 Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Day three of our coverage of Cisco Live. We're in the DevNet Zone, we've been here all week. Dave, this DevNet Zone is the place to be at Cisco Live. Well, first of all, it's so packed downstairs. Not that it's not packed here, but there's a little space you can walk around in. Number one and number two, it's where all the action is from the learning standpoint and education and people are just eating it up. They are eating it up. So speaking of learning, we are pleased to welcome Mike Adams, the VP and GM of Learning at Cisco. Mike, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here. So we've talked to Susie a number of times. She's actually coming on to guest host with me in an hour or so and looking at the DevNet evolution in the last five years, 600,000 members in this community, which is mind boggling how this says, I teased her that I was like a field of dreams, but. Which also was 30 years ago. Yes, that's kind of scary, isn't it? But also so is Bill and Ted's excellent adventure and I think those are two really good ways of looking at DevNet. But if we look at some of the things that you guys have announced with respect to bringing software skills and software practices to network engineers, it's a big signal in Cisco's evolution. Talk to us about some of the things that you guys have announced from the certification perspective and why that's a signal of changing wins. Yeah, absolutely. So it's been exciting. Susie and I have been working together very closely for the last year in preparation for this. So I'm not sure if I'm Bill or Ted in the combo, but. Either one's pretty good. That's right. You're the one who charges the excellent adventure. That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, so there's some really fundamental significant changes to the program. The most exciting of course is the launch of our DevNet branded software certification. It's one of a kind in the industry. There is no other company who has the mix of network engineering certifications and software certifications like Cisco does. Certainly not at the scale that we do. We've trained, we've certified over 1.7 million people since the program has launched over 25 years ago. And so you imagine the power of bringing together the community of developers with this community of network engineers that we've created. The sky's the limit. It's going to be amazing. So that's the biggest announcement is that launch of the software certification, DevNet certification. We've made some other pretty important changes too. And all of these were based on the feedback that we got from customers and partners. One is you can now use continuing education credits to maintain your certification at any level. So rather than having to go back and retake the test every three years, now you can branch out and learn new things like software as a continuing education credit to maintain that certification you have. We've also added flexibility into the program. In the past, you had to start at associate level and then go to professional and then go to expert. Today, if you feel like you're ready for professional, we invite you to start right there. If you feel like you're ready for that very rigorous CCIE lab exam, bring it on. Well, welcome you into it. But we feel like that's going to give learners more of a choice in terms of how they process their learning and training and which certifications they want to pursue. I could go on. I could go on. Let's keep going. You can essentially cut the line if you've had some field experience and you just naturally have an affinity toward this. That's right. So if you have developed depth of expertise and skill and experience but you hadn't started the certification program, why would I make you go back and take an entry level engineer exam just to work your way into the direction you wanted to go? Rather, we welcome you to come in and start where you feel like you're ready. Can you explain more, Mike, the continuous certification credit? Because if I infer correctly, it used to be every three years you got to re-up kind of like an EMT has to get re-certified. Right. That's not required anymore. You can traverse across the portfolio. So I'll answer it very specifically. In today's program, the highest level, the CCIE, the expert level, that level can use continuing education credits to re-certify, to maintain their certification, right? We've extended that same principle to all the others. So today, if you had a CCNA and you wanted to maintain that CCNA, you would have to go retake that exam again. We think it's a lot more valuable and it's interesting you would mention EMTs. There are lots of other verticals and professions. There's a lot of data and science behind this that will say that there's more value in terms of extending and maintaining your skills by doing continuing education rather than studying for a test. Absolutely, couldn't agree more. So it's kind of like you're allowing the folks to have more control over their education. Choose your own adventure kind of thing. That's right. But also one of the things that sort of strikes me about what Cisco has done in this big pivot towards softwares becoming developer friendly. What's for a large organization with the history and the girth that Cisco has is not easy to do. So from a competitive advantage perspective, how are you, what are you hearing from customers in terms of are you seeing the dial up on Cisco's competitive edge? Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So we took counsel from Jerry, our head of sales. And she believes very strongly that the DevNet certification in combination with our network certification program gives us a real selling edge. Because it demonstrates the commitment we have to solving real world problems for our customers. And we know our customers are anxious to take advantage of what software on top of the network creates for them. To take advantage of those APIs, to build applications and programs that let them maximize the use of the technology as they compete in their own marketplaces. So yeah, we're absolutely hearing very positive things about how this differentiates Cisco. And I'll just add one more point. Even though it kind of looks like there's two tracks, there's a network engineering track and a software track, that's really not the case. It's one certification program as an example. At the professional level, to earn that CCNP, you have to take a core exam and then you take a concentration exam in the same technology vertical. Data center, enterprise, collaboration, security, service, private or DevNet. Interestingly, in each of the first five that I mentioned, you'll take the core exam and then the concentration can be a DevNet concentration. So we're inviting people to begin to add that software skills into the traditional network certification track that they've had. So I've seen, I wonder if you could help us understand the philosophy of the programs. I've seen some education programs. It's like a Chinese menu and it's deep and wide. And I think my sense is a lot of companies, or some companies, not a lot, have said, okay, we're really not relevant in the cloud market. So let's do some cloud certifications and we'll sort of stamp an imprimatur there. It seems like Cisco's strategy is to be very focused. Is that fair? And then maybe you could ask a couple of questions. It is absolutely fair. We've been very thoughtful about how we have structured the program and what content we have put into it. We've been very mindful to focus on need to know information in the core exams and then allowing the learner to choose concentrations for the nice to know, the things they want to round themselves out with. But around relevancy, we built the program with job role specific skills in mind. So as an example, we've been talking about it this week, DevSecOps engineers, an example. It would maybe get their CCNP in enterprise, Route Switch, and then they could add onto that various DevNet concentration exams to earn them specialist that would mix that, whether it be WebEx or IoT, and then those combination of skills speak to a very specific job role this DevSecOps engineer as an example. So there are other ways you can mix and match the components to create demonstrable capability around skills for a job. And I imagine as time goes on with these new certifications that you guys are going to be analyzing the different pathways that each person is taking to understand, maybe looking at some consistencies and maybe even offering some recommendation recommended pathways. That's exactly right because as those job roles evolve in the industry, we're constantly evaluating what skills are needed for those, making sure that we're bringing those to the market. And I just can't say enough about how important this DevNet certification is. Being able to have developers demonstrate their capabilities and skills through a certification is really powerful. And what's the strategy with regard to, say, partnering with universities and are you doing things along those lines? I'm so glad you brought that up. So there's another leader that Susie and I have been working with, Laura Quintana. She runs Networking Academy. Networking Academy reaches out to higher education, also to high schools. They also create networking academies and underserved areas around the globe. Laura and our team have been at this for a while. They have trained over 9.2 million people and have a goal to graduate another 2 million within the next year. So the reason I mention that is that's the arm of Cisco that reaches into higher education and invites people in underserved areas into our industry by giving them those fundamentals. The primary certification that they graduate with is the CCNA, is that entry-level engineer and now entry-level software DevNet associate. Those are the graduation that they'll focus on out of Networking Academy. So yeah, we do a lot of that. And how about the technology of learning? I mean, when you started this ever, almost three decades ago, there were MOOCs weren't around. This is a massive scale of learning. How has the technology of learning evolved? Massively, right? I mean, think about how you like to learn new things, right? Much of it is going to the web or finding some digital format and then doing it at your own pace. That's the other important thing here as well. So yeah, we are massively transforming the way we're meeting our customers through digitized products. It's very important. And you know, one of the other big announcements this week was the move from Cisco services to customer experience. You may have heard Maria Martinez on stage day two. And if you noticed, there were four main pillars to the CX strategy. One of them was learning, active learning. And so we know that by embedding learning and education into the digital products that we have and getting it to our customers just in time and ideally by looking at telemetry coming back from how they're using our products, maybe I can predict what training you need before you even know you need it. That's where we're going. Absolutely, ah, very awesome. Last question for you, Mike. Cisco is a massive partner ecosystem. We've been talking with a lot of them this week and at many events. What's to them, to your partners, what does the certification and this massive change signal to them in terms of Cisco's evolution? Well, I think it absolutely signals where the company is going. Our commitment to software, our commitment to continue to evolve and stay on the forefront of technology, giving them what they need to go serve their customers and make money in the meantime. Our partner ecosystem is so critical to this company. And so the software certification as an example is going to allow them to demonstrate to their customers in a very quantifiable way how many DevNet certified engineers they have. Some of these partners have over 1,000 DevNet members already, but wouldn't it be great if they can show that via certifications? So it's a real differentiator for them. And then I'll mention one other thing. We have a group of very strong learning partners that we work with that extend our capability globally that are able to take the content that we create and then form that to meet the needs of very specific customers. So there's another aspect of partners that are critical to this transformation. And so you talk about partners then to your customers, to the engineers. You know, when I was at IDG, one of the most frequently read articles was the annual computer world salary survey, right? I don't know. No, that's not all about money, we know that. But you know what? If everybody's going to publish salaries, I'm going to look and see, all right, where do I stand? So that's part of it, right? Getting more certifications, you're going to be worth more in the market. It is, we've got some really good data that says what an investment in a professional or an expert level certification should do for your W-2 at the end of the year. And we're very mindful of that, right? DevNet, bring in the street cred. It was great to have you in the program. I can only imagine how dynamic you and Susie are together. We had a lot of fun. I got to say that next time, but congrats on all the success. It's been, it's palpable. Thanks. Cool stuff. For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Cisco Live San Diego. Thanks for watching.