 Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live 2020. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to Barcelona everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with my co-host Stu Miniman, John Furrier is also in the house. We're here with Ryan Rose, who's a technical program manager at Cisco DevNet. Ryan, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on. I'm really glad to be here. You know, we have a soft spot in our heart for DevNet because of course we're in the DevNet zone. DevNet is the reason why theCUBE originally came to Cisco Live. And so it's been awesome seeing the evolution and the ascendancy of DevNet. It's now mainstream. You get a lot of love on the main stage. And really it is the lint pan of the next generation of training and certifications for the engineers, the network engineers. So tell us, give us a little quick history of DevNet. You've been here since the beginning. You remember the first DevNet. Oh yeah, in fact, so during my time at Cisco, like I was originally in learning at Cisco and being able to move over into DevNet. But I remember the very first DevNet experience that I had and it started back when DevNet started about five years ago now. It was at Cisco Live San Francisco. At the time they had split us across two streets. You know, they're trying to put, Cisco's trying to put a lot of activities going on in San Francisco. And they put DevNet in this walkway that was next to the Moscone Center and inside the Moscone Center. And when you went in there, it was packed. I mean, it was just shoulder to shoulder. Everyone there was just so excited because everyone was trying to learn like, what is DevNet? And now to look back on that, it's just so crazy how people have just been so quick to embrace the DevNet mission, the DevNet philosophy, really getting into automation and programmability. And it's so exciting for us every year to be coming back, seeing you at the queue, being here in the DevNet zone and being able to help people continue on that journey. Yeah, it's been great. And we got some hard news to talk about today. I said in my breaking analysis this week that Cisco when it rose, it pulled a number of levers and one of them was really creating the role of the network engineers, CCIE and the certifications. People who really understood the challenges and what Stu calls the dark art of networking. And now you're bringing that sort of hardware certification to software. So let's get right into the news. What are you guys announcing today and why is it so important? Thank you so much for letting us talk about this because I think everybody has been really excited since Chuck came out in San Diego, announced the DevNet certification, said the new exams were going to be available February 24th. So we're about a month out from there. And to help people get started, we just announced here about two big new offerings. The first is our DevNet associate fundamentals training, which will be launching on February 21st. So that way we can help individuals that are looking to start building up the skills and the exam readiness that they need to pursue a DevNet associate certification. We also announced our new DevNet study group platform. Because we don't want people to just find the tools and the training that they need at DevNet, we want them to find each other. We want them to not just build together, but learn together. So we will now have a brand new DevNet study group platform to help people have that type of interactivity. Ryan, I'm curious if you have much visibility into who's going to be taking these. How many of them are the ones that are the net vets, the CCIEs that have done this year after year and how many are new? Oh, I will tell you right now, we are actually getting this really wide and diverse audience. In fact, in the DevNet zone, we are providing a presentation on getting ready for DevNet certifications four times a day and it is packed every time we do it. And the audience is networking engineers, veteran networking engineers. When we ask people in the crowd, how many of you have certifications? How many of you are CCIEs? We get a wide variety of CCIEs this morning. We had a crew of software developers. So we are getting people that are coming from kind of all job roles at all stages in their career. What they're embracing is that DevNet philosophy around coding, around automation. They want to bring those practices back, whether that's DevOps, whether that's bringing a greater understanding of programmability. And so we're actually getting everyone, whether again, they're veterans or brand new. No, I love that because about 10 years ago, there was this big movement they said, network engineers, your future is miserable. You all need to learn to code, throw out what you learn, and you fast forward to today. There's multiple paths to get there. As you were talking about, there's diverse backgrounds. There's lots of ways to be relevant. Automation, of course, hugely important. Coding is a major piece of it, but it's not forget everything that you knew. It's how everything all works together. Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like, especially because the DevNet certifications aren't just the only one part of the launch on February 24th. In fact, the entire certification portfolio, and I know you're going to have other Cisco leaders on to talk about this, that is also being updated in launch on February 24th. And what I think you're going to see here is that flexibility that's in the program now, where you can actually have elements of automation baked into that network engineering journey. So you can still have the elements that people have been focusing on and building upon, except now you can stack on these new skills as you go. So if I go back 10 years, maybe even a little bit more, but certainly 10 years ago, people were reticent to embrace automation. You sort of alluded to that, Stu. But now in this day and age, automation is fundamental. You can't scale without automation. And so the DevNet zone is really about taking beyond that existing skill set, going to the next level. Okay, so if you think about the network engineer and the training that they've gotten in the past to deploy, manage, and optimize networks. Automation comes in, simplifies all that. How do you describe what the future looks like for that engineer that's been DevNet certified? What are they doing? Oh, I think that now it opens up a brand new horizon of tasks and even efficiencies, new things that people have yet to even, or new job roles that are even starting to emerge. A really good example, and one that we even talk about here at the DevNet zone is the DevSecOps engineer, the SecDevOps engineer. It's not that, and Susie has even talked about this as well, too, Susie Wee, who leads DevNet, that jobs are changing, and roles are expanding. And so rather than just having this opportunity where you're looking at supporting a network or acting as a network administrator, now with automation, to your point, we actually can expand the opportunities of the roles themselves and really open up things maybe you want to add those security automation elements, maybe you're interested in adding the collaboration automation elements. But whatever you are looking to do, the way that the program's built post-February 24th of 2020, you're able to actually have the opportunity to add in those skill validation exams, really build upon where you want to go. So I would say the horizon is wide and bright. So to carry this out further, my question is, so the lines are blurring between Dev and Ops, right? And then, so the network engineer, you kind of become more Dev-oriented. Do you see them actually either contributing to or certainly contributing to, but actually developing apps, say for instance, for the Edge? Maybe we could talk about that a little bit. Well, we are actually encouraging, as we've had more and more people join the DevNet community, we actually have two elements, two exchanges, our automation exchange and our code exchange, to really help people as they're moving through that. And we're already starting to see that learners, individuals that are coming through DevNet, making that change themselves. And actually contributing code to our code exchange, but also adding use cases to our automation exchange. So that way they're able to show not only how they're implementing these cases, but why they're doing it and the types of business outcomes that they're achieving. So that's a practice that has already started to take off. And I think certifications and things like the automation exchange, they go hand in hand, building the skills and then adding to the program. Well, you're hearing the keynote today, all the talk about bringing IT and OT together. And I think, again, part of that is, I've always said that the Edge is going to be won by developers because critical infrastructure needs to be secured. And developers, the DevSecOps role, I think this crowd is actually going to be an important lever in terms of bringing those two worlds together. Your thoughts on that? Yeah, I actually think that that bridge is something that everyone is crossing right now. And in fact, that's one of the motivations behind the updates to the certification portfolio. In fact, you'll find that we have parts of the portfolio that are shared between the hardware side and the software side. So that way we can have people, as they're making that transition, as they're starting to move into that world, that larger world of network automation, we're actually having it be more of a clear journey for them, so they're able to work that in to their own certification path. And I would say that these people that are here in the DevNet zone, they're the pioneers. They're the ones that are out there on that Edge that are doing that exploration and building these new things, these new worlds that we're going to start experiencing in automation. And I guess, Stu, it goes without saying, but it's worth saying. This is really all about programmable infrastructure. Infrastructure is code, bringing the cloud operating model to your data, to your infrastructure wherever it lives, right? Yeah, so, Brian, one of the things that's struck us is not only is there so much enthusiasm, but the breadth of the offering here, everything from, you know, here's some cool Maraki IoT thing to, Stu, you talked about security, automation sprinkled the route. Can you just remind our audience a little bit of, as people get through the certifications, you know, what are some of the paths that they have for different parts of the portfolio? Oh, absolutely. So the certification journey that we have right now within DevNet, we actually align it to all of our five major technology tracks right now. So there are pathways within the portfolio around enterprise networking, security, collaboration, service provider, and also data center. But we also have pathways as well around application build-outs in IoT and edge computing, WebEx, and also we have an entire practice that's now just dedicated to DevOps. And because DevOps is a concentration that can be, that is a horizontal throughout all of the certifications, this is something that you can now add to your journey. So we can actually have people here, and in fact we've been answering this question more and more. How do I become more proficient at DevOps? A part of that is now in the certification journey. And so we've done that here. You should mention, we're in the IoT takeover right now in the DevNet zone. Yeah. So Ryan, what about the partner ecosystem? Talked about how, what impact do they have, how much of the ecosystem is getting involved in certifications too? Oh, well I will say that we've actually, we've brought in a lot of people to help us develop this program initially. And I know that you're going to have additional DevNet leaders, they're going to be coming on, talking about partner ecosystems, so I don't want to take anything away from them, but I will say this. There is a lot of excitement because of the fact that when we brought the DevNet certifications out, and what that would mean for, for example, the new DevNet partner specialization. This is something that has been embraced by our partner community, but it's been embraced by the developers, whether they're our partner developers, they're our customers, or our networking engineers. Now that they have these as options for them to pursue, we have only been met with like positive, enthusiastic engagement. And in fact, even now, we're starting to see a lot of people that aren't asking anymore, back going back to San Francisco when everyone was saying, what is DevNet? Now they're asking, how do I DevNet? And it is so great to be able to come and show them not only the certifications, but the associate fundamentals training, these new DevNet study group platforms that we have, to show them, you know the what now, here's the how. So how challenging is, I was talking to a lady on the floor yesterday, and we were chatting, and I said, you were CCIE, she goes, oh, it's my dream, you know, I'm working my way there, it's very challenging, but you know, I'm doing really well. Similar challenges, presumably, to get DevNet certified? It's not trivial. No, it is not trivial. It is a certification in the exact same hallmark that we hold CCNA, CCNP, and CCIE, the DevNet certifications are just as rigorous. And so we are giving people a lot of tools to help them get ready. And in fact, one of the things that we've done to help people on this journey, take the initial steps, is we are not holding back any secrets. We've posted every one of our exam topics for all 10 of our DevNet exams at developer.cisco.com slash certification. There, you can find out the exact skills we'll be testing you on for all of those exams, but we want to step further. We found every DevNet learning lab that you can take today for free to start getting ready on that exam journey. And so for every single exam, you can find training that you can engage with. So as people are starting this journey, if they want to get ready and just build their skills, especially if they're starting at zero, for example, if they think Python is just a snake, we have a learning lab for them. So we have an entire plan that's built so they can start getting ready and advance and move forward for that certification process. What should a college kid do to get prepared for this? If he or she wants to get into IT and become a network engineer or DevNet is interested in that, what should they take? What courses should they be interested in? Oh man, that is a great question. We talked to a lot of people that are in a CS program, computer science program, and so many young people that are moving through college now, they're already in a habit of programming. They've been working on things, they might have even been programming their own video games or adding something to the new Mario games where you can actually build your own levels. What I would recommend to every young person, and in fact to anyone that's on this journey, come to DevNet. We have an incredible amount of tools at developer.sysco.com just by signing up. You get access not only to training that can take you from zero to coding to making your first API call to finding our sandboxes where you can take that theoretical knowledge and put it into practice using Cisco hardware and tools and then you can also find use cases there too. I think everyone is often just looking for where can I start? How do I start? DevNet has gone so far as to even have a start now area on the DevNet main page. So when you come to DevNet, we're always trying to meet you where you're at. If you're a veteran networking engineer, if you're a veteran developer, or if you're just starting out and you're a college student, we've got a plan for you to be able to take. Awesome, right? Check it out folks, you know, career builders, Cisco's always been renowned at that. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Oh hey, thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. All right, keep it right there. Everybody will be back with our next guest from Cisco Live in Barcelona. 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