 Every CEO is trying to get hybrid right. Most people, they've been working remotely for the better part of two years now. And we've spent a lot of time and thought on how to accommodate remote workers and providing tools to make them feel connected and more productive. We've also built remote and hybrid models into our hiring ethos, making it a feature, not a drawback. But what about the underlying infrastructure that powers hybrid work? How is that evolving to be as flexible, scalable, and cost-effective with the lowest latency possible? Recent survey data from enterprise technology research shows that 56% of executives believe productivity continues to improve with only 14% citing recent declines in productivity. 26% say it's holding steady. The question is, how do we maintain those positives and minimize the negatives? And what role does the network and underlying infrastructure play in evolving new work models? Welcome to the network, powering hybrid work on theCUBE made possible by Cisco. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be your host today. And in this program, you're going to hear from experts that are going to discuss and introduce new innovations that are specifically designed to energize and support hybrid work. My first guest is Lawrence Wang, who's the Vice President of Product Management at Cisco. And we're going to dig into Wi-Fi 6E and what it all means to the future of work. Lawrence, welcome, good to see you. Hey, great to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here today. Yeah, you bet. Okay, my first big question is, what's the big rush? It feels like we were just talking about the shift from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 just a few years ago. What's going on there? Yeah, I mean, you're right, right? We, at Cisco, we introduced our first Wi-Fi 6 access points back in 2019. And one of the things that we've seen is a tremendous rate of adoption moving from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 over the past couple of years. In fact, it's one of our fastest transitions that we've seen between wireless standards. And a lot of the drivers for that, we're really just about making sure that there's better Wi-Fi experiences for people in the office, making sure that they can support more of that five gigabyte set of clients to reduce the amount of congestion. And our top what we've seen is that migration has been tremendous, but it also means that we're starting to reach that capacity where five gigahertz is starting to become more crowded. And so many of our customers are looking at, well, what can I actually do to continue to expand that traffic, the number of lanes that I can actually support for wireless traffic? And for many of them, they're looking to Wi-Fi 6E as the answer to help them do that simply because six gigahertz as part of that standard introduces a whole new spectrum or a whole new highway that we can get client devices on. Well, so it sounds like you're thinking about a different role for offices and campuses going forward. So what should listeners expect to see kind of in the near term and the midterm and even a long term, near term, when they get back into the office and then long term, how do you see this playing out? Yeah, that's an interesting question, right? When you think about this context of hybrid work, work is not a place that you go to, but it's really a place that you could be where ultimately you are trying to get work done. It really is supporting that quality of experience no matter where you choose to work from. And yes, while the campus is going to evolve and play a different role, it is a critical part of that hybrid work future. And the way I see it here is that the role of the campus is going to change over time. It's not going to be the same that we saw prior to two years ago. And I think for many of our customers about what does it mean to invest in that infrastructure for us to continue to adapt to support the ways that their employees that are expected or want to work. And a big part of that is investing in infrastructure to support new ways of working. Well, Lawrence, I mean, I've personally been lucky because we go to studio and I've been able to come into the office since the pandemic started, but I know a lot of people, they're really excited to get back to work in person and face-to-face events and the like. And I know others that say, you know what? I'm moving and I'm always going to work remotely. I'll never work for another company that forces me to go in the office again. So this sounds like a tall order for IT organizations to accommodate that diversity. How do you think they will be able to plan for and manage all this new complexity? Yeah, I mean, I think the reality is, you know, talent, it doesn't know any zip codes, right? And I think one of the boons of, you know, being able to support a more distributed workforce is to be able to bring in great talent no matter where they're based out of. And I think for IT teams, I think the interesting thing will be, you know, what are the drivers to bring people back into the office, right? There has to be a purpose that's more meaningful than simply it's a place that I go to every single day. You know, what are the tools and applications I bring in to help support collaboration? And I think important part of making this a great experience in the context of hybrid work is that you do have to make the office a meaningful place for employees to gather, but also making sure that as you connect people around the world as part of your global employee workforce, that they still have an equitable experience. So for IT teams, it is about, you know, thinking about how do I actually manage this infrastructure that's more distributed, but I still have to invest in my, you know, central campuses and at the same time, making sure that I have great quality experiences for everyone, unified security policies, you know, visibility across all the clients and applications, but there's also increasing pressure from their IT's core constituency. We know that people are asking more of IT. They want them to support new use cases like Safe Return Office, that they want IT to help be a contributor to, you know, global corporate initiatives like driving towards, you know, zero greenhouse gas emissions. So any number of these activities or initiatives is putting more pressure on IT teams. Yeah, interesting. I mean, so I got to ask you, please don't hate me for this question, but was this just luck on Cisco's part that you got solutions ready for this sort of hybrid work model so quickly? In other words, was it something that you were maybe planning that was gonna take years for the market to be ready for and it just got compressed because of the pandemic or was this architecture that allows you to be flexible? How did you land here in what appears to be a pretty strong position? Yeah, I mean, at Cisco, I think one of the things that, you know, we think about is, you know, it's always amazing when you look back at something and then you write the story. But I think if we're being honest with ourselves, if you look at what happened from where we were two years ago to where we are today, including our competitors and customers, I think that no one could have predicted the world that we're operating and living in. And so for us, the question becomes, how did we help our customers support this transition and ultimately it's about investing in architectures and platforms that are flexible that allows our customers to support, you know, use cases that they were thinking of as well as ones that they never anticipated. And I think that's really the exciting thing about what we've been doing here as part of our hybrid work investments. Now areas that, you know, I think, you know, we double down on and, you know, in some ways accelerated because of this. When I think about, you know, what our customers care about when they start bringing people back into the office, it is about some of these emerging use cases, whether it's more dynamic way-finding, being able to understand the density or the air quality of a given environment. And these are some of the technologies that we've embedded in some of our, you know, new, you know, Wi-Fi 6C access points along with, you know, our management infrastructure here. So I think that it gives our customers and partners a lot more flexibility than what, you know, they had before to really adapt to the changing needs of today and even beyond. Something we've certainly learned throughout the pandemic is the ability to be flexible is fundamental. I got to ask you, what's your preferred mode of work? You go back into the office, are you going to stay remote? Great question. You know, I have come to appreciate, you know, working from home, you know, over the past couple of years got to spend a little more time with my kids at lunch. But I will say I am looking forward to the day when I can have the voice of being back in the office a few days a week as well as continue to be remote as well as continue to visit my customers and partners, you know, all over this great country and the world. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, so you're a true hybrid. I guess I'm a hybrid too. I like being in the office, but I'm traveling a lot when the world returns to the new abnormal. Anyway, Lawrence, thanks so much for kicking off the program with me. Now in a minute, we're going to dig into the core of the network and understand the role it plays in supporting new and flexible work models. You're watching the network powering hybrid work made possible by Cisco on theCUBE, your leader in global enterprise tech coverage.