>>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.

>> From Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering the conference boards sixth annual Innovation Master Class. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff with theCUBE, we're at the Innovation Master Class at Xerox Parc in Palo Alto. It's put on by the conference boards, a relatively small event. But a bunch of really high powered people, terrific presentations. If you ever get a chance to go, I suggest you check it out. We're happy to be here for our first time, we're here and one of the big themes on innovation is how do you innovate well as a big company. It's not easy to do, there's a lot of barriers in the way. We're excited to have an expert in the field, he's Alex Goryachev the senior director of innovation strategy and programs at Sisco. Great to see you. >> Thank you, I'm glad to be here. >> So you just gave a presentation on this topic so first off, give us a little overview of what your role is at Sisco and how it plays with innovation. >> So at Sisco, I'm lucky to lead two things. One is how do we work with the ecosystem, at our network of global innovation centers. And the second one is how do we capture best ideas from our employees. And most importantly, support them in making those ideas happen, turning them into products, or process improvements. >> Right, so Sisco's an interesting company, it's like intel and a lot of really dominant players in their field. Terrific market share, dominant for a long time. So it's really hard, that innovators dilemma is really written for companies like Sisco, so those innovation centers, how did those come about, how many of them are there, and what is the mission of the innovation centers? >> So the mission, if you think about innovation, it doesn't happen in San Jose or doesn't happen only in San Jose, it happens around the world. So when we think about the innovation centers, we've got around 12 of them around the globe. With a core mission of working with ecosystem players. Whenever that's start ups, customers, partners, academia, governments, and coming up with solutions that then we can deploy in a local market and potentially scale around the globe. >> So it's interesting, you lead with really working with the ecosystem partners, so their mission is more leveraged that greater ecosystem versus we need to come up with the great ideas inside of our four walls. >> Absolutely, because if you think about it, we have a lot of great ideas inside the four walls, but when we look at the specific problems that are you know, problems for Japan, may not necessarily be the same that they are for Australia. And what we really want to do, is be able to work on an issue of national relevancy and focus on the economic strengths and problems that are in the particular area, so that we can make a meaningful impact. >> Right, so one of the topics in one of the earlier presentations here, was how do big companies manage innovation centers, and we're here at Xerox Parc, this is probably one of the most historic innovation centers ever in computers industry. So how do you manage this kind of dichotomy between having them kind of set aside, the people at the innovation center in their own separate little location and still be innovative and kind of unbridled from some of the corporate tail winds I guess, would be head winds I should say. But also make them part of the bigger Sisco environment and still make em feel like they're included and that these things are important, not just to what they're working on and even their ecosystem, but are important to the whole Sisco. >> It's a great question, and I think that's where the corporate government comes in really well. Because at the end of the day with the innovation centers we don't want to boil the ocean right? We want to make sure that everybody wins. So when we think of creating products and solutions, we want to work with customers that have real problems and with start ups that can potentially close that gap and help us co develop a solution with them. So we're very focused on ar engineering priorities and be our specific country priorities and particular opportunities that exist in the country. For example, we have a center in Australia, right? And if you look at the Australian economy, a lot of it is with agriculture, right? So what we have in Australia is a concertia with other industry players in the region to focus on solving some problems for the agriculture. Which utilizes the internet of thinks technology. So that's one of the ways that we're connected to companies mission which is iot, one of the corporate missions. And at the same time we're solving the local problem, working with the ecosystem and creating something that can then be scaled around the world. >> Right, so the other part of your job that you mentioned is inside the four walls and trying to help foster the innovation that does come from your own internal people that are in line jobs, more regular jobs. So what are some of the initiatives that you have in place to identify and to surface and to ultimately support and maybe those grow into new products and divisions and whatever. What are some of the secrets you can share there. >> Well I think the secret is very simple. It's everyone, at the end of the day, everything in the company comes down to talent. People generally invest in talent, not necessarily in ideas. So, one is recognizing that the innovation is a mindset, and then the second thing is really focusing on empowering every single employee to innovate. And in practical terms, that means that we have to redefine innovation. It's not only about new product development, it's not only about top line grove, right? It could be about process improvements. It could be about other things that bring value to the company. Could be about corporate social responsibility, when you go in and listen and engage with employees across the entire company, you actually have far better ideas that touch all aspects of your business, and can produce a lasting impact. Not only in products but with sound process improvement as well. >> And how do you support that? How do you give people the encouragement to say listen, we're interested in your ideas or interested in your innovations across this broad swath of opportunities, like I said from product all the way to social responsibility or cleaning out the Guadalupe river, I'm sure there's all kinds of interesting things that you can point to. How do you make sure that's communicated, that this is a priority for us, the company, that we want to support you, our employee, in some of these opportunities. >> Well first of all, we're lucky to have the sponsorship of our CO Chuck Robbins, who really put this as one of his key priorities. The second one is because innovation is about talent first and product second, we're lucky to work with our chief people officer, Francine, and she's a sponsor for this as well. So we have an incredible opportunity to go and message this as a top corporate priority to our employee's year after year. But the other thing, which is the key, is for every single function in the company, we worked with them to define innovation ambition. So that when we got to employee's and say hey help us, give us your best ideas, we can go and guide them towards some of the Sisco's key priorities. So we connect them with strategy. Obviously at the end of the day, some of them will give us whatever ideas they're passionate about. And there are a lot of great things there as well. >> So Alex I'll give you the last word. We'll be at Sisco live in Barcelona, it's right around the corner, and Sisco live US, etc. This is a really small event. So for you as an attendee and also as a presenter what is this type of event here at the innovation master class mean to you, what are you hoping to get out of it, what do you get out of participating in these type of events? >> Well if I think about, the most important thing, again going back to Sisco, we believe that no single company can do this alone. The innovation program that I just talked about, they innovate everywhere, we put it for the entire world to use and I think just connecting with other fellow practitioners is very important. At the end of the day, innovation teams, they typically go against the grain. So a lot of this is group therapy, it's support. It's the human connection, but then we learn so much from each other, right? Because at the end of the day, we face the same challenges, we face the same problems together. So any industry concertia, we can make a meaningful difference for our companies and for our employee's. And by the way, if you're at Sisco live Barcelona, do stop by our booth, we have the innovation network booth, where we talk about the Sisco innovation centers, and the innovation programs that we run. >> Great, we'll do that. Well Alex thank you for taking a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you in Barcelona. >> Pleasure. >> Alright, he's Alex and I'm Jeff, and you're watching theCUBE, we're at the Innovation Master Class, put on by the conference board here at Xerox Parc in Palo Alto, thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)