 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 in the longterm, 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 got a 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, you know, tools and, you know, applications I bring in to help support collaboration. And I think an important part of, you know, 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 to 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 the sort of hybrid work model so quickly? In other words, was it something that you were maybe planning that was going to 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, you know, 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, you know, more dynamic wayfinding, 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. Well, that's 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 in 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. The world is coming back and leaping forward at the same time. You want to keep up with both. Introducing Cisco Access Networking, a portfolio of centrally managed catalyst switches, wireless solutions and software that empowers you to reimagine your connections, reinforce security and redefine the IT experience so you can bring always on, always secure connectivity. Anyway, without interruption, that's your bridge to the future of work. That's your bridge to possible. We continue now with the network, powering hybrid work. Now we just heard from Lawrence Wang on the rapid move to Wi-Fi 6E, which is going to increase Wi-Fi efficiency, enable routers and devices to more efficiently use bandwidth. And that additional spectrum that Lawrence talked about, that means more Wi-Fi channels, which is really going to help reduce overlap between networks and make a noticeable difference, especially in crowded places. We're here now with Muhammad Imam, who's Senior Director of Product Management for Catalyst Switching. This is a multi-billion dollar business for Cisco. If you ever listen to Cisco's earnings calls, you'll hear the CFO, Scott Herron. He'll talk about the Catalyst 9000 and double digit growth and switching. This is the fastest ramping product in Cisco's history. So Muhammad, that's got to make you feel pretty good. He has indeed. Thank you, David, and thank you for having me here. Yeah, great to have you. So look, Catalyst 9000, it's been really successful. What does the 9000X bring to the table for your customers? Yeah, absolutely. And indeed, the Catalyst 9000 family of switches have been extremely popular with their customers. As you said, fastest ramping product in Cisco's history. And the last four or five years, we have really evolved the Catalyst 9000 family of switches to a very comprehensive product portfolio, addressing the various enterprise use cases that we address. But now we see increase in demand on the networks and that really stems from some of the most recent trends that we are seeing. Part of it is hybrid work spaces. It's going to be a video dominant hybrid work space, right? A lot of cases is going to be high-definition 4K, 8K videos. We are seeing cloud-based applications everywhere. My spreadsheet used to be on Excel sheet. Now it's either an Office 365 or Smartsheets. My files used to be on my computer. Now it's on in the Dropbox, right? So these are trends that are really putting pressure on our networks. We are also seeing trends where VR headsets are becoming common. They are being used for trainings and education use cases, WebEx hologram. In certain industries, we are seeing the robotics are becoming more and more popular. And they come with a lot of applications that are very latency sensitive. And as Lawrence mentioned earlier, Wi-Fi 6E is really making over the ear multi-gigabit Wi-Fi possible, right? And for all of these different trends and the recent technologies that are evolving, we really need the network that can really address and deliver for these applications. And that's where we are bringing the Catalyst 9000X that addresses the increase in network demand. We are expanding the Catalyst 9000 family with top-of-line premium introductions in the access layer of the switches of the network, as well as in the aggregation and core layers. So we are bringing 400 gig high-speed core and enterprise core and edge layers of the network. We are bringing point-to-point IPsec security, which will give you 100 gig of IPsec encryption. High density of multi-gigabit, which is becoming very common as we evolve our Wi-Fi networks because we don't want our wired infrastructure to be the bottleneck when the wireless infrastructure is capable of going more than a gig. High density of 90 ward, powering the smart buildings use cases, right? These are all different use cases that are being enabled by the Catalyst 9000 and the new Catalyst 9000X family is really addressing some of these new trends and applications. Well, it's good because the metaverse is coming too, and we're going to need some help with that, right? Who knows how much bandwidth we'll need for metaverse, absolutely. Yeah, guarantee you'll be a lot more. But so I want to hear more about the new products that you've just launched and maybe how these offerings are going to help with this new hybrid work model that we've just been discussing. Absolutely, so let me start with the Catalyst 9300. We are introducing the Catalyst 9300X, which is the highest density, full multi-gigabit platform with 100 gig uplinks and 90 watt of power on every port available, right? That's an industry for us that we are bringing on the Catalyst 9300 family. It is also capable of one terabit per second of a stacking, which is also unheard of in the industry. This will serve our customers with all the new trends that we talked about, including the hybrid work and some of the new trends that are going to come in the next decade. But 9300X is not just a high-end campus switch. It can also be a lean branch in a box solution where you don't really need an SDVAN, but you do need an encryption point-to-point from the Catalyst 93 and from your front of brands with the Catalyst 9300X to the data center or to the cloud. So for the first time, we are introducing the IPsec-based encryption natively in the hardware. And that means no compromise on performance and you can get up to 100 gig of encrypted traffic with the Catalyst 9300X. Second is the Catalyst 9400. We are introducing Soop 2 and Soop 2 XL with 100 gig uplinks, enhancing the scale and performance, giving our customers options for fully loaded line-rate multi-gibbit board on a 10-slot chassis, right? It'll give you two to three times bandwidth boost to your existing line cards since it completely removes the over subscriptions. And the Soop 2 on the Catalyst 9400 is coming up with the version of the ASIC that we used in the past on the Catalyst 9600. That means it's also bringing the core capabilities that we today have on 9600 on the Catalyst 9400. And that brings high-density, 10 gig boards on the Catalyst 9400 without over subscription, right? With the core capabilities. Then we have the Catalyst 9600 where we are introducing a Supervisor 2 which really triples the bandwidth per slot on the Catalyst 9600. It introduces 400 gig uplink and truly drives the transition to 100 gig in the core. Get 6K customers with Excel-scale requirements. Now they can transition to the Cat9K with Soop 2. And by the way, we are also introducing a combo line card on the Catalyst 9600, which means now you don't have to burn the whole slot for your uplink boards. In fact, you can get up to 400 gig of uplink with this new line card. So that's a bunch of things that we are bringing on the Catalyst 9600. In line with Catalyst 9600, we are also introducing Catalyst 9500X, 100 gig boards with 400 gig uplinks in a fixed form factor. And all the benefits that I just talked about on the Supervisor 2 in 9600 is also available in a fixed form factor on Catalyst 9500X. Got it. So that's in summary kind of the multiple product lines that we are introducing. Yeah, so a lot to unpack there. I mean, the big theme there, of course, is optionality. You got a lot of choices for customers. I love to encrypt everything without a trade-off, you know, no performance impact. And anytime you can reduce my oversubscription, it's going to make me happy. You know, Mohamed, we've reported in our breaking analysis segments the importance of custom silicon. And not every company has the resources or the expertise to develop their own silicon Cisco, of course, does. Catalyst 9K is bringing silicon one based products with this launcher. Tell us more about that. Why is this important? Yeah, that's really exciting development that we have on the Cat9K family. Because you know the silicon one is a powerful ASIC that enables high performance and high-scale with modern silicon architecture, bringing the architect, a converged architecture for switching as well as routing. Cat9K, as we know, has been running on a UADP ASIC, which has been a programmable ASIC. It has served us really well so far on the Cat9K family. But with the silicon one, we are taking it to another level. Silicon one brings the capabilities of UADP ASIC and unlocks the Excel scale and high performance in the enterprise stages. This is a critical and foundational element to meet the core requirement for the next decade. Silicon one is a 12.8 terabits per second chip, supports up to 10 million routes, supports much deeper buffers, brings multi-slides, VOQ architectures. With this new architecture, the silicon one ASIC has paved the way to transition the Cat6K Excel deployments to Cat9K. So that's kind of the silicon one importance in the Cat9K family that we are bringing now. Yeah, and it brings differentiation. A lot of people sometimes don't appreciate that, but when you have the control like that, you can do things that you might not be able to do with off the shelf silicon. But I want to ask you, what about customers that previously purchased from you as you evolve the portfolio to 9KX? How do you protect their investment? Yeah, thank you for asking that question because when we started building the Cat9K, we always thought about investment protection for our customers. So if you buy today, how you will have a very long life for that product and you will be able to unlock new powers on that platform that you have purchased maybe five years back, right? That's exactly what we are doing with the Catless 9000X. Talking about modular, right? On the modular side, the supervisors that we are introducing now are backward compatible with the line cards that you already have. In some cases, the line card throughput is doubling and tripling because now you have a new machine that is going to power these line cards, right? So you don't have to change your line card. You just change your supervisor and you have much higher performance and scale with this new supervisor. Similarly, on the stackables, you can stack with the existing Catless 9300s, for example, and you will be able to, you don't have to rip and replace everything. It's not a forklift upgrade for our customers. You can continue benefiting from your existing Catless 9000 deployments and add to the power with the Catless 9000X components as well as new platforms that we are introducing. Nice, that's key. This just speaks to the software content that you guys, I know you have a lot of software engineers running around and this is welcome to the 2020s folks, new world. You know, Mohammed, zero trust was kind of a buzzword before the pandemic, but it's really become a mainstream topic today. We talked about the infrastructure. We know security has to be built in from the start. It can't be bolted on and zero trust is really top of mind for customers. How are there security requirements changing as a result of hybrid work and how do you make sure that as we shift to hybrid that these new security requirements are addressed? What are you doing there? Absolutely, and we know, as you said, security is top of mind for our customers. In fact, security has been highlighted as the number one reason why a lot of customers pick Cisco and Cat9K. We have a comprehensive zero trust architecture with software defined access where we started with segmentation and expanded into endpoint classification and visibility. Now we are taking that to the next level and we are introducing Dallas powered trust assessment for unmanaged endpoints to further make the workplace is stronger with zero trust and software defined access. Trust analytics, it detects traffic from endpoints that are exhibiting unusual behavior by pretending to be using a mag spoofing or probe spoofing or man the middle techniques. When trust analytics detects such anomalies, it signals endpoint analytics to lower the trust score. So we have a trust score system. When the trust score goes down, it shows up on the dashboard and the network admin can completely deny or limit the access to the network from these endpoints. From another security aspect that we are introducing and I touched on that briefly earlier is for non SDVAN internet only branches where we are, where services, security services might be in the cloud, right? That's a trend that we are seeing. To secure that connectivity from a lean branch to the cloud, we are introducing the IPsec capability with the Catalyst 9300X and that's built in as we just talked about. And as far as the automation is concerned for these use cases, they are, we are bringing those automation with our command center, the Cisco DNA center. And we are bringing the full lifecycle of automation as well as assurance for the secure connectivity that is being provided with the Cisco DNA center. Well, a couple of takeaways there for me. I mean, endpoint security has really become much more important up for obvious reasons when you have remote workers. The built in IPsec just that really emphasizes that you got to have it built in from the ground up. You can't just bolt it on and the automation is key. The number one problem that CISOs face is lack of talent. So automation definitely helps with that. So, okay, Mohammed, thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming on. In a moment, we'll look at private 5G and what's been happening at Mobile World Congress. You're watching the cubes coverage of the network, powering hybrid work made possible by Cisco. 5G and IoT will redefine businesses to fuel the ongoing digital revolution. Advanced analytics and automation will digitalize operational technology to work with information technology for massive productivity and efficiency gains across industries. This requires the power and precision that only 5G can offer. But not just any 5G network will do. Introducing Cisco Private 5G. As one of the world's most trusted 5G partners, Cisco has reduced technology risks, operational risks and financial risks that may have been holding you back. Cisco has deep knowledge of enterprise networks to offer you a simple, intuitive and trusted private 5G service. Simple to start, you'll be up and running in no time experiencing the power and speed of 5G revolutionizing the way you work. Intuitive to operate, simplified management reduces manual work right from the start. The latest features and upgrades are instantly delivered from the cloud so you'll always be up to date. It also integrates seamlessly with existing enterprise systems for a familiar experience and propagates actions consistently across domains to save time and limit human error. Trusted to work with unparalleled reliability for both indoor and outdoor environments, there's no time for downtime in your 5G future. For over 35 years, industries have trusted Cisco to help them transform and capture new opportunities. Between the power of 5G and revolutionary digitalization, there's a bridge, Cisco, the bridge to possible. Okay, we're back, digging into the infrastructure to make hybrid work possible. High performance, cost effective, scalable, and secure, that's what it's all about. So far, we've covered the rapid migration to Wi-Fi 6E technology and the role that switching is going to play. Now we're going to get into private 5G and to do that, let's welcome Masumir, who is vice president and general manager of mobile, cable, and the IoT business at Cisco. And Greg Dorei, who is the vice president of product management for the networking experiences group at Cisco. He's responsible for catalyst access, that whole portfolio, enterprise 5G, Cisco DNA spaces, Cisco ISC, a lot of stuff there, Greg. Gentlemen, welcome. Dave, thank you for having us. Yeah, our pleasure. Masumir, let's start with you on the topic of private 5G. What do we need to know about that? And more specifically, what's unique about Cisco's private 5G? So, most importantly, delivering private 5G in enterprise terms. That's super important to look at 5G. Many of our peer groups might have got it wrong. We're looking at private 5G with the lens of enterprise, what enterprise really needs. Is 5G going to come and displace a lot of existing technology? Or is it going to help augment the technology that enterprise has and accelerate the digitization journey? I wanted to start, Dave, with the basic premise of hybrid work. And what hybrid work really means, is it only for knowledge worker or is it for all workers? So we strongly believe hybrid work needs to empower all workers. It's not only connecting remote workers, but also bringing people, things, and space together. And we strongly believe the combination of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G for private network is going to accelerate that journey, bringing people, things, and space together in a very, very cohesive way. Why our offer is so unique? We are going to create a continuum. Enterprises don't have to make a hard choice. They will be using Wi-Fi technology and 5G technology hand-in-hand without creating a disruption on their policy and identity systems. They don't have to rethink, do I have to go and build a new backbone? It's a common backbone that will support both Wi-Fi as well as 5G. Most importantly, delivering this entire offer as a service with the ease of consumption, ease of operation, and a trusted environment that they can put their mission-critical workload on. I like it. So a couple of takeaways there. I mean, it's inclusive of all workers, not just knowledge workers, non-disruptive. Everybody loves to hear that. And of course, as a service model is key. But so let me stay with you. I mean, we can't wait for 5G, right? It's lightning fast. It's got super low latency, very high bandwidth. So that's what everybody's excited about. The question though is, as 5G gets introduced, you know, it's going to power things like IoT networks. Is that going to replace Wi-Fi in legacy wired broadband? Absolutely not. So we see Private 5G as an augmentation to the enterprise on top of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, as you heard in the previous conversation, Wi-Fi is bringing more capability with Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6G. And 5G is going to be yet another augmentation. Wi-Fi and 5G will coexist within enterprise for many years to come. I would like my friend, Greg, to talk a little bit about this continuum, Greg. Yeah, I think it's sort of like, I like to say it's an and, not an R, because there's enough use cases out there which require spectrum. And, you know, spectrum is a constraint. So you have Private 5G, your Wi-Fi 6 and both offer opportunities. So for example, in an indoor carpet setting where you're basically connecting your phone for basic browsing or connecting your laptop, Wi-Fi is sufficient. But if it's a process automation factory where you need seven nines of reliability, Private 5G is the better technology. Similarly, outdoor large areas, it's probably Private 5G, right? Like, because you can have easy handoff between public and private. So it's use case-driven. And once it's use case-driven, it's going to be an R because there's so many next-gen use cases that's AR, VR, drones, self-driving cars, you name it, right? And so I think these two technologies, 5G and Wi-Fi 6C is going to work hand in hand to deliver awesome outcomes for our customers. Yeah, and just the data volumes are going to be incredible. We always talk about the data volumes that you ain't seen nothing yet is what I always say. But the thing is every new tech that's introduced into the enterprise, you can almost be certain that it's going to bring adoption challenges. And not only that, it also is going to bring changes in the way you do things. And that brings new complexities from an operational standpoint. So my question is, how are you addressing this with the introduction of 5G? Dave, this is a fantastic question. And this is why we have spent, me and Greg have spent tremendous amount of time to create Continuum. I'll start with the foundation first, backbone. So we have been building this enterprise backbone supporting with wired connection as well as Wi-Fi connection. We wanted to make sure that as Private 5G comes within enterprise, we don't have to rethink and reimagine your backbone. It's the common backbone that will support both Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6D, as well as Private 5G. Your rest assured that it is the same backbone that we have heard in the previous section on the cap 90 that will also support a Private 5G access. The second aspect of Private 5G is as you build any new technology into enterprise, oftentimes we get into this trap. To get to an outcome, we move fast and we create a silo. And then that silo operation creates barriers to mainstream it. So upfront we have to think about not creating another silo and how we are doing it. Number one is a device that can connect into Wi-Fi network or a Private 5G network. You don't have to reimagine or rethink how I'm going to manage the identity. We'll create continuity of the common identity across the Wi-Fi access or 5G access in the same environment. The second aspect of that is, how are we going to retain all our staff? Our enterprise staff is well trained with Wi-Fi technology and wired technology. Now 5G comes with tremendous amount of value and benefit, but it also comes with inherent technology complexity, learning curve problem. This is where our simple to consume, simple to operate model of SaaS comes to play. That we're going to take all those complexity away. It is a cloud delivered service. So enterprise don't have to go through this massive learning curve adopting this technology. Last but not least, on how we are going to manage your capital. Any new technology and enterprise, oftentimes you need a huge amount of upfront investment to adopt the technology to get to the other side of getting the outcome. So again, our business model of SaaS will allow enterprise to adopt this new technology and pay as you grow model to meet with enterprise needs. Finally, I also wanted to pass to Greg to touch a little bit more on how we are thinking about this common identity across any access in the enterprise. Greg, to you. So we thought about it in two different ways. One is a lot of enterprises today use our identity and secure management platform. We call it ISIS CoIS platform. And so years and years of policy and identities, access servers, radio servers they use, et cetera, are plugged in already into our eyes, right? So if we can share that with this private 5G as a service infrastructure that Masoom's been building, we think we'll be able to create that bridge because we are not forcing enterprises to create new identities or new policies. So that's sort of step one to make it easier. We also thought through something where in the case of a public 5G network, for example, it's very convenient because you take your phone out of your pocket and it's connected to the network, right? Whereas for Wi-Fi, you have to log in to an SSID in your hotel or in your home, and in home it's automatic. But that's that login process that creates friction. And that's a problem because then you can't be seamless. So we initiated what we call as open roaming, right? Like that's a identity federation that we first created between identity owners, could be carriers, could be anything, right? Anyone who owns an identity and they will share with venues. And so if the sharing happens, then that onboarding can be automatic. And once onboarding is automatic, then it's easy to pass off between Wi-Fi and 5G. And so that's again another way in which you can lower the adoption barriers because you share across public, private 5G and Wi-Fi networks. So these are two concrete examples of how we thought about lowering the barriers of adoption as we enter into this heterogeneous world. Nice, I can't wait. Let's talk about how this thing scales in the go-to-market. What are the most likely or maybe preferred or obvious routes to market for private 5G from Cisco? So Dave, stay tuned, we're going to announce more about it. But I can also assure you that access to the spectrum is a challenge for many enterprises when it comes to cellular technology. In some countries there are more spectrum accessible by enterprise in many countries, that's not the case. So we have talked through very carefully that how do we bring this offer to the market partnering with managed service providers and mobile operators? Where in countries where you don't have direct access to the spectrum, our partnership with mobile operators that you will hear more about as you come to Mobile World Congress is going to allow our enterprise to consume this technology even if they don't have a spectrum. In places where the enterprise might have direct spectrum access, we'll also bring in our managed service providers to hide the complexity of the new technology. On top of our SaaS services or cloud delivery services, this is the augmentation with the partnership with managed service providers and mobile operators that will ease this journey for enterprises. Our most important primitive in this journey is to keep it simple for enterprise, make it intuitive and trusted from day one. Outstanding. Okay, Masum, Greg, thanks so much. It was great to have you guys on, I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. In a moment, I'll be back with some closing thoughts and an opportunity for you to actually see this technology in action and talk directly to the experts. Keep it right there. You wanna make hybrid work, work for you. Which means securely connecting everyone and everything. Everywhere. But that's just the beginning. Cisco continues to push the boundaries of technology. We're opening up new possibilities in the workplace and giving you more choices with Wi-Fi 6E, Private 5G, and network switching innovations. We're helping organizations in every industry deliver unparalleled experiences, supporting smarter, sustainable businesses and driving better outcomes. So you never need to compromise on security, agility or experience. And you have the freedom to connect seamlessly in the most important way, yours. Okay, we're back with some final thoughts. Today we heard how Wi-Fi 6E is ushering in the next generation of wireless. The technology cycle is actually compressing. It's going faster, which is great news for all of us, as the devices that we use and the networks that enable them to communicate are going to be able to more efficiently do their jobs, meaning our experience as users is going to improve quite dramatically. And we heard how new switching technologies from Cisco will not only improve performance, but also make us more secure, which is vital in a world where criminals and nation states alike continue to attack our critical infrastructure. Now as workers move from the office to work from home or remotely or wherever they are, and back to the office again in a hybrid mode, the threat surface expands and it's up to all of us, including technology companies like Cisco to continue to be vigilant and invest in securing our networks and data. And then finally, we heard about the role 5G and private 5G will play in this new world. You know, in our recent predictions post, we said 2022 would see a complete reset of how organizations think about remote work and it's happening. We expect only about a third of employees are going to be back at the office full time. Hybrid will be the new reality. That means there are going to be permanent changes in the way we support and secure workers globally. And really importantly, how we're going to increasingly rely on infrastructure that can evolve as our work modes change and deliver highly secure, scalable and can never go down infrastructure. Okay, now if you want to check out some of the solution demos and get your questions answered, you can join the Cisco customer and partner event on February 23rd at 10 a.m. Pacific. We'll put a URL in the show notes. In this event, you'll be able to join in a live Q&A with Cisco experts and get your questions answered directly and see all of this technology in action. Well, that does it for today. Thanks for watching The Network, powering hybrid work made possible by Cisco. And remember, all this content is going to be available on thecube.net and on Cisco.com. So please share that with friends. This is Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching The Cube, your leader in global enterprise tech coverage. We'll see you soon.