more complicated traffic flow. I might be connecting directly to the internet securely is a huge concern. >> This is a great point, I was going to ask you the flow question, you know the old expression "follow the money and you'll find your answers." In networking, in this business, follow the traffic. Remember, north, south, east, west. That became a paradigm that helped shape a lot of network architecture. Now you have new traffic patterns. Can you give some color around the new traffic patterns and with cloud, comes with Edge, it's not just north, south, east, west, it's everywhere, so give- >> So a new traffic pattern now can be, instead of from the branch through your headquarters to your data center, now the traffic pattern is direct internet access to the SaaS application. Or go to a regional hub that I have in a co-location facility. Well, in the old world you had a security stack in your DMC. So it had your best firewall, your best IPS solution, all layered in there. Now in this new world with your traffic hitting directly, those applications and data in the cloud, you have to rethink security. So what we did in our SDWAN solution, we embed the best Cisco security technology application firewall, URL filtering, IPS solutions natively in our SDWAN software stack. And so you can deploy this across hundreds of branches now, and so you have assurance that the same level of security that you had in your data center can be delivered in a distributed way, in an easy way. And what happens is, customers also want to consume cloud security. You know, maybe I don't want to run in my branch, I actually have a SaaS application, I want to use the Cisco Umbrella service. Alright, so this is a secure internet gateway that processes this traffic, makes sure things are clean, makes sure we are safe, the customers are safe, and we can now integrate with cloud services in our SDWAN solution with just one click. >> How important is this security paradigm you just mentioned? Because there probably will be consequences. We've seen IOT become a talking point around oh, surface area, more surface area for the security breaches. This security paradigm's different. Why is it important and what are the consequences if not followed? >> If you don't follow this paradigm, I think the risk you run into that first of all, you will make a compromise on application experience because you're so worried about security. Let me give you an example, customers may choose, hey, you know what, I'll continue hair pinning all my traffic through my headquarters because I have a rich security stack there, and suffer an application experience because I'm going this way to get to the cloud asset rather than going directly, and so by enabling that rich security stack to be virtually enabled anywhere you want it, anywhere you need it, we can ensure that you can have the maximum level security that you need in your architectural design, and still get the application experience by selecting the best path for your application. >> And it's good business to be in enabling technology. We've seen that, you guys have lived that at Cisco. What is the most important story coming out of Cisco, out of this show, as you guys move forward that customers and the industry should pay attention to in your opinion? What's the most important story? >> I think the most important part of the story is, intent-based networking and the architectural shift, the reinvention that it's created isn't about any single domain, right? This is happening in the WAN to solve application experience problems, SaaS application experience problems, security problems, automations, scale. It's happening in the campus for segmentation, prevent lateral movement of threats. It's happening in the data center with ACI, and the customers want simple outcomes. What they're looking for is users, devices, things connecting to applications and data, doesn't matter where they sit, and ensuring that from a policy based model, they can automate end to end, and they can get the visibility, the telemetry end to end to solve problems and to learn and to improve the network. >> So cross domain traffic, application probability of the network, and the role of data that plays in that seems to be a common thread. >> Beautifully summarized, John, that's exactly right. >> Well, what's coming up in the keynote? What are you going to talk about at noon here in Barcelona? >> Yeah so in the keynote, I'm going to recap why have we done this, why does it matter, and why isn't CLI still going to work for you, and why did we need to reinvent networking? And then talk about the journey so far, all the new things we've announced, and then what I'm really excited about is I have a partner coming on stage with me talking about how we're delivering SDWAN solutions for our customers, how does that conversation work, and what should you really worry about as you select the service, design the architecture you're going to go with. >> Sachin, I want to go back in time, jog your memory, I remember back in the 90s, multi vendor was a big word, multi vendor improbability. Multi vendor meant working with multiple industry standard stuff. I hear multi cloud, I get a similar vibe. This seems to be the trend that people want to pay attention to just as much as hybrid cloud or maybe more on the multi cloud side, some are even saying, multi cloud is hotter than hybrid cloud. Do you agree with that, and how does multi vendor, multi cloud jive to Cisco? You guys thrived in a multi vendor world. What's your thoughts on this multi cloud? >> I think in both of those situations, customers are looking for freedom. It needs to be open, API driven. I should be able to move my traffic from one place to the other, my applications from one place to the other and not feel locked in. And so it's critical to support open protocols, open APIs and to provide customers that freedom. An SDWAN actually helps provide that. We're using open protocols open APIs, but at the same time, if I need to move my service from here to there, and I still need to deliver security, application experience, scale, automation, you can do that. So we provide that freedom to run that application in the multi cloud environment. >> One of the things that comes up all the time when we have conversations with the geeks out there at the conferences, it's microservices in containers on one side, and then on the networking side it's still latency and cost, you've still got latency issues and cost to move traffic around. Still a dynamic, how are you guys still looking there? 'Cause latency is certainly super important, and networking will be moving packets around, moving traffic around, and cost, there's still cost. Is this the concept of data center moving to the applications? How do you guys look at that cost equation and the latency equation, that's still important, can't change the laws of physics. >> The cost of latency equation is still really important, but the problem has changed, now. As your applications now, your data center is sort of moving with the cloud. Think about Office 365, we still need to help you get the best experience for Office 365 as if you were running an on-prem solution. For that we need to do things very different, we need to manage latency, to manage jitter, to manage cost overall. So what we've done is we use an API integration with Office 365 to give you 40% better performance for that fast application, and we're doing this for many applications. So I think you're right, you're solving for similar things, but now everything's changed on here. The applications are in a different place. So you just have to solve them in a fundamentally new way. >> And that's the traffic patterns, really comes down to it, and that's a tell sign of user expectation, user behavior, application behavior, this is the new normal. >> This is the new normal. >> What are you excited for looking forward as you look at your business, you look at Cisco, positioning style, I like the new position, very tight, very good, I like A Bridge to Tomorrow, A Bridge to the Future, kind of makes sense. Bridge, I like the double entendre there. But as you look at the portfolio coming together with multi cloud, what are you excited about? >> Look, and I've heard this from many customers and partners this week as well at Cisco live, we've been on this journey for many years. Building out intent-based networking for each of these domains, and now we've got thousands of customers already using it. But the conversations are going from hey, why did we need to do this? To, hey, help me perfect my design, and I now need to connect two or three domains together, how do we go do that? So we're now having richer, more mature next phase conversations. So it's working with our customers to realize that value across all of the domains from anywhere where there are users and things start anywhere with data and application sessions. >> And the network is foundational with the security architecture, you can build on that, that's where the magic will happen from your perspective, you see that. >> That's where the magic will happen, and you know what, only Cisco can pull this off. Because we have leadership in every one of those domains, and we're following the same architectural principles across all of them. >> So if someone said Sachin, this is not your grandfather's SDWAN, what do you respond to that? How do you update that narrative? What is the SDWAN new message, what's the new picture for SDWAN, what does that mean? >> The new SDWAN is about connecting to your applications and data in any cloud in a multi cloud environment, SaaS, IOS applications, it doesn't matter. Any private data center, still delivering the best security, best application experience in an automated way at the skill that you need. >> Okay, at the center of the value properties, have been saying on theCUBE for nine years, finally it's happening, a lot of stuff coming together meeting the road, congratulations on your success, and thanks for spending the time to come in. Great to see you, good luck on your keynote. This is theCUBE coverage live in Barcelona. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, back with more coverage here from Cisco Live after this short break, stay with us. (funky music)

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