(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Barcelona, Spain. it's The Cube covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, Veeam, and The Cube's Ecosystem Partner. (upbeat music) (people chatting in background) >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. This is The Cube exclusive coverage live in Barcelona, Spain, for Cisco Live 2018 in Europe. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder and co-host of The Cube here all week, two days of live wall-to-wall coverage in the DevNet Zone where all the action's at. It's the biggest story at Cisco Live is the impact of the DevNet and the developer network that's been growing leaps and bounds. Of course, we covered DevNet Create earlier last year, which is a Cloud Native event. Kind of bring in two communities together from Cisco and of course, we can't talk about developers without talking about experiences that developers need and want and expect and also, you know, how to operate in those environments. We have two great guests. Mandy Whaley's been on before, The Cube Alumni Director of Developer Experiences at Cisco, and Tom Davies, who's the Senior Manager of the DevNet Sandbox. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good to see you again. >> Excited to be here. Yeah, good to see you, too. >> So congratulations. >> DevNet is again booming. It's the hot part of the show. It's one of the top stories here in Barcelona. >> Yes. >> It's been great. Our workshops, where we're doing the hands-on coding, have been extremely full even early in the morning and late into the evening, and it's great to see people really diving in, laptops open, getting their hands on, and doing some coding. >> That's great stuff, congratulations. And, you know, the Sandbox is interesting because now you guys are completely open. Love the motto: learn, code, inspire, and connect. That's the motto here. You got to have a place for people to do this. >> You do. >> What is this Sandbox thing that you guys are rollin' out? It's pretty interesting. >> Yeah, so the Sandbox is completely open to everyone, and the idea behind it is if you like, if you can go to developer.cisco.com/sandbox, you can hit our catalog and start playing with our technology within minutes by just clicking on the technology you want to cover. We'll spin you up that environment, and you can start playing it as a developer really quite quickly. >> Alright, take me through a progression example, because let's just say I hit that website, developer.cisco.com/sandbox, >> Yeah. what do I do? I mean, what are people doing? Is it like, you know, Hello World or what are they coding? What are they learning? I mean, what's goin' on there? >> It just depends on the technology that they choose. So we go to developer.cisco.com/sandbox, hit Catalog, it comes out with a bunch of titles, and in that catalog, you can choose Networking, you could choose Security, you could choose Data Center, Cloud, Open Source, any different technology that that developer might be interested in or want to integrate into, and then from there they click on that title and say, "Right, I want to reserve say APIC-EM. "I'm interested in Networking and control of Networking." From there, we spin that environment up for them, completely secure, send them the details of how it's connect, they connect to it, and then they are free to start coding within minutes on, say, a APIC-EM controller solution, figure out what the latest release provides them, >> Yeah. how they integrate into it, and how they can start innovatin' in a really easy way over the top. >> So they can, it's a playground. They can do mash-ups. >> It's a playground, yeah. >> It is. >> I can sling API's around, test stuff, break stuff. >> If they're breaking somethin', they're probably doin' something right so we encourage it. >> Yeah (laughs) >> Yeah. >> It's brilliant. >> Yeah. >> The other thing that's really cool about the Sandbox is that Tom takes a lot of time and care to make sure we put together fully, you know, environments where you can actually build things with the Cisco gear plus open source projects that are relevant to those pieces of the Cisco technology portfolio, so it's not just the environment. It's sample code, it's open source you can use, it's traffic generations, it's really a full working environment. >> Yeah, that brings up a good point I wanted to ask you, as we had some other guests on. We couldn't get to it. You're startin' to see with Kubernetes and well, first docker containers and now all containers. Really interesting. I mean, Red Hat just bought CoreOS yesterday. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's big news. >> They did, they did. >> Big news, yeah. >> In Europe, you miss all the action. The State of the Union. (Tom laughs). >> I know. >> It was a big story on the New York Times on Sunday. I'm like, "Ah, I'm missin' all the late news." But that's a signal. Containers are commoditized. You're seeing that be the now abstraction layer for moving work loads around and program around it. >> We do. >> Kubernetes gives an orchestration opportunity that now allows you to bring this service mesh concept to the table. >> It does. >> This is becoming a really interesting developer dream, because now I could provision >> Yes. microservices and start doing network services with those microservice at the app layer. >> Yeah. >> This to me is a really, really big trend. I know you guys have kind of quietly put it out there, a term called "Net DevOps," >> Yes. which I think will be a very big thing. >> Yep. (Mandy laughs) >> Because it's DevOps the whole stack. >> It is. >> That's right, yeah. >> But really usin' the network more, so for the people who are power users of network services, this could become a very big DevOps movement. >> Yes, yes. >> Can you explain this concept of the Net DevOps, and does that relate to like SDO and some of the service mesh stuff out there? What's your-- >> Yeah, do you want to start with service mesh and then I'll dive into the lower parts or, yeah? >> We can do that. >> Go for it. >> Jump right in. >> Yeah. >> Share the information. >> Yeah, sure. >> The term service mesh is actually fairly new, and it's common because as people use microservices more, their understandin' that they just perforate like crazy, and it's actually really quite hard to understand which microservices talk to which microservices, are they doin' it securely? Are they within policy? Are they talkin' to the right thing? And that's where SDO comes in. It's really providin' a proxy for that traffic so you can easily talk between microservice A and microservice B, understand it, see observability between that traffic, and then control that traffic, and SDO is takin' really the abstraction away, takin' the pain away from that huge service. >> Just talk about the quantify that time savings, because this is like, I think this really kind of was the minds get blown. That example you just laid out, without that, what would you have to do? I have to build a proxy, I have to test it. >> You do. >> I mean, just take me through it. >> Yeah. The comparisons A to B. >> Well, normally when you have >> Real quick. a microservice, you probably have about 15 other services around them all. Like if you had a ton of microservices, you probably have 15 different subserving services around it. With SDO, it takes 15 away so you don't have to manage or operate all those, and it brings you down to one, and that's really super key, 'cause it makes it so much easier to deal with microservices >> Yeah. then to bail them out. >> And then I boil it down, and then I tell people when Amazon launched Lambda, which essentially the serverless trend, 'cause they're always >> Yeah. just services. Never really serverless. (Mandy laughs) I know the Cisco people debate this all the time, and now there's, it's true. This server's behind it. >> Of course. They just take this abstraction away. They're really enabling this notion of a mindset for the developer where this gets into the user experience, user expectation. >> Right. >> Yes. >> If I want infrastructure as a code and I don't want to dive into the network services, I want the one not the 15 to deal with. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> I'm essentially programming the infrastructure at that point, so this is a big, effin' deal. >> This is a big deal, >> It is. and then even what we're seeing is that the expectations are set by DevOps practices, and now that our network devices are opening up APIs, and we have the really strong assurance and analytics pieces that we saw in the Cisco keynotes, we can extend those DevOps concepts to managing network devices. So something very traditional, networking task, like out of VLAN. Let's say you want to do that, but you want to do that in a network as code manner. So you want to take that through a build pipeline, something that would be familiar to a developer or somebody who manages their infrastructure in a DevOps way, but now you can do it for a networking device. And you can take it through build and test just like you would code, and all of your network configurations are source controlled so you have your version control around it, and that's a big mind shift for the network developers. But in DevNet, we have the application developers, the ops engineers, and the net workers, and then what we're tryin' to do is share those practices across because that's the only way we'll get to the scale, the consistency, the level of automation that we need. >> Alright, so here's a question for you guys. Put you on the spot. DevOps has been great. It's going mainstream. Some are called CloudOps, whatever, but DevOps is great, great movement. >> Yes. >> That's been goin' on for a while, you know. Hey. >> Yeah. You know, pat each other on the back. (Mandy laughs) But DevOps means automation. >> Yes, yes. >> Right? >> And the old rule is you got to do it twice automated. This scares people. So what is being automated away in the Net DevOps model? >> So I wouldn't know that it's being automated away, but the idea is that is if we're managing infrastructure, traditionally you would do it in a sequential and manual way, right? But we need to do it in a parallel and automated way. So moving towards that automation helps us do that. I think we see some network engineers who think, "I have to learn a lot of new skills to do this." >> Mm-hmm. >> And that is true, but you don't have to be the level of an application developer who's writing applications to do some automation and scripting, and DevNet's really working to put the tools out there to lead them down that path and get them moving in that direction. It's also a little bit more, I mean, DevOps is definitely the automation in the tools. There's also the culture of bringing Dev and Ops together. So the same thing happens there as well. >> Totally agree, and also the process as well, repeatability in what we're doin'. So once you've done one >> Yes. and that process works for you, you can repeat that process for the next set of configuration you're deploying. >> Yeah, definitely. >> What's interesting. >> Super slick. >> Rowan showed on stage the future titles of what it'll be like in 2030 or 2050. I forget which year it was. >> Yes, yes. I joked, it says the LinkedIn on that. Might not even be around, might be around then, either. (Mandy laughs) This is a new field, right? >> Yes. >> And successful companies, the ethos was hire the smartest person because the jobs that are coming haven't been invented yet, so there's no right experience there. So this kind of reminds me of what's going on with DevOps where, you know, Network guys, they're not dumb. I mean, they're smart, right? >> Super smart. >> You know? >> Yeah. >> And it used to be that you were the rock star if you ran the network. >> That's right, that's right. >> Okay, now the rock stars are more the app developers and the developers on the Dev Op side. So these would be easy, and we're seeing that it's easy for those guys to jump in to some of these coding and/or agile mindsets. >> Yes. >> 'Cause they are gunslingers, they are rock stars. >> They are, it's incredible how fast they're picking it up. I mean, they are, just from the ones that we met from last year to this year who were here came to like their first coding class. This year they're here, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I totally get this build pipeline. "I'm doing this in my organization." We're seeing 'em pick it up incredibly fast. >> And so they obviously see a path to other jobs. What patterns are you guys seeing in terms of things that they're doing on the Sandbox and/or some of the user expectations that they have as they're now fresh, young, or/and middle age >> Yeah. or old students >> Right? in the new world. What are some of the patterns? >> Yeah. >> What are they kickin' tires on? What's the, what are they gravitating towards? >> Everythin', but they yeah, literally everythin', but they're always like quite interested in containers and what's happenin' in the container world and how that applies >> Yes. to networkin', especially because as we touched on it earlier, there's a lot of networkin' to be had in the container world, and it's not just one layer of (mumbles) of the service mesh. There's also virtualization layers, there's like abstracted policy layers. There's a good few layers of networkin' that you need to know and really understand to be able to get into, so that's one real trend that the network guys >> Yes. really are jumpin' on, and so they should, because they're great at it. >> Yeah, I would add to that. Like I've been seeing, you know, in different conversations I have with people who are coming from the appDev side or the Op side and saying, "Wow, I'm really good at containers. "I can build apps and containers all day." And then they get into it, and they're like, "The networking part of containers is hard. "There's a lot to learn." >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And so I definitely see a lot of activity around both sides coming together around, "How do we really make that work?" >> And the bottom line is is that this whole "Your job's going away" is ridiculous because this really proves that there is so much job security in DevOps it's ridiculous. >> There's more devices per engineer to be managed then ever before, so it's really just you have to have the automation to even keep up, right? >> Yeah, it's quite funny, actually, because I come from a very much a software centered background, and networkin' to me was black magic. You had to know so much stuff in the networking order, it used to scare the hell out of me, but I had to go down into the network layer to start understandin' it to do a better job of software >> Well, you was locked down. and I'm seein' the reverse. >> I mean, you had perimeter-base security, (Tom laughs) and you had very inflexible configuration management things. You were just >> Yeah. really locked down. >> That's right. Now agile and dyanmic >> And then we're seein'. adaptive, and these are the words that are described. And now add IoT to the mix. You guys had the Black Hat, you know, IoT booth here, >> Yes. which is phenomenal. >> Yes. It's only going to increase the edge of the network, which is not new to Cisco. >> Definitely. Cisco knows the edge. >> That's right. So it's going to be interesting to see that going forward. >> Yeah. >> Definitely. >> And that's one of our sandboxes. We have a sandbox where developers can practice taking docker containers and deploying them into Edge Compute in our routers, and that's one that's really popular and gets a lot of-- >> It's incredibly popular. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Mandy and Tom, thanks for comin' on The Cube. Really appreciate, great to see you again. >> Yeah, thank you so much. >> Congratulations on all your success. Go kick on the tires of the Sandbox. >> It's all down to Mandy. >> Yeah. >> You guys did a great job. >> DevNet developer network for Cisco here, and of course DevNet created in separate small, boutique-event small, for the Cloud Native World. You want to check that out. Well, the Cube will be there this year. This is The Cube live coverage. I'm John Furrier, stay tuned for more of day 2, exclusive Cisco Live 2018 in Europe. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)