 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering DevNet Create 2017, brought to you by Cisco. Hello everyone, welcome back to our live coverage here in San Francisco for Cisco Systems, inaugural DevNet Create event. I'm John Furrier, SiliconANGLE, my co-host, Peter Burris, head of research at wikibon.com. Our next guest is Jose Bergarin, Chief Innovation Officer, all those consulting VIP here at Cisco DevNet Create, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you. So to tell you a story, you have a really special story of true transformation where DevNet and being a developer in this new world order, has changed things for you. Yeah, actually the people from Cisco call it a racks to riches story. Basically, well I founded my company 10 years ago with my brother and a friend, and business was going good, but we were having some trouble competing with the larger Cisco partners in Costa Rica, so that's why we decided to do something else and software was a way to go. So three years ago I had the opportunity to participate in the first DevNet zone in Cisco Live in San Francisco 2014, and that really was a turning point for my company because we actually shifted our focus to software and software development, and that really pushed us forward and really allowed us to compete with those big partners, but also expand our business to some other parts of Latin America. So now we're doing stuff also in Mexico and doing stuff in Peru, and even thinking about coming to the States and do some software development here. Like taking over the world. So take us through specifically the inflection point. Obviously DevNet, you had an internal compass, you felt it, kind of the tailwind, the marketplace, pretty, pretty, not obvious to everyone, but you guys saw it. What was the moment where you go, wow, we're on to something with this? Yeah, it's probably hard to say because it lasts like different moments. The first one I think it's really Anderson Hurwitz. Andreessen Hurwitz? Yeah, exactly. Adventure Capitalist. Yeah, reading their blog post about software is in the world. So that was a blog post in 2011, I think. But we read about it in maybe 2013, and we started thinking, hey, maybe the way to go is actually to do some software by ourselves and figure out if we can actually improve the Cisco solutions that we're selling right now using software. So we basically used that, and then we came to the San Francisco 2014 DevNet zone and said, hey, now Cisco has a program around this. So maybe, yeah, software is the way to go. Maybe software is the way to actually go ahead and innovate and do some other stuff to better serve our customers. So that's when we actually went back home and doubled down on our strategy and started developing more software and having more conversations with our clients that we were able to solve using Cisco technology and Cisco hardware, but also develop software around it. Why did customers resonate with your story? It was because you had a unique differentiator. What specifically did you do with Cisco that made it such a high impact value proposition? Okay, one of the things that I really like about Cisco is they have a very robust infrastructure, but it's sometimes, or you need special integrations to really solve a business in it for a customer. So a lot of customers that we had really had maybe the hardware or the platform, for example, the Cisco Contact Center, but there's a gap between having the infrastructure and really solving that business need. So when we got there and told them, hey, maybe we can have those skills or we are building those skills in our company to bridge that gap, that really make a difference with our customers. And that's our whole business in the past three or four years has been around that, basically. And so it gave you an opportunity to get into that market. Yeah. And just have good product. Craig, what was the biggest learnings that you've had over that journey? What's the learnings you could share with folks watching? Okay. The first of all, it's a complete shift in your company. I mean, if you've been selling hardware and now developing software, two different worlds complete. I mean, I don't want to say it's easier to sell hardware, but it's maybe more complicated to develop software. It has to be a whole different process because when you're selling hardware, you're basically doing the design and then just like buying this hardware from Cisco and then selling it to your customer. But when you're developing software, you have to have your team ready, develop probably three, four, five months or even six months in advance and then get that solution to the customer. So it takes a while and you have to change all your business. You have to change your practice. It's difficult. I mean, I know that a lot of partners are trying to move in that way and develop more software, but to be honest, it's not that easy. You have to have a lot of commitment from management to actually make it. But I presume you're developing software not just for the hardware in terms of management or something like that. Are you also looking at Webex and Telepresence and the full suite of Cisco products as you start thinking about how you're developing solutions for your customers? Is that kind of the direction you're taking? Obviously, on top of the hardware. Is that kind of the direction you're taking? Yeah, we actually started more around Contact Center and then mainly around collaboration. So Webex, Telepresence, and now even Cisco Spark. And that was our focus for the first maybe three years. And now we're starting to do stuff around networking, like, you know, traditional networking, like router switching, or stuff like APKM, or CMX for the wireless part, or even Maraki gear. So we started in collaboration, but now we're expanding our business to other parts within the Cisco portfolio. And as you think about this message of how the network, which is now becoming programmable, in other words, you can use software to define and reconfigure, rapidly reconfigure the network. Are you also then seeing yourselves working not just with the traditional network people within the companies that you're selling to, but also developers and showing how the network is offering a more superior or extending the quality of the target that they're writing to as they write software? Yeah, yeah, and it's quite interesting. Again, coming from that contact center side, our conversations moved from IT to the supervisors and supervisors in the contact center. And now going to networking, we'll probably have to move the conversation from the operations team now to the development team. So when you start developing software, you actually have to go to the line of business or to teams different from the operational team that you're used to talk to. And I was going to say that's probably one of the reasons why it becomes more complex. That the change management challenges and a partner has to fit into those for installing a new switch or installing a new router is one thing. But the change management practices of going in and evolving the way a contact center operates, and I know Costa Rica is one of the places where at least here in the US, it serves Spanish speaking communities here in the US, that's a pretty significant challenge. There's a lot of change management things that have to happen there. To be dragged into those is not a trivial exercise. But it also points up the need for more intelligent, higher, more easy to manage, more robust types of networking interfaces. Where do you see the network going as a resource for developers to hit? I got to say that it has to become easier to program the network because right now you have a lot of technologies, but they're still not there yet. They're still need a lot of network background to actually use them. And some of them are not very flexible. So those technologies need to evolve for the developers to actually use them. And I see that coming in the next few years and Cisco's made a lot of progress in that. And also what we're seeing is that need to improve the analytics and the information that you can get from the network. And again Cisco, for example, has made a lot of progress in that. More app dynamics. Exactly, exactly. With things like app dynamics or for example APIs like data in motion or the whole computing process that they have. And that needs to improve for the developers to actually start getting more use about it. What's next for you now that you see DevNet create? They're putting their toe in the water or doing a good job here. First inaugural event. Yeah. Does this have legs? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've seen it. I wasn't there in the first DevNet zone in 2014. And I've seen the growth from 2014 to 2015 in San Diego and then Vegas and then Vegas this year. So I've seen that grow in the DevNet zone. I'm completely confidence that the DevNet create is going to get bigger and bigger in the coming years because I've seen how other teams, networking teams, operational teams like people from data center, traditional like compute teams. They're starting to get more interested in software development and events like this. So based on your first signals of the first year at DevNet which you walked in and transformed your business, you feel a similar vibe here. Oh yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, completely. You get that vibe of people learning, people starting to say, hey, Cisco's really actually sponsoring this and it's actually putting their money and where the amount is. They're actually investing. And the content's good. I mean, that's to me, the tail is the content. It's called walk in the walk. Yeah, exactly. Man, they're really, really helping the developers and you can see that. Well, let's hope that it translates to the core of Cisco because it's a huge company. I mean, the network engineers in the past, their diversion of developer was using voiceover IP. I mean, those worlds are over. Not over, but it's subsumed by cloud, right? I mean, cloud is changing everything. So what are you most excited about right now? As an entrepreneur, recovered, you're back on your way, rags to riches, talking to town. As you look out on the horizon, next, the 20-mile stair, what are you excited about that are enabling you to go out and continue to do what you're doing? What technologies? Yeah, well, probably, I know that some of them it's like buzzwords, like IoT and cloud and machine learning on even blockchain, but actually having those technologies at hand and it's not like you have to choose every one of them, but actually use them, some of them to actually build a better product or better service to your customers. It's something that really excites me. And again, it's something that Cisco's really investing in. So getting the traditional Cisco knowledge, like networking or contact center, and actually improve those technologies with machine learning or some IoT technology, I think that's the way forward. And we're actually doubling down our investment in those technologies. Hosey, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, sharing your story, really appreciate it. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you so much. And you got to get us down to Costa Rica. Sure, every time. We got to get down there. Heather Palo Alto goes down there, so we might as well, Peter. Seriously, thanks for coming on. Great, great, great to have you. This is theCUBE live coverage in San Francisco for Cisco's inaugural event, DevNet Create Building On, the popular only three-year-old DevNet program. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris with theCUBE. Stay tuned for more live coverage. Stay with us after this short break. Hi, I'm April Mitchell, and I'm the Senior Director of Strategy and Planning.