 Welcome everyone to the Architecting Solutions for Market Transition, a case study which is being presented by Naglakshmi. Naglakshmi is a senior engineering program manager at Cisco. Without any further delay, it's over to you Naglakshmi. Thank you. Thanks, Pankaj. Hello everyone, welcome to the session titled Architecting Solutions for Market Transitions wherein we'll be going over a case study. My name is Naglakshmi. And we'll get started on the session. As Gibi Shah said, progress is impossible without change. And those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. We have all heard the above quote and associate this with innovation. In every innovation initiative, design planning and program management should be at the center as is the foundation under driving force to the success of the initiative. It is even more crucial when entering a new game-changing initiative with a converged architecture, for example. When building solutions, there are typically multiple products, their teams and extended teams involved across the organization. If there is no well-defined structured process, there's the high risk of not meeting the desired results for the solution's success. At Cisco, we are building the internet for the future. We believe in building sustainable, world-class architectures and solutions, along with products that enable our customers to grow their revenue, reduce their operating costs and do so securely. To successfully execute this goal, we must provide architectures or solutions that deliver value to all the stakeholders to achieve growth and differentiation. With this in mind, we have built a solution program that enables our engineers to innovate at scale. Today, we'll be using our recently announced routed optical networking solution as a case study to share the best practices we adopted while building the solution. Routed optical networking is a new network paradigm that delivers improved operational efficiencies and simplicity. Before we start, let's try to understand the industry context. Today, the networks that connect us are becoming difficult to operate. Inefficiencies have accumulated from layers and layers of new technologies. So today, typically for every $1 invested, it costs $5 to manage network equipment and as network grows, this gap will likely to get worsened. Communication service providers need to simplify and reimagine network architecture to curb the rising operational costs and fast track the delivery of new services. Leonardo Da Vinci said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The above code summarizes the need for market and the customers. So routed optical networking is one of the key building blocks of Cisco's Converged Transport. It can eliminate the gap by reducing the complexity of the multi-layered network. Cisco's routed optical networking solution is about simplifying the network, how we build it, and more importantly, how you run the network. It is built on three pillars, namely, system, software, and optics. Massively scalable routers are available in all parts of our network. Our silicon photonics advancements have resulted in the production of high-speed, pluggable optics with no density tradeoffs. Together, standardized optics and new scalable routers have created a new solution called routed optical networking. Transponders is a device, a control device that picks up an automatically response to an incoming signal. This device can be removed and replaced with the specific optics and the long separated IP and optical layers in networks are unified with a single layered network. Thereby, designing, planning, protecting, managing, growing, and optimizing the network fiber assets becomes easier. The life cycle management is simplified as different technologies are streamlined into one unified management operation. Changing the paradigm, the Cisco routed networking solution significantly improves the operational efficiency and reduces the total cost of ownership for the customers by up to 45% and increases the service velocity. As a trusted partner, Cisco can help migrate from a complex multi-layered network to a routed optical networking solution anchored in operational simplicity. Customers can move the networks to the forefront of innovation with Cisco. As with anything new, there are always challenges and listed are some of the challenges when such a strategic solution is getting implemented. Firstly, the architecture needs to be defined, keeping in mind the customers and their journeys. How can we define the various releases that are part of the solution based on which? How would the customers transition and finally arrive at the final architecture where the services converge? Solution involves multiple products. Each of these products have their own product roadmaps. They have different release cycles and there are also new products getting implemented across the different business groups. Successful delivery of solutions would need a synergized effort and prioritization across multiple cross-functional teams within and across the business groups. Such solution customer engagements do not have a well-defined process and introducing use cases specific to the solution into different product roadmaps is challenging. Multiple stakeholders are involved across various business groups and aligning them and ensuring that the requirements are prioritized, scoped, planned, executed, validated and completed till solution support and documentation is another challenge. In terms of processes, tooling are also a key thing because the different products have their own respective processes, their own release cadences and tooling. Governance across all these disparate teams and planning for the solution is challenging. So this slide represents the various product releases with its content and the timeline alignment which is at different stages. Each of these challenges are opportunities that bring about changes and to scale. First was to focus and to define and establish a common solution process that is easily interpretable, adaptive for the various business groups and their corresponding products and releases. The various solution releases and corresponding milestones were defined. Take holders for the solution with their roles, responsibilities and a clear racy matrix was baselined. It had accountability defined for the various phases and milestones. The solution process also defined a clear entry exit criteria and quality criteria. Then was to establish the templates and tooling towards capturing the details of the solution. Architecture definition forms a key part of the entire solution. Based on the solution requirement document, a high level architecture was committed with inputs from the core architecture group. Solution development is dependent on the roadmap of different products and taking into account the customer journey. Solution releases were carved out at a very high level. So if we just try to understand, this is a slide that represents the solution releases and it has the use cases across various products and they are together forming a particular solution release. Now as and when each of the solution release is nearing a planning phase, the detailing was done and requirements were prioritized within all the products in their respective product roadmaps by the product line management team. This enables engineering teams to have greater details to scope, plan and to commit. So as we see in this slide, we have the two solution releases with various business units contributing with each of the business units running multiple releases of the products and the features which are needed by each of the solution releases are highlighted in a different color. So if we move forward, this particular picture represents how the feature and functionality is covered with various releases. So each of the features are part of a release and the releases are encompassing, are encompassed in a solution. So each of these are part of the commits that go in for the respective stream. Core teams are formed per solution release and key points of contacts from each of the product teams were nominated and cross functional team for the solution was formed. This also included formation of a solution test team that comprised of members from various groups in order to perform validation of the use cases for the specific solution release. Planning phase of each solution release covered engineering plans with the key emphasis being on the dependencies because cross functional dependencies are something that we need to ensure is covered very well and these dependencies across the various teams with clear producers and consumers and clear due dates which were mutually agreed were being tracked. Wherever the dependencies were open, which was not mutually agreed upon is being monitored as a risk. This was also tracked with automated mailers so that teams are on top of the various dependencies and they are closed on time. This represents how various deliverables across the product releases are considered for continuous integration for the solution testing. Last but not the least was also what establishing a clear governance structure so that leaders and executives are involved. They are appraised of any risks or issues and can make key decisions. The next slide talks about the various forums that were established as part of the overall solution governance. So this is the overall structure of the governance that was established and the data flow goes from the bottom to the top and we will cover the slide similarly. So we have at the bottom where we are having working project teams which cater to each of the solution releases. They meet at a cadence of a weekly and would cover the planning, the status, risk dependencies and actions and the coverage is with program management, engineering exec sponsor and the representatives from the various products. They cover the project team status, test progress, defects, dependencies and actions. Subsequently, if we move forward we are having a solution governance wherein it meets on a monthly basis in order to drive key decisions, having product alignments, prioritizations, budget and delivery across all the business groups. This is being attended by the solution owner, the program management and the key engineering and the product line representatives from the various products. They cover the status, the measure, the timeline, overview and the architecture, any roadblock or help needed, risk, overview and key early field trials. Subsequently, we need to ensure that there are also sales interlocks which happens bimonthly across the various geographies. So it is mainly geo-focused on sales forecast challenges and for the proof of concept demo and early field trials. This is having an interlock with the solution owner, the product marketing and the sales representative, ensuring there is coverage of status, measure, timeline and marketing plan and sales forecast. Subsequent to this, all of these will feed into the leadership deep dive that happens on a monthly level which ensures that there is a review with the extended teams and not just the engineering and the product line marketing but also includes field updates, marketing updates and customer experience readiness. So the representatives would comprise of leadership team, the solution owner, the program management, key engineering and product line marketing representatives along with sales leaders, customer experience leaders and marketing leaders. So here we also ensure that we are having a deep dive into the overall technical business readiness and sales pipelines. Another big time check, three minutes more to go. Sure. Thanks, Pankaj. So subsequently, we have the executive leadership team wherein we have a quarterly overview of each of the strategic programs of each of the solution that gets discussed with the executive leaders. So in a nutshell, what we have is an opportunity to architect market transitions. We have involvement of evolving technology, multiple products are involved and processes and tools were developed in order to aid this. Working with the cross functional was the key for the success of the program and extended team alignment is crucial. Attached is a story of how one ISP fulfilled its mission to bring next-gen connectivity to Ethiopia. So for more details on the solution, please refer to the link here. And with this, I can conclude and open it up for questions and answers and we can connect on LinkedIn as well. And we can meet up in the hangouts to cover all the questions and answers. Thank you, Nagalakshmi for sharing your experience with us today. Thank you all and thanks, Pankaj.