 Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live 2020. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain for Cisco Live 2020. I'm John Flurry, host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante. My co-host is Stu Miniman here all week in Barcelona, kicking off 2020 with the keynote analysis. Cisco just unveiled their, looks like their plan for the year and what looks like a future direction of Cisco. Again, we were here past two years covering Cisco Live. We'll be at the U.S. show this year as well. Dave and Stu, keynote analysis. Let's get into it right away. Obviously, you start to still see the messaging positioning unfolding in front of us. It's clearly not there yet. A lot of people had their check boxes, their rotation. David Geckler kicked it off. I mean, Wendy kicked it off. David Geckler, the key executive, really leading the charge here. But this is about Cisco setting the table. Let's get into it. What did you guys think? I thought it was a good keynote. I thought it was a little bit lacking in the storytelling. What was the thread? It was no common thread. I heard a lot of little clout. I heard a lot of Cisco. I heard a lot of speeds and feeds. Everyone kind of had their turn and all the top people were on there. What's your thoughts, Dave? Well, who was Cisco? It was my first thought. It's like, if you're a kid coming out of college, you hear that keynote, which I agree, it was a good keynote. But I still wouldn't be sure exactly what Cisco does. And so, I think that you're right. That messaging needs to be tightened up. There needs to be a thread. At the same time, we saw some innovation. They sort of doubled down on the December announcements and talked about that. I really liked the collaboration. I mean, that's been a sleepy market. Zoom changed that and woke everybody up. And so we saw some interesting features there. The stuff on AppD, they made a lot of claims, which I don't know if they're true or not. It seemed like VMware could do some of that stuff and New Relic and some of the others, Dynatrace. But Cisco was coming at it from a networking area of strength. And so I guess my bottom line is I still want to understand what that thread is. And they talked about multicloud. I really do think that Cisco is in the best position to connect those clouds to on-prem and hybrid. They've got the data from the network and they're in the best position to leverage that for value for their customers. And that kind of came through, but I think it's my inference, not their claim. Yeah, I was a little surprised, Dave, this third year we've done this show and usually there's the new tagline and they were reusing the bridge to possible. And I feel still that things are coming together for Cisco as you and John were saying. Some of the products moving together. Saw some chatter on Twitter and said, oh great, Interstate and AppD actually going to integrate and work well together. And that integration message was one that Cisco's highlighting. Cisco's always had a really broad ecosystem. They put up the video about like, if you know the internet and everything you've done, we've been there and we're going to drive that for the next generation. In the collaboration space, it's not the same Webex that you've known forever. Heck, we're going to have Microsoft with Teams and Webex trying to squint through that a little bit and say, okay, well Cisco's got a bunch of devices. Is that all it is? Is being saying great, I've got Cisco devices and therefore, if I'm a Teams customer from Microsoft, I can plug into that. It seems like there's a lot of internet working pieces underneath the covers there because Microsoft's driving hard in that space. Zoom as you said, Dave, for the quick, easy experience, that team came out of Cisco. So a lot of things moving in the collaboration space, but in the hardcore data center space, workload optimizer was something that they were focused on. Talked about the new router with Jonathan Davidson, who we'll have on theCUBE tomorrow, talking about that space. So Cisco's got a very broad portfolio and, John, I think you nailed it. I did not come out of it a consistent who Cisco is, the message for how we're going to partner in the future. Well, Dave brings up a good point. College kid looks at this as a good way to kind of zoom out of the technical world. But remember, David Gekler is a technical person. He ran engineering. He's using his big marketing word as multi-domain. I mean, come on, multi-domain is not a marketing word. It's just, it's a technical feature. But this is a technical show and a lot of their audience here at the show are techies. And so it's clear to me that Cisco's brick by brick, building the classification, the cloudification of Cisco. And this is something I think they're not yet ready to pull the switch on, Dave, as to use the sailing analogy as they tack into the marketplace. They got to do a full turn on the boat. I think this is just the progression. I think it's natural to see Cisco spending millions of billions of dollars, as we've heard, cloudifying and creating this subscription business model. The other notable things is you're starting to see some tell signs from the keynote on a few little things. And I picked up out of this that shows that they're kind of going in the right direction. Still a lot more work to do and the story needs to be up leveled a bit. I totally agree rather than just speeds and fees. It's the classic enterprise. But Wendy hit it clearly. Business model is the new killer app. And I think all the things that we've discussed over the past 10 years to past five and particularly with cloud native is the business outcomes is what the apps are focused on. And so they're headlining the event with app application dynamics, which makes sense, but it's not clear enough that the business model is the key to everything. And if you're going to connect businesses, what Cisco does, I mean, what is Cisco, Dave? They connect businesses. That's been their mission from day one. They got to take that message, bring it up to the applications or driving business model changes and results. And I think that's the thread they're trying to get through and they're trying to thread the needle there. They're just not ready. See from an umbrella messaging standpoint, I think that would have been a lot more effective. But some of the things that I liked in the keynote, you know, Wendy Mars did talk about the importance of privacy, how Europe is leading in diversity. So that is really important. And they also talked about how last decade was all about enabling apps. And this decade is going to be all about enabling apps. And to your point about enabling business, John, they talked a lot about bringing IT and OT together. Liz Santoni really made a big point of that. When we walked into the DevNet zone, there was all these network engineers looking at an IoT presentation. These are IT guys trying to learn about the edge and OT. And so I think that's a really important message to the collaboration front. You know, some neat features. I just wanted to mention my understanding is that Microsoft Teams is all about taking it's the old Skype business, which is like falling off a cliff because everybody hates Skype and migrating at the team so they can compete more effectively with WebEx and the rest of them. So again, a lot of different parts of Cisco, but I think there was some definite innovation there. And then when they talked about their December announcements, the optics, the Silicon One and the software bringing that together, you know, that is going to power service providers over the next, you know, five, 10 years. Well Stu, I want to get your thoughts here because one of the things that we were just kind of observing and Dave kind of hit it with Teams is that they're kind of groping a little bit on areas. Everyone's going to get their time on stage. I get that. But you know, the comment I made yesterday in our pregame day zero analysis was that there needs to be a Tesla of this industry and to completely change the game. So I think Cisco, if they take the position of we're connecting businesses and looking for business model changes, we've got to look for the engine of the car or the application of the company and then what it is. So Cisco as a company is the car. The engine is where the geekiness is. So if you look at Cisco, all they do is talk about the engine and the features of the pistons and all the technical speeds and feeds. That's great, but at the end of the day, it's a new environment on the business front. And I think they got to get that kind of conversion and bring that together because of course they're going to have to check the boxes on. Look, we got a new engine. We got new cloud, cloudification. This is where it's at, but it's the destination that you're driving to which is business model outcome. So, you know, under the hood, are they there yet? So it seems to be, they're still trying to get the engine fixed and then they can roll out the car. Right, one of the things when we always look at all of these keynotes, are they effectively letting customers tell their story and does that resonate with what they're talking about? For the piece I saw, I only saw two customers. There was a video with Michael Bay, great special effects. And I actually, I thought it kind of resonated because it's like, okay, I've got 10 locations. I'm shooting around the world and there's terabits of information. He's like, I don't even know what a terabit is. Sounds like a dinosaur. And of course all the network geeks are like, ha ha. You do cool exploding stuff, but you don't know what a terabit is. And then they had Airbus. And Dave, you talked about, Liz Santoni got up on stage and she said, look, IT and OT, they don't play well together. And that's, when we've done research, looking at the challenge of really delivering on IoT, it is that schism between IT and OT. And I would have loved to hear a little bit more because she said, oh, well, our tools just enable OT to work on anything and it's not that easy just to throw those two worlds together or give them a single tool. The key there is security. I mean, we're talking about securing critical infrastructure. And really that's a whole new opportunity in realm. I mean, it kind of came through, but that's the linchpin, is really securing that critical infrastructure, whether it's power plants and roads and all kinds of logistics and banks. There's a lot going on, Dave. I mean, this is the whole point about Cisco's challenge is one, from a story standpoint, it's complex. From a technology integration standpoint, it's complex because you got application awareness, which is going down at the network end to end. They showed a lot of that. And I thought that was the key highlight that didn't actually come through, but they did present it. They got the cloudification story and then they got network automation, all those things, as well as 5G around the corner, Silicon One, there's a lot coming together. They nailed that. I mean, no doubt. There's a lot coming together. And I think the key is, is that Scott Harrell nailed it. And I think where Gekler and the team are right on the money on, in terms of the engine, is intent-based networking, multi-domain, essentially to me means multi-cloud and hybrid. Nailed that, and you can get those kinds of innovations. And I think Scott Harrell said it. Simplification is key. Security, inclusive of the cloud, that one word he used, he said, we're talking about something that's now inclusive of cloud. He didn't really slam cloud. He said, it's a fancy place. It's a nirvana, but don't forget the intent of having the on-premise, basically. So I thought that was a nice thread, the three layers of insight, security, business, and IT. But to me, it's simple. I think Cisco needs to think differently around how they position themselves, because if they're going to throw WebEx out there and they're going to throw out all these analytics and data, they're a data company. They're a data-first company, and they have to be a video-first company, if it's 5G, and they got to be a virtual-first company, because the new future workplace is about having those kinds of workloads, running those kinds of apps that, you know, feed the modern enterprise. And to me, my premise is, if you can't automate it, it's not a feature for the modern enterprise. Has to, automation will be critical of everything, and you can't have bloated software running a virtual-first environment. Well, but to your point, Cisco's advantage is that the data's running through the network, so they have visibility on that data. So they are in a very good position to leverage that data for automation and to connect businesses through networks. I mean, data, video, and killer feature for them. I mean, they really are the only company right now in the business that can do that. Yeah, actually, I like the analogy they said, you should think of the network as a sensor. This is what's going to be able to drive your insights and outcomes. It's not just the plumbing anymore, but, you know, that's one of the earliest areas where we drove analytics and data out of everything that's going on and sets them up for that machine learning and AI world that people are driving to extract data. And to your point on cloud, I mean, look at, they know that, and they sort of even referenced it, the cloud is slowly eating away at their opportunity because IT practitioners will tell you, what, the more we do in the cloud, the less we're going to have to spend on our own network gear. Yeah, but here's the thing that's coming out during the SD-WAN section, I was making some comments on the YouTube channel. SD-WAN is really, to me, a bellwether of how this goes because latency matters. If you're in the Cisco ecosystem, it's latency, latency, latency. And if the WAN is the new LAN, which is my premise, then the interactions and the security between the routes becomes critical, right? So you have to have that kind of insight. So when you look at something like WebEx, for instance, on the collaboration side, is that product truly defined for that environment? And I think you mentioned Zoom earlier and it's kind of waking everyone up is they built a product around latency and around the environment around the WAN, not the LAN. So WebEx and desktop is not the state of the art anymore. So unless you've got an Nvidia graphics card designed into it and a gaming rig, it's got to be mobile and it's got to be over a WAN link for virtual. And I think if the software is too bloated, it's not going to work. And I think that's going to be an area that Cisco's got to look at and say, does these products fit this new use case? Okay, so let's see, three days of coverage, right? We did day zero, it was actually four days of coverage for us. We got a lot of good guests coming on, a lot of Cisco execs. What are you guys looking for? Let's go look at the week we had a lot of guests coming on, Dave's too. What are you guys looking for in terms of analysis? What are you looking to tease out of the show? Well, like any of these shows, I'm really trying to look at the substance, trying to understand the announcements that they're making, how real they are and how they map into the customer's view of what it is that they need. I'd say the collaboration thing is interesting to me. I was really concerned about Cisco. I thought they were just sort of sitting on their laurels. I think their WebEx install base is going to really look hard at these features if they're, in fact, they're available. I want to understand from practitioners and particularly service providers, what they think of all this new stuff that's coming out because it's expensive, right? That's a big, big CapEx investment for these guys. Then I want to understand in the core Cisco business, their data center business, their networks, their hyper-converged, where they stand competitively. And then the last thing is the partner ecosystem. We've talked about how they have to walk a fine line between servicing guys like IBM and NetApp and then also competing with their former great partner in EMC, now Dell EMC, and how they're going to go forward in the next 10 years. Yeah, you touched on the partner ecosystem with service providers. Edge is the next big opportunity for Cisco and how will they leverage what they're doing to support all of those partners going forward. Big thing I'm looking for this week, as well as, yeah, as you said, Dave, the maturation of a lot of the pieces that they add. Where's the substance behind the announcements that they've made? How much of them are table stakes that we see some of the other environments? Collaboration space, John, as you said. Oh, here's these things on the desktop. I can do all these things on my phone with Zoom. So I'm trying to understand what is differentiated. Awesome. For me, I'm looking for, obviously we're in the DevNet zone, the cube. I'm looking for the developer equations too. That came up clear. Kind of last with Suzy Wee, but she kind of put a new world of developers. That's going to change the whole CC certification area and the ecosystem. And for the developers, it's ACI, IoT, DNA Center, InterSight and Umbrella. Outside of that, I'm going to be looking for how Cisco's looking at cloudification of networking. Network as a service. WAN to cloud versus internal. SD WAN, simplification of the edge. Security and networking common policy to name a few. No talk of Wi-Fi. I mean, Wi-Fi is the preferred connectivity point inside the enterprise. And how does that relate to the whole edge thing? Application awareness. I'm really jazzed up by AppD. And I think where they're going with that is really going to be the front end of that network policy and that application awareness is critical. And finally, network automation from CI-CD pipelining to analytics and how that relates to fixed wireless with the 5G, which is going to be IoT and the subscription-based model. So to me, that's the big picture. I want to dig into those areas. The two other things, if I may. One is this gestalt of, am I going to buy best of breed or am I going to buy from a one-throat to choke? And I think Cisco is obviously trying to be the latter. And I think the last is for me, security, security, security, and how is Cisco going to help practitioners implement the best security possible? Yeah, and John mentioned in the DevNet zone, it is that modernization of the workforce. One of the last things in the keynote, they want to celebrate the first 500 certified DevNet engineers out there. So what CCIEs have been doing for many decades, many of them in the future are going to be part of that DevNet with security being one of the key areas that they'll focus on. Yeah, and of course, we're going to get the top story but so far out of the keynote, to me the top story so far is that Cisco is not going to yield to the big cloud guys. They are brick by brick moving the needle on their rebooting of their products to be cloud enabled for hybrid and then ultimately in multi-cloud. And I still think the big switch is coming. They haven't pulled that lever. They haven't yet made that big move. I think there's a lot more to come. So we're going to be digging in. So guys, thanks for the analysis. Keynote analysis here, day one of Cisco Live in Barcelona, kicking off and setting the agenda for 2020. This is theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman and Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with more live coverage after this short break.