 Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE here at Cisco Live 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. I'm Stu Miniman, and I'm happy to welcome to the program first time guest with someone I've known for many years, Jason Edelman, who is the founder of Network to Code. Jason, great to see you and thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me Stu. All right, so Jason, let's first, for our audience, it's your first time in the program, gives a little bit about your background and what led to you being the founder of Network to Code. Right, so my background is that of a traditional network engineer. I've spent 10 plus years managing networks, deploying networks, and really acting in a pre-sales capacity supporting Cisco infrastructure. And it was probably around 2012 or 13 working for a large Cisco VAR that we had access to something called Cisco 1PK. And we kind of dove into that as the first SDK to control network devices. We have today iPhone SDKs, SDKs for Android to program for phone apps. This is one of the first SDKs to program against the router and a switch. And that for me was just eye-opening. This is kind of back in 2013 or so to see what could be done to write code and Python, see your Java against network devices. Now, when this was going on, I didn't know how to code. So kind of use that as the entrance to ramp up. But that was, for me, the pivot point. And in the same six-week period, I had a demo of Puppet and Ansible automated networking devices. And so that was the pivot point where it was like, wow, realizing I've spent a career architecture and designing networks and realizing there's a challenge in operating networks day to day. Yeah, I mean, Jason, dial back. You have some Cisco certifications in your background? Sure, yeah, CCIE. Yeah, so I think back when this whole open flow, and before we even called it software defined networking, you were blogging about this type of stuff. But as you said, you weren't a coder. It wasn't your background. You were a network guy. And I think the network to code, a lot of things we've been looking at career-wise, it's like, okay, does everybody need to become coders? How will the tools mature? What was the, give us a little bit about that journey is how you got into coding and let's go from there. Yeah, it was interesting. In 2010, I started blogging open flow related. I thought it was going to change the world. So what NYSERA was doing at the time and then Big Switch at the time. And I just speculated and blogged and really just envisioned this world where networks were different in some capacity. And it took a couple of years to really shed light on management and operations of networking. And I made some career shifts. And I remember going back to 1PK at the time, my manager then who is now our CEO of network to code, he actually asked, well, why don't you do it? And it was just like me, me, like automated program. Like, what do you mean? And so it was kind of like a moment for me to kind of reflect on what I can do. Now I will say, I don't believe every network engineer should know how to code. That was my on ramp because of partnership with Cisco at the time and learning 1PK and programming languages. But that was sort of for me, I guess, what I needed as that kicking the butt to say, you know what, I am going to do this. So I do believe in the shift that's going to happen in the next couple of years. And that was where I kind of just jumped in, feet first and now we are where we are. Yeah, no, Jason, some great points there. I know for myself, I look at Cisco's gone through so much change. A year ago, up on stage, Cisco was talking about their future as a software company. You might not even think of us as networking first, you will talk to us about software first. So that initial shift that you saw back in 2010, it's happening, it's a different form than we might've thought originally and it's not necessarily a product, but we're going through that shift. And I like what you said about how not everybody needs to code, but it's changing paradigms and what we need to do are different. You've got some connections, we're here in the DevNet zone. I saw the U.S. show in Orlando last year, Network to Code had a small booth, there were a whole bunch of startups in that space. Tell us how you got involved in the DevNet really since the earliest days. Yeah, since the early days, it was really pretty DevNet, so the emergence of DevNet, and I've seen it growing in the past couple of years, this is still alive. And for us, given what we do at Network to Code as a network automation focused company, we see DevNet in use by our clients, by DevNet solution and products, things like I mentioned yesterday on the panel, but DevNet has always-on sandboxes to one of the biggest barriers we've seen with our clients is getting access to the right lab gear on getting started to automate. So DevNet has these sandboxes always-on to hit a Nexus API or a Catalyst API, things like that, and there's really a very good structured learning path to get started through DevNet, which usually where we intersect in our client engagements, it's kind of like post-DevNet, you're kind of really showing what's possible and then it will kind of get in and craft some solutions for our clients. Yeah, and I'd love to take us inside some of your clients if you can, are most of them, are they hitting the API instead of the CLI now when they're engaging? Yeah, it's actually a good question, not usually talked about, but the reality is APIs are still very new, and so we actively test a lot of the newer APIs from Cisco as an example. Like iOS Xe has some of the best APIs that exist around RESTConf, NetConf, modeled from the same Yang models and great APIs, but the truth is that a lot of our clients, all gender prizes that have been around for 20 plus years, the install base is still largely non-API enabled, so a lot of the automation that we do is definitely SSH based, and when you look at what's possible with platforms, if it is something like Custom and Python or even an Ansible to Shelf, a lot of the integrations are hidden from the user, so as long as we're able to accomplish the goal, it's the most important thing right now, and our clients' leaderships sometimes care, and it's true, right, you want the outcome, and initially it's okay if we're not using the API, but once we do flip that switch, it does provide a bit more structure and safety for automating, but the install base is so large right now that to automate, you have to use SSH, and we don't believe in waiting till every device is API enabled because it'll just take a while to turn that base. All right, Jason, the major focus of the conference this year has been around multi-cloud. How's that impacting your business and your customers? Right, so it's in our path as a company. Right now, there's a lot of focus around multi-cloud and data center, and the truth is we're doing a lot of automation in the campus networking space, automating networks getting deployed in wiring closets and firewalls and load balancers and things like that, so from our standpoint, as we start planning with our clients, we see the services that we offer kind of really poured over to multi-cloud and making sure that with whatever automation is being deployed today, regardless of tool set and look at a tool chain to deploy if it's a CICD pipeline for networking, we'll be able to do that if you're managing a network in the campus, a data center network or multi-cloud network to make sure you have a uniform looking field to operations and doing that. All right, so Jason, you're not only founder of a company, you're also an author. Maybe tell us about, believe it's an update or it's a new book that recently got out. Yes, I'm a co-author of a book with Matt Oswald and Scott Lowe, and it's a widely book that was published last year, and look, I'm a believer in education and to really make a change and change the industry like we have to educate, and I think the book, the goal was to play a small part and really bringing concepts to light as a network engineer by trade. There's fundamental concepts that network engineers should be aware of, and it could be basics in a lot of these. It could be Python or JINJA templating and YAML and Git and Linux for that matter. It's just kind of providing that baseline of skills as an entrance into automation, and once you have the baseline, it kind of really uncovers what's possible. So writing the book was great, great opportunity, and thank you to Matt and Scott for getting involved there. It really took a lot of the work effort and collaborated with them on it. Yeah, I want to get your perspective on the show also. Education, always a key feature of what happens at the show. Not far from us is the Cisco bookshop. I see people getting a lot of the big Cisco books, but I think 10 years ago, it was like everybody, get my CCIE, all my different certifications updated here. Here in the DevNet zone, a lot of people really, they're building stuff, they're building new pieces, they're playing in the labs and they're doing some of these environments. What's your experience here at the show and anything in particular that catches your eye? So I do believe education. I think to do anything well, you have to be educated on it, and I've read Cisco press books over the years, probably a dozen of them for the CCIE and beyonds. I think when we look at what's in DevNet, when we look at what's in the bookstore, people have to immerse themselves into the technology and reading books, like the learning labs that are here in the DevNet zone, the design sessions that are right behind us, that it's just amazing for me to have seen the DevNet zone grow to be what it is today and really the goal of educating the market of what's possible. So even from the start of Network to Code, we started as doing a lot of training because you really can't change the methodology of network operations without being aware of what's possible and it really does kind of come back to training, some, whatever it is, on demand, streaming, instructor led, reading a book and just glad to see this happen here and a lot more to do around the industry or in this space around community involvement and development, but training a huge part of it. All right, Jason, I want to give you the final word. Love the story of network engineer, gone entrepreneurial, out of your comfort zone, coding, helping to build a business. So tell us what you see going forward. Yeah, so we've grown quite a bit in the past couple of years. Right now, we're over 20 engineers strong and starting from essentially just one a couple of years ago was a huge transformation and seeing this happen. And look, I believe in bringing on A players to help make that happen. I think for us as a business, we're continuing to grow and accelerating what we do in this network automation space. But yeah, I just think one thought to throw out there is oftentimes we talk about lower level tools, Python, Git, YAML, a lot of these new acronyms and buzzwords for network engineers. But also the flip side is true too as our client base evolves and a lot of them are in the Fortune 100, so large clients, looking at consumption models of technology is super important, meaning is the ITSM tools deployed today like a ServiceNow or WebEx teams or Slack for chat integration to really think through early on how the internal customers of automation will consume automation because it really does us no good Cisco vendors or clients no good if we deploy a great network automation platform and no one uses it because it doesn't fit the culture of the brain of the organization. So just as we continue to grow that's really what's top of mind for us right now. All right, well Jason, congratulations on everything that you've done so far and wish you the best of luck going forward. And thank you so much of course for watching. We'll have more coverage, three-day wall-to-wall here at Cisco Live 2019 in Barcelona. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCUBE.