 Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE! Covering Cisco Live 2020. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back, you're watching theCUBE, helping to extract the signal from the noise here at Cisco Live 2020 in Barcelona. I am Stu Minim. My co-host for this segment is Dave Vellante. John Furrier is also in the house. One of the things when we look at Cisco, it has a strong strength in helping users really with their careers. And of course, education is a key piece of that. Help really dig into that ever-changing topic. Talk about future of work as a great hashtag. I love following on LinkedIn and Twitter. Everybody's always interested in it because it affects so many people. Mike Adams, welcome back to theCUBE. Vice President and General Manager at Learning at Cisco. Thanks so much Mike. Thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. Good to see you guys again. All right, so we're here in the DevNet zone. We've been watching some of the moves Cisco's been making. Heard about the new DevNet certifications. Of course, leading up to and at the show. I see lots of friends talking about the prep they're doing, the courses they're taking, and all excited if they pass a certification, everything. So bring us into kind of what's new at your world and we'll go from there. So the last time we spoke in San Diego, we had just announced Cisco's new certification program. The most exciting and fundamental changes we've made to the certification program in over a decade. That was the promise that we made to the industry. In 26 short days, we fulfill that promise with the launch of the new certification program. Then that includes the first software certification track for Cisco, the DevNet certifications. But there's some other big changes that have been incorporated into the new program as well. We have continuing education credits, which we spent a little bit of time talking about last time, to allow people to maintain their certifications at every level. There's a lot of evidence that there's more value in learning new things to maintain that certification than just retaking an old test again. We also have a customer success manager certification that I would love to chat with you guys about as well because there's two big fundamental changes taking place in the industry today. One of them is very technology oriented, the coming together of network and software to unleash the capability of the network. But there's a fundamental business change that's taken place as well, a business model change. And that's where Cisco has pivoted our historic services organization toward a customer success, customer experience oriented model. And we're now certifying folks to be customer success managers in the industry as well. So a lot happening around certifications. I said in my breaking analysis leading up to this show that the ascendancy of Cisco, you could kind of track a lot of things, but there were three levers that I called out. One was the bet on IP. The other was the mergers and acquisition strategy which we had panned out. And the third was training, you know, this force of advocates, which became just a secret weapon for Cisco. We're now seeing sort of the next wave of that, aren't we? As the industry changes, you guys are on top of that. I wonder if you could talk about the force of that body of work that you guys have helped create as advocates and really changing the way in which people are applying technology and beyond technology. Yeah, so you're right. So for over 26 years, individual engineers and technologists have bet their career on Cisco. And they have actualized that through certifications. Those certifications and the rigor and the power of those have allowed them to demonstrate their capability to get that next job, to compete and earn more for their family, to do things that they never would have thought they would have been able to do otherwise, regardless of who their employer is. So one of the things just most gratifying about the role that I'm in and the work that we do is we touch individual lives. You were talking a moment ago about hearing individual people being excited about the exam they passed. That's not a B2B conversation. That's a person-to-person conversation, right? So that opportunity to influence that historically has been powerful. And with this new certification program that we're rolling out and a lot of the other changes that are happening, we're telling folks you can now bet your next 26 years on Cisco. Bet your career on us and we're going to make sure that it's equally as valuable with a new skill, software in particular that are coming back. And it's not, the other thing to point out is you talk to the folks who have gone through the certification, like CCIE, obviously, like a gold standard. It's not trivial, it's really challenging. It's like going back to college, right? Rinding. Yeah, we work hard to make it rigorous. The value of that certification is because we maintain the integrity of that program. And that's exactly what we're going to continue to do. So using that structure and integrity and rigor that we've built over the last 26 years and now injecting new capabilities and skill into that model is really what the focus is. Yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit more, Mikey. We're talking about changes and some different options people have to make sure that they're not just on the treadmill of repeating the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Have to start with DevNet, have to start with software skills. We're hearing from our customers every single day, fundamental networking capability and skills still critically important, but the thing they're hungry for right now is being able to add software and programming skills on top of that. And so our response to that obviously is not only with what we do in DevNet here, training people every day right here behind us, but now allowing them to be able to demonstrate those skills that they have earned through a certification. So now they can take that to their employer and say, I've actually got it, I can show you, I can prove it, you don't have to see me do it. So that's one of the fundamental changes that's happening right now in the industry and why it's so important to our customers and partners. So what's the data show? Where are you seeing it? What's hot? What do you see in the demand? I mean, it's IoT and Python. I mean, lines out the standing room only back here, but what are you seeing in the data? And what are you advising folks to sort of lean into? Sure, sure, yeah, and I'm glad you asked that. A couple of things, and I'll sort of back up just a little bit if I can. Even on the network engineering track, if you will, we have begun to inject and embed more programming fundamentals, more software fundamentals. So one way to think about it is kind of 2080. So in the network engineering track, there's still 20% of sort of software skills that we have built into each level and 80% of that traditional sort of network engineering capability you have to demonstrate on the software side, on the DevNet side, it's the flip, right? So it's 80% software, but there's 20% of networking engineering capability. What that does is allow all these folks to have a common language that they speak. This is about building an IT team of the future. It's not about having one individual that knows everything. It's about being able to assemble teams that know how to solve these problems together. So all those skills that you mentioned are really critical as they can unlock the potential of Cisco's new programmable platforms. Well, the other thing to do is it's self-funding, so it's good business, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Mike, I'm curious, when you were building these software certifications, what did you learn from existing certifications out there? I think, you know, Microsoft of course, you know, very positioned in this space. The cloud providers have certifications, so what did you learn in building this? And also, a lot of your customers, if they're developers, they're playing in multiple environments. It's not, you know, CCIE, I know what gear I'm working on of a developer. There's many environments I will play in, so how do you frame what you're learning and how it fits in the broader ecosystem? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we do keep an eye on the industry, of course, and what other technology companies are doing around certifications. So we went to school on that a bit. You know, the Cisco certifications have been the gold standard, I think you mentioned a moment ago for a long time. We have seen sort of the increasing relevance of other technology certifications, and that was part of why we recognized that we needed to work a little harder to get back out in front, to maintain that gold standard, to continue to be the flagship in the industry. So we recognize that particularly on the software side, there is a broader set of skills that need to be integrated into the certification, but always with a focus on how to leverage those skills to unlock the potential of Cisco's platforms that we're building APIs on top of. How about the security piece? Does that fit into the curriculum at this point? Yeah, security's pretty hot, huh? Yeah, security's pretty hot. But it's complicated, and it opens up a whole can of words in a way. It sure does. So security is still a very heavy focus of the new certification program. And I'll use this as an example to tell you about another fundamental change that we've made around the certification program. Historically, Cisco's certifications have been more technology oriented, if you will, right? We have evolved the program to be more job role focused. So I'll give you an example. So let's say you wanted to prove that you had the capability to be a DevSecOps engineer. Back to the security question that you had. You would get a CCNP in security. So you would get your core exam in security. You would add to that concentrations in DevNetWebEx and DevNetSecOps, DevOps. And then the combination of those concentrations and specialists allow you to say, I have the requisite skills to be an effective DevSecOps engineer. So rather than having to show that through job history, I can now show that through a mix of concentrations in the certification. Right, outstanding. Great. So I know we're going to be talking to Suzy and she'll be talking about the DevNet 500. But I'm curious, when you look at the partners and some of your big customers, how fast do you expect this to roll out? What should we be expecting to see? Anything particular you have for the Cisco channel is lots of certified people in their ranks. So how are you helping to bring your customers and partners along? Sure, so two things I would say. Number one, we have seen a real spike in certification testing over the last six months. That tells us that there's a lot of value in what we're doing. It also tells me there's a lot of people that we're studying for exams that want to get that in before the exam changes. And we have seen a lot of early signups for the exams that are going to be released on February 24th. Again, 26 days away, we're close. And so when Suzy announced the DevNet 500, I'm telling you, the buzz around here is crazy. So anybody who's watching right now, I would tell them if they want to get that DevNet 500, you better go sign up for that exam right now. Right, go get your name on the list today. And anecdotally, I would say that's consistent with what we're seeing. We're seeing a high demand for the new certifications in general and DevNet specifically. Partners are particularly interested because it's a way for them to differentiate their capabilities and what they do from some of their competitors. There's a DevNet specialist that a partner organization can earn by having a certain number of DevNet certified folks inside the organization. That drives a lot of demand as well. You know, we've noticed a little uptick. Not quite a big uptick in young people, kids in college watching our programs. So what do you tell those guys if they're interested in becoming an IT practitioner? Where do they get started? Sure, I would tell them a couple of things. Number one, I would tell them, bet your career on Cisco, right? Folks that are maybe not early in career like myself did the same thing 25 years ago and it's paid off for us. And Cisco is committed not only to continuing to stay in the front of technology but making sure we're taking care of the needs of individual engineers and developers out there who want to bet their careers on this. So hopefully the certification program we're launching is evidence of that, that we're going to continue to invest in them for the next decades to come. I would tell them if they're interested in being a network engineer, it's a great time to do that. If they're interested in being a developer and understanding how to build and program and create applications on top of Cisco's massively dominant infrastructure around the globe is a great opportunity to do that as well and certifications are a great place. Mike, I'm curious when we look at the general cadence of release of hardware versus software. Software tends to move a little faster. So I'm curious what things your team has in place. Is it a quarterly release cycle on the software side or how do you start to look at that? It's a really insightful question you ask, right? Because the need to maintain current skills particularly around new releases of software is very different than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. So I would say a couple of things, right? When we talk about how we enable and train and educate, often there are different ways we can, there are other ways that we meet that need in addition to certifications, right? Certifications almost by definition move a bit more slowly. We want to maintain that rigor, right? We always want to maintain the integrity of the program. So the training and education that we have available to folks via the DevNet and via the information that you can find on Cisco's website via the extensive network of our learning partners that we have, we are working to rapidly change that as new software releases come out. And we will be looking to accelerate that pace of certifications. But just to be fair, certifications are always going to lag just a little bit behind that because we need to maintain that rigor. All right, well, Mike, when we meet again at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, we expect you to bring along some of those newly minted certified people in the environment. Thanks so much. We're really excited about that. Thank you for the time. You're welcome, congratulations. For Dave Vellante, I'm Stu Miniman, back with much more coverage here from Cisco Live 2020 in Barcelona. Thanks for watching theCUBE.