 It's theCUBE. Covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE Conversation. Here in Palo Alto Studios, I'm John Furrier. With theCUBE, we have a special guest here, Susie Wee, who's the vice president and CTO of DevNet at Cisco Systems. For theCUBE Conversation around what's happening in cloud and really some of the most important trends that are generating out of a new event that she's starting called DevNet Creative. Of course theCUBE will be there. Susie, welcome to this CUBE Conversation. Hi John, thanks, it's great to be here. So you are a pioneer within Cisco, obviously, you know, superstar, technologist, CTO. You helped really put the Cisco DevNet developer program together, which has been a huge success. Congratulations. Thank you. And that's been, you know, Cisco has a big community of geeks. They're super smart, they like to surf the web and learn and develop new stuff on Cisco, but there's also a whole nother world. And you created an event called DevNet Create as a new initiative, a new pioneering effort. Why did you, why a new event? What's the big news here? Yeah, so it's really interesting. I think that what's going on is in the world of kind of the infrastructure, right? So the infrastructure has our networking, our compute, our storage, and all of that is changing and that it's becoming programmable. And so once it's programmable, you're like, what? My infrastructure has APIs. Once it has APIs, you can do things like DevOps, right? You can start to do things like really have good flexibility with how you deploy your applications. You can get much more rapid deployment of apps and you can get just fundamentally different and improved applications. So the big thing that's going on is that there's this huge industry transformation in front of us and the transformation is in how applications meet infrastructure. And this has happened as applications go to the cloud, then how applications meet the cloud, apps are changing, right? Then as the infrastructure becomes programmable, there's APIs into it. So there's this really kind of fresh ground that's ahead of us and we can make the most of this and that's what DevNet Create is all about. You know, people always ask me, this is our eighth year doing theCUBE. John, you and Dave do such a good job with theCUBE. You always pick the events that are going to be good. We did Hadoop Summit, we were first on Hadoop World, I mean, with Cloudera, nobody here have heard of Cloudera. We can sniff the trends out. And to me, I think you're onto something really big here and this is why I'm excited to bring theCUBE to your event. I know it's small, it's inaugural, it's very community oriented. But I think you guys are on a fault line of a massive shift. And I think you're on the right side of this and I think the app dynamics acquisition that Cisco did points to some of the things that are going to give Cisco, I think, a big lift. And that is by looking at the plumbing as being automated, certainly relevant, that's not going away. But as you move up the stack, there's going to be the need for rapid, rapid application deployment. Meaning conceive, build, ship in minutes. It could be automated with Boston AI and whatnot. So this is the trend. Talk about that dynamic because that requires a fundamental rethinking and reimagining of the cloud, security, how packets move. Absolutely. Do you agree with that? And I'll see you run in the event so you probably have some bias there. But more importantly, this big trend. Yeah, absolutely. So kind of the applications themselves, we take apps for granted these days and we've had applications forever, right? So, but the applications are how people interact with the system, with the cloud, with all the services that they use every day. So we know that everyone's lives have been transformed with apps. And then we also know that the cloud has been huge. So, workloads are moving to the cloud. The cloud has instant deployment, global resources. Again, big stuff there as well. But that's going to shift again, right? So what happens is now that the cloud is as awesome as it is, now that applications are great as they are, we're going to go to this next generation where the applications get even better, the cloud gets even better the way they meet and therefore the services that people use get better. And let's have some examples of what could be better. Well, now that you have things like app dynamics, you can start to get information from your applications and the infrastructure that give you business insights. So let's say that you have your application running and then you know how many times different APIs have been called. You know what parts of your systems or your applications are called the most. You know who's using them. You know how often they're being used, by whom and so on. What order are they being used? All of this can start to give you business insights. So then you say, oh, the infrastructure is not just about delivering compute network and storage. It's also about giving me insights into how people are using my stuff so I can get business insights all of a sudden and then it's a whole new world. So talk about how you got here because, and your journey with Cisco and creating the DevNet and now DevNet creates, I think there's some trends in the industry and we're going to be covering Sapphire, which is SAP's big show coming up in Orlando. And Cisco has some announcements I know. I was briefed under NDA on that so I really can't talk about it right now, but I do know for a fact there's going to be some significant innovations that Cisco is bringing to the table. And they're an app provider. Now they're an older version. They're the big ERP and the big software frameworks, but with, and they announced cloud native with iOS development kits. So this notion of like a new breed of developers is not a mutually exclusive argument against IT. It's just a continuation. So there's a dynamic going on between software developments in apps and not only just on the business model side but actually technically. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a few different things. So first of all, you know, an app developer can, so we have something called Meraki. So Meraki is our wireless access points. It was a big acquisition we did a few years ago. And you can think of, you know, wireless access points is giving you connectivity, wireless connectivity, but now imagine that it also you have APIs into it and it tells you how many mobile devices are connected, where are they connected from and where are the mobile devices located? If someone comes into your store, like how many people have been there before and how many people is it their first time there? So this is all stuff that you can get from your wireless access points and you can start to do really interesting stuff. I think any app developer would love to have that information of, you know, what can I get? Like who's in my store? Who's in my venue? And the infrastructure gives you that, you know. And you guys run all, if not all the networks in the world and an IoT device in the end of things is connected to a network wireless or wired. Yeah. And that's the other. And packets are moving around. So you have that data. We have that data. Yes, so, yes, exactly. Cisco infrastructure is everywhere. But it's been hard to expose that over the years because I mean Cisco's always had this notion of we play at a certain part of the stack. Yes. And now it's almost like finally after decades of conversations, I know from folks I talk at Cisco, let's move up the stack. There's always been this push that does Cisco move up the stack and how? Yes. And basically the way that, the way and the reason that Cisco can move up the stack now is because the infrastructure is programmable. So now our kit, the network is programmable. Now there's analytics that are being built into the network as things are running around. So like having a programmable network, having analytics where you can gather information together on how applications and things are being used are key. And then how do we move up the stack is we work with the ecosystem. We work with the community. Is that we have a developer program like DevNet, which is why we founded it, is we're going to enable those app developers to come to the world of the enterprise. So right now when you have an enterprise, who can write an awesome IoT app for a building or for a casino or for a mall or for a hotel? It's whoever that hotel works with, whatever system integrator they have. And that's all amazing because you know, your building's instrumented, you know where people are. So you don't have to, it's a horizontal market of developers versus a specific Cisco community, which you have to nurture in and of itself in the course of business. Guys who know how to handle the packets and the networking gear. Yes. But now someone who's, hey I know Cisco's a network provider, I just don't want to have to go get a training certification to get some data, just give it to me. That's right. And so what we can do is say, hey, here's the APIs, go to developer.sysco.com. Everything's there, everything's free. Here's learning labs on how to use the different APIs. Here's use cases. We actually have kit in the cloud. So we have a sandbox that lets people use stuff. Like if you want to write an app for a contact center, because we sell contact center stuff, we have a contact center that you can write and deploy your app on. You don't have to buy one to test it. So it's really interesting when these apps hit these places, which is that you need a contact center. Well, we'll have one for you. Here's the hard question I want to put you in the spot and bring the heat, if you will. You guys have been great in your own ecosystem, dominant force as Cisco's a company. As you move into this new ecosystem, because ecosystems are now business model parts of public companies. Cloudera just went public, Hortonworks went public. Mulesoft, a new class of new kind of open source companies are going public. You guys are not necessarily an open source company. You do all you do have open source initiatives. You have to now embrace a new kind of ecosystem. Absolutely. Where's the progress on this? How early is it? Because I think that's what DevNet created to me is pointing is that Cisco is now going into a new market. Yes. And being proactive. Absolutely. The question is, are you ready? Do you have the chops? And where are you in the progress of that? So we're ready. Now it's going to take work to work with the community to get there. But let me just go back is when we first started DevNet three years ago, we said, hey, are those networkers and those infrastructure guys, are they really ready for programmability and software? We didn't know. Then we had our first DevNet event and it was packed. We're like, oh my gosh, these guys are so ready. And we didn't know that at the time. So we've made good progress there. But now that we're sitting there to work with the community, I think that I'm hoping that they're going to be embracing. So we're certainly going to be open. We've actually opened up kind of the thinking within Cisco. We've done a lot of cultural change within Cisco because people have seen the success of DevNet and of the developers outside in the world who are actually kind of jumping in and ready to embrace programmability. So it's the old ad. It started home. It started home. It did with your own core. And then use that to then build out to the next one. Again, we go to a lot of events. I've seen Cisco around at a lot of some of the open source events outside Linux Foundation. You guys had some presence, but it seemed like a toe in the water. How are you guys going to go big on this? And that's what changed. Cisco has had some little developer efforts and a lot of heroics done by people within Cisco like, hey, I have this great product. I want to run a hackathon. So we've had all of these heroic attempts. But until DevNet came along, we didn't have one centrally funded program with a mandate from the CEO to go and get that programmability and developer ecosystem out there. That's what we had now for the last three years with DevNet. So now as we go to the next layer, you're right, we do have the people who are out working with Cloud Native, working with OpenStack, working with Open Daylight, working in the SDN, the Linux Foundation. And what we're doing is now bringing that to the next level. So again, adding the DevNet power, now that we have kind of established our base to really embrace this. So we hope that we're going to provide a lot more kind of foundation so that we can go big in these spaces. How big is the cultural change within Cisco? Just give some color without giving away too many trade secrets. But I mean, I know Cisco and a lot of my friends worked there for years in the beginning and intimate with the company's culture. And they've been a case study of dominance, just the way that their competitiveness has been the pros and the great, they run the networks. But now they have to move into this open source and the community world. Talk about some of the cultural changes. Any conversations, the CEO, when you talk to him, what's the conversation like there? Yeah, so I just met with our CEO Chuck Robbins a couple weeks ago, updated him on our progress. He actually, he and John Chambers together helped found DevNet. So they understand the need for it and they helped break down the barriers and create the funding and the organization to do it. And we had to do some reorgs to get it going originally. It's not just lip service. They're putting their muscle behind it. They're putting their effort behind it and they're dedicated to it and they understand it. So Chuck is fully behind it. He sees the importance of programmability. He actually understands the applications meet infrastructure and the transformation that can happen there. So he is super supportive all the way. He sent me a text this morning and said, yeah, when is DevNet created again? So he's on top of it. Yeah, he knows what we're doing. We're on theCUBE for sure. Absolutely. So applications meet infrastructure is the DevOps ethos and that really highlights your theme here. It does. It does. Now some of the other cultural change that has happened is for example, we have something called systems engineers in our sales force. So what happens is in our sales force, we have technical folks, we have 6,000 sales engineers around the world, systems engineers, and they understand the technical side. They're all taking DevNet training. So they're taking DevNet learning labs. They're learning to code. They're learning to use our APIs. And now the other thing is that they're now running DevNet events around the world. So these guys are not only getting trained, but they are running their own developer events. And so they've picked it all up. So this is a transformation that we've partnered with them on and that's really changed what they're doing. And they're realizing that, hey, there's a conversation like we can finally have the assets to help out app developers. And the app developers, they do need help. People have been writing mobile apps for years. Not that many of them are making money. So the question is, how do you do good to those app developers? How do you bring those app developers into the enterprise? How do you take it and make sure that when you have the newest things like... I've always said, feed it data. Feed it data. Data is a lifeblood of applications. Absolutely. When the applications have data, then you start to analyze it, you get the intelligence from it right there and then all new... The automation around provisioning, all that network plumbing is really, really hard and nuanced. So if you can automate that away, developers will just have parade to your door. Absolutely. A personal question. You've been very successful in building DevNet. Building developer programs is everyone's holy grail right now. There are people in companies right now, we've got to build a developer program. We've got to build a developer program. Throw some money at it. So they might have some lip service from the CEO or full commitment. What is the key to success to get the companies and to actually conceive, to build and deploy a successful developer program for a company? Yeah, that's a good question. I have to say that building a developer program is not as easy as you would think. I would think it should be easy. Get out there, go find some web service. You know, that's running for community stuff. Give them code. And that's it. But it's actually not that at all. But there's actually a few things that have been key to what we've done. So one of them, and actually I spoke about this at the Evans developer relations conference a few weeks back. But one of the keys there is just kind of, is first, just be entrepreneurial. Like you actually have to be an entrepreneur. Even if you're in a big company, then you especially have to be entrepreneurial. You have to hustle harder. And what I mean is you have to hustle hard. And with few resources, you have to show quick wins fast. And you have to make bets, right? So what are the kind of things we do? Well, when we first started, we actually didn't have an organization. It was me. It was a couple rebels from the different parts of the org who were like, we need this. And we were making proposals. And we pretended that, hey, just pretend that we have a full-blown developer program. What would you do? We went out there. We made developer.sysco.com. We made one site. We brought all of the APIs into one place so that developers could access it. And it was just going through and kind of building that site, which is really hard in a big company like Cisco with APIs all over the place. And we just silently launched it. And then people started discovering it. Like, oh, all of Cisco's stuff is here. Holy cow. And so that was one thing. Go humble early. Learn from Lennox himself. And we actually got kind of blasted on the Twitter sphere because actually on our developer page, we had one section that was actually going to just product information and not having APIs in it. And so this guy was like, oh, that's all product stuff. That's not about APIs. So we got blasted. We were like, holy crap. He was right. We went. We changed it, got rid of all that. That's our jail. And fixed it. And then he became our biggest fan. Right? So we changed and we learned from feedback from the community. You apply the entrepreneurial hustle. So, you know, hustle hard and make bets. Make bets. What's your big bet that you're hustling now for? I mean, hustle in a good way. Yes. Yes. What's your bet? Well, so our first bet back then, big bet was the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live was let's have a developer conference at Cisco Live. Like, we have no idea if people are going to be interested, but let's just do it. So we got second floor in Moscone, same place in Salesforce Dream. Yeah, exactly. So we like, boom, you know, kind of got the same place. They have Google I.O. and Dreamforce. We got the space, kind of created it. Didn't know if anybody would come. It was jam-packed. So we're like, oh my God, John Chambers came by. He told his whole staff, like you guys have to see what's happening. The DevNet Zone's now the busiest part of Cisco Live. So that was our big bet then. And fortunately, it paid off. And I think that's what made us part of the fabric that let us continue on. But now our big bet is DevNet Create. So it's about applications hitting the infrastructure and really ensuring that the infrastructure is giving benefit to app developers. Like, you know, it's not real benefit. It's not just for the sake of business. It's actually because to me, there's a real inflection going on in the industry. Like, apps can just ride on top and then just, you know, do whatever the infrastructure can provide for them. And that'll get us to one place. But once you really think about it, then you say, okay, where does the data for the apps need to sit? Oh my gosh, there's data sovereignty issues. So it can't just sit anywhere. Oh, how do we scale out? Like, when we scale out and you could just say, oh yeah, just go buy it. And you know, Amazon, Google, someone else will take care of it for me. Well, some of it will. And you should absolutely use that. We're using all of those as well. But there's policy. And so when you're really working to scale out and understand what's critical for your business, there's more that can be had. And then now you can go to the next level of where apps can get value-added business insights from the network, like what we were talking about before. And then, you know, like, a really big thing is just when I kind of think forward to the world of IoT and you say, again, this building is now IoT enabled. This building has APIs. It's the infrastructure and app developers would love to get access to that. Peter Burris and I were talking in the Cube about a new standard we want to see. All data should be presented in less than 100 milliseconds from any database. Oh, nice, nice. It's a moonshot. But let's think about that. That's what we want. Okay, so final question. Congratulations on all your success. And I do believe that the trend is there. The question is when we'll get there. So upcoming for DevNet Create, what do you hope to bring to the community? What do you want the community to look for and expect and what will they see? Absolutely, so what we want is we hope that, you know, DevNet Create is just a catalyst for this to happen, for this transformation that's happening. And we want it to help drive things with the community in a faster way than if we just let it go itself. So there's basically going to be two tracks at DevNet Create. One is on cloud and DevOps and the other is on IoT and apps. You know, with cloud, there's all these questions of how are we going to take monolithic legacy apps and turn them into microservices? You know, we have the world of containers, we have the world of container orchestration and everything there. That's all really hot stuff. But the way that we move this together, bring it into full production and get all of the apps really embracing that is key. So what we're hoping will happen at DevNet Create is that the world of cloud developers, the world of app developers, IoT developers will come together together with those that are working in DevOps, those in the infrastructure to really understand what are the benefits that can happen across these layers. I'm not saying that every app developer needs to become an infrastructure developer. So I'm not saying that every developer must be an operator, but there's benefits that can happen in the right ways. So really what we're hoping is that with DevNet Create, we can drive that conversation at the event itself and then continue with the ongoing community. What's the targeting specifically for the event? Non-Sysco developers or Cisco developers with a plus, with a twist, or? Non-Sysco developers, as well as some Cisco developers as well. But it's really about the industry. So whereas when you go to a traditional DevNet event, you're going to be hearing all about Cisco APIs and Cisco products and how they play together in these solutions. But at DevNet Create, 90% or more of the talks are non-Sysco. We had a call for papers. I was really nervous when we had the call for papers and I was super relieved because we had great papers come in. Actually the only problem is that we didn't have enough slots for the great papers. We even had to turn away some really good ones. So we have a really strong agenda and we actually said no to more Cisco talks because we wanted it from the ecosystem. So we have people from Google, from Amazon, from Howdy. There's just lots of from the Linux foundation. And so will this be a Cisco event going forward or an industry event? Because there's a trend in the event world where people are going in for the big dream force and the big one show, big ten to zillion people and then a series of industry shows around open source communities with governance. Are you guys going to take and make this a Cisco show, managed show? Or are you thinking about opening it up to the community to manage? Or what's your thoughts on the vision of that? Well we're hoping to catalyze it and we will continue to have our other Cisco DevNet events that are really about the Cisco APIs themselves and really training and bringing along that core community and we invite all the developers to attend that as well. But we really view DevNet Create to really be an event for the community. We'd be open to doing this with kind of co-sponsors and hosting it with others. We're open. We're open. We're open. We're actually doing this with Linux foundation as well. I'm involved. Many of them are on our advisory board. So we are very open. We're actually working with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE and so we want to do it in the most open ways possible. As I said, we'd like to sniff out all the hot events. This is one inaugural event. I think it's really, really important because it really shows Cisco's commitment to open source in a way that's been toeing the waters in the past. Like you said, little rebels in the organization are doing their thing trying to get the word inside Cisco. But now with the cultural shift I think you guys have the app dynamics. There's a vision as a path. I see a path there. And I think the community only benefits. Absolutely. And if the community benefits, then our goal is to actually make our community and our developers successful. So that's actually our only goal. So for them to be successful in their careers and in their business. And that will in turn make Cisco successful but really it's really about making the community successful. If you think about the 5G end-to-end architectures are winning. We do a whole segment on end-to-end. But to make it end-to-end work that's not just one company you need to have a strong developer community. And I think this is kind of where I see the events importance is true network transformation and programmability. The ethos of DevOps needs to go the next level so cars can program themselves. So a lot of new stuff happening. Absolutely. I don't think any major industry transformation happened with one company alone. It really takes a community. Be it a community of product makers, a community of solutions provider, service provider and consumers themselves. So this is really about the community. So congratulations on all your success and we're looking forward to seeing DevNet creates inaugural in May. Appreciate it. And great to talk to you about some of the mega trends and your perspective on that. Appreciate it. Thank you for helping to drive this vision and agenda. So I think that we'll be able to do this together. Susan, we're CTO at Cisco Systems DevNet creator and pioneer with her team of Rebels now a full-on group. Really talking about the app meets infrastructure total transformation enabling all the AI and autonomous vehicles. Smart cities, smart home. Cube Conversation, I'm John Furrier and thanks for watching.